AMA: Adobe Director, Product Management, Charat Maheshwari on Product Roadmap & Prioritization

Ideas for new features come from everywhere: Usage data/analytics and insights, design & user research, executive vision or business needs, competitive/industry analysis and trends, engineering/architecture insights, support tickets/community forums, Mktg/PMM, etc. It is a good practice to keenly scan & listen for new feature ideas.  The decision on what (& when) to build, should be based on a simple & structured approach. First, is it a validated user problem or new user value o ...Read More

I would look through four primary lenses when prioritizing: Strategic alignment: Does this connect directly to the vision and OKRs? If not, it should not be on the roadmap. User/customer impact: Are we solving a real, validated problem? Again, strong evidence matters – e.g. from research, supporting data, or direct feedback. Business value: Does this drive the key metrics: retention, activation, growth, or revenue/ARR? Effort vs. Impact: A rough assessment of cost relative to expected impact.   ...Read More

The short answer: everyone gets influence; (almost) no one gets control. It is important to assume the role to smartly synthesize the inputs, and not to take the requests at face value. The stakeholders I engage regularly include executive leadership, engineering, design, PMM and marketing, sales, customer success, legal and compliance, and of course customers and users themselves. It would also depend on the type of initiative, etc. Each stakeholder brings a distinct perspective, and the roadma ...Read More

Beyond the obvious internal stakeholders – engineering, design, marketing/sales/CS, and leadership – input should also come from customers (/via advisory boards), community forums, and user research, from architects (re platform constraints or future opportunities to scale), and from competitive and market intelligence. So, product roadmap input should come from as many stakeholders, as possible.   What gates an idea should be clear to develop a robust and prioritized roadmap. Some progressive f ...Read More

Listen before you lead or change.   Resist the latter till the insights are developed. So, spending 30-60 days in listening mode: with customers, your team, engineering, design, sales, and your executive peers. Understand what’s working, what’s broken, and – crucially – why certain decisions were made the way they were. Gain more context behind the status quo than is visible at first.   Additionally, just doing that would earn trust and credibility. And its easier to infom the right to change di ...Read More

Yes, a quarterly cadence strikes the right balance between giving enough directional clarity and flexibility to adapt. Doing it on a rolling basis with decreasing resolution as you go further out. (With AI this could potentially shift to monthly - but same principle.) Current quarter: Committed. Well-defined scope. Team & stakeholder alignment. Next quarter: Directional. Scope is somewhat clear; Dependencies are being mapped; Priorities are mostly known, though a few commitments could be pen ...Read More

Stakeholders often conflate “what I want” with “what users need,” and they would expect some things in the immediately too. A few approaches that can be used effectively:   Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD): “What is the user trying to accomplish?” to shift the conversation from features to outcomes. Also, inform what’s table-stakes versus what’s a nice enhancement. MoSCoW method (Must have / Should have / Could have / Won’t have): This if associated with each request (and with limits or distribution acros ...Read More