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AMA: Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management, Julian Dunn on Product Roadmap & Prioritization

March 18 @ 10:00AM PT

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If you were the first creative hire in a company with a legacy/outdated product that's never been touched by a designer, how long would you reasonably expect before being able to set in motion the implementation of a new design system and new UX?

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

This depends a lot on whether it is materially causing problems for the business. (There are an awful of legacy products out there with legacy UX, but there few motivatio...

784 Views

2 requests

How do you balance the level of complexity / granularity of a roadmap? What is just enough fix and flex?

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

My preference is to focus a roadmap on "big digs" or themes of investment. Customers (and your sales team) generally want to see a roadmap not because they care about eac...

940 Views

2 requests

How do you balance "must do" work (compliance, maintenance, etc.) with objective/goal oriented work?

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

The best way that I've found to manage this is to fund these out of separate envelopes.Typically I will work with engineering to agree on the base % allocation of resourc...

509 Views

1 request

Move Items on Roadmap: What are your suggestions for product leads when they need to efficiently explain that an item on the roadmap needs to move because some other item has become more important?

We are required to write long docs and spend hours on creating decks for leadership which is not the best use of time

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

Yeah -- that seems unnecessary for most day-to-day roadmap changes. In my view, lengthy discussion like this should only happen if one or more of the following is true:Th...

440 Views

1 request

Does it make sense to use quarterly format for roadmaps? Do you do capacity planning for roadmap items that are more than 6 months out?

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

I very much prefer not to use quarterly formats for roadmaps; I am a huge fan of the now/next/later roadmap. If pressed, I will say "now" is 0-6 months, "next" is 6-12 mo...

469 Views

1 request

How do you manage a roadmap when company leadership cannot or will not provide guidance? (e.g. the C-team is all newly hired and don't know enough about the product or customers)

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

This is a tough situation, similar to one in which a C-team won't clearly articulate a company's strategy or its short-term objectives. A mistake I've seen some PMs make ...

403 Views

1 request

It seems like a PM role is stretched in multiple directions - business goals, engineering, customer satisfaction etc. How do you determine what's more important to focus on?

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

I try to focus a product team on the most pressing areas that only PM can do. Our job is to create unique leverage for the company, not try to do everyone's job. So for e...

1465 Views

1 request

How do you determine how much of your roadmap should be focused on existing customers vs prospects?

Julian Dunn•

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 1y

To answer this properly, it's critical to know what your product or product line's goals are. What is the lifecycle phase of the product? Is it in its initial growth ramp...

524 Views

1 request