AMA: GitLab Group Manager, Product, Jacqueline Porter on Product Roadmap & Prioritization

I love this question - the audience is everything! I typically have 3 pre-prepared altitudes for my product roadmap which correspond to a specific persona and time horizon  1. Annual Thematic Roadmap with Big Boulder Features - Executives and Buyers of Product: This roadmap has a conceptual, initiative-based view. So, it features connected narratives of multiple features for what the themes of the roadmap will deliver for a buyer or an executive interested in the ROI of the roadmap.  2. Quarterl ...Read More

Well, I often incorporate multiple sensing mechanisms into the roadmap - the field and sales team are definitely an important lever to drive revenue, which really is why product managers exist.  So, a tactic I use is to show how much of my engineering capacity is dedicated to enabling revenue, technical debt, and long-term vision. The long-term vision is often a "big bet" that is about making a splash in the market or analyst review. Oftentimes, sales and the field are supportive of carving out ...Read More

This is certainly a tricky one! I like to think of a roadmap being made up of four sensing mechanisms:  1. External stakeholders - investors, board members  2. Market landscape - competitors, analyst reviews or reports, and prospects 3. Internal stakeholders - CEO, leadership, cross-functional teams  4. Customers - install base or existing paying and free users  When you are able to attribute the sources of your roadmap features transparently, it becomes a trade-off conversation with executives ...Read More

I typically start from what are the annual business targets set by the company to answer this question. Oftentimes, the sales organization, CEO, and professional services organizations have targets around expansion, new logo acquisition, and win rate which will help portion out what the backlog needs to be to support the business goals.  In absence of these targets set by leadership, I would use a RICE framework (https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/) to ...Read More

Since I have joined GitLab, where our product roadmaps are publicly accessible (https://about.gitlab.com/direction/), I don't think I will ever go back to internal roadmaps. A public roadmap as a number of benefits:  1. You keep everyone internal to the company aligned and up to date on what the product organization is building  2. You can encourage contribution (if you use open source) from the community or customers to help build your roadmap - delivering on a dual fly wheel mechanism  3. Redu ...Read More

Wow, what a great question! I like to think that product marketing offers a different lens to the market landscape, competitive positioning, and product launches. As a result, I typically rely on four main activities:  1. Include product marketing in the annual product theme and road-mapping processes  2. Have a set sync with the product marketing to review shared performance indicators such as the top of funnel leads, website performance, and release post/notes engagement  3. Assign tasks and r ...Read More