AMA: Braze Director of Product Management, Marion Nammack on Product Roadmap & Prioritization

The level of detail that people on other teams need depends on what they are using the roadmap for. Our roadmap planning tool enables us to create multiple views of the roadmap - we tailor each view to the use cases of the consumers. For example, we have the following views: A view for our quarterly planning process - this view is primarily used to communicate to execs so it focuses on the high level business goals that each roadmap item supports and doesn’t contain many implementation details. ...Read More

Good framing is essential for effective prioritization, especially in cases where departments have different perspectives on what to prioritize. In many companies, including my own, the sales team is an important stakeholder in the product roadmap. When working with other departments or teams, you want to ensure that there’s a common language in which to communicate. For example, are both departments aligned on the prioritization of high level business goals? Is there a clear ownership model? On ...Read More

Let’s say that a product team and an executive team are aligned on the goal of improving customer satisfaction with the product (measured by a CSAT survey). The product team will then do research and perform experiments to validate the best way to impact customer satisfaction. Including executives in the research process via stakeholder interviews is a great way to get input early - executives are viewing things from a much different perspective than team ICs and often have great ideas. When the ...Read More