AMA: Asana Head of Product Operations, Saikat Paul on Product Roadmap & Prioritization

The easy answer is ideas come from everywhere—customers, sales, internal teams, data, market trends, a founder's morning shower epiphany, etc. In reality, what matters most is having a clear system to prioritize them based on impact, not who yells loudest. I don't think you take an idea and then just go and build it. You need to look at the ideas holistically and in a larger context. Are they hinting at a one-off problem or an endemic one? Use all the noise of the requests to triangulate the cus ...Read More

It depends on your company’s stage, but a healthy roadmap usually balances both existing customers and prospects. Earlier-stage companies should prioritize features that unlock growth and new deals, while more mature businesses should focus on retaining and expanding existing customers. More generally, here's how I'd think about it: Think portfolio, not either/or Don’t fall into the trap of choosing one over the other. Treat your roadmap like a product portfolio to get flexibility and balance ac ...Read More

Enumerating the lenses is easy enough. What's truly difficult is advising on their relative weighting. No single lens wins every time—it’s about balancing them to make smart trade-offs. That balance will change over time depending on company strategy, market context, etc. Business impact: Will it drive revenue, retention, or efficiency? Customer value: Does it solve a real pain for a meaningful segment? Effort & complexity: Can we build it well with the resources we have? Strategic alignment ...Read More

Product and product marketing work best as partners—not folks talking at one another through a wall. PMMs bring market context, buyer insight, and positioning expertise that help shape what you build and why it matters. Involving them early makes the roadmap stronger and easier to launch. Here’s how that partnership usually works: Co-create roadmap inputs: PMMs bring win/loss data, competitive intel, and market trends to help prioritize high-impact work. Validate demand & urgency: They help ...Read More

This is highly dependent on your business and release management, but in my opinion, quarterly roadmaps work great for clarity and alignment—but don't treat them as gospel. As for capacity planning 6+ months out; yes, do it, but be flexible. Don't spend excess cycles on tight estimation and schedules. There's usually limited value in that since we all know things change. Here’s how I think about it: Use quarters to communicate timing, not deadlines.Grouping by quarter helps with stakeholder expe ...Read More

It's hard to focus stakeholders on what's truly necessary vs nice-to-have and to complicate things even more, everyone's going to have a different list. Give your stakeholders an easy-to-understand prioritization framework, clear constraints, and educate them on the real-world tradeoffs. Also, remind them that an MVP is a tool for learning, not launching. Couple other things I've picked up over the years: Anchor on the goal, not the feature listAsk: “What outcome are we trying to achieve in v1?” ...Read More