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Mike Flouton

AMA: GitLab VP, Product, Mike Flouton on Product Roadmap Planning

October 25 @ 9:00AM PT

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  1. 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)

    Mike Flouton
    Mike Flouton

    Boxford Capital Managing Partner | Formerly Barracuda, SilverSky, Digital Guardian, OpenPages, Cybertrust • 2y

    I know it's a cliche, but as PM you are CEO of the product. You shouldn't need guidance from the e-group. Their perspective can be useful, and they will bring knowledge and insights that can help you get to the right market driven insights. But you shouldn't outsource your job to them by relying on their guidance. If you're at a company with a new e-group that doesn't want to provide input into the roadmap, consider yourself lucky! This is your time to shine and show yourself as the market and c ...Read More

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

    Mike Flouton
    Mike Flouton

    Boxford Capital Managing Partner | Formerly Barracuda, SilverSky, Digital Guardian, OpenPages, Cybertrust • 2y

    This question is impossible to answer in the abstract. It depends entirely on where you are in the technology adoption lifecycle. If you haven't read "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado," go get them immediately and work your way through them. They are relatively short reads and timeless classics you will want to re-read throughout your career. As you will learn, at some points in the lifecycle you might focus 90% on new customers, at others 90% on your existing base (and no, it's not a ...Read More

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  3. What are some of the lenses your look through or principles you apply when prioritizing a roadmap? How are they weighted relative to each other?

    Mike Flouton
    Mike Flouton

    Boxford Capital Managing Partner | Formerly Barracuda, SilverSky, Digital Guardian, OpenPages, Cybertrust • 2y

    This is a great question. I've been using some variant of cost-adjusted impact scoring to prioritize roadmaps for over 20 years now. Every market, buyer, product and strategic context is different, so there's no one size fits all methodology. RICE is an example of one popular approach, but I prefer something more tailored for the specific situation. Essentially, as an organization we will pick 3-5 outcome measures according to the needs of the business. Examples might be new business growth, chu ...Read More

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  4. Which stakeholders have input into your roadmap, and how to balance giving them influence vs control?

    Mike Flouton
    Mike Flouton

    Boxford Capital Managing Partner | Formerly Barracuda, SilverSky, Digital Guardian, OpenPages, Cybertrust • 2y

    As a general rule, everyone should have input into the product roadmap. In fact, at GitLab our mission is to make it so that everyone can contribute and we apply the same principle here. A good product manager knows that listening to an idea, asking questions, and truly trying to understand it is in no way a commitment to implement it. So they don't shy away from this dialog, and in fact embrace it. Now, when it comes to doing the prioritization, we need to be market driven and not stakeholder d ...Read More

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  5. When does it make sense to make your roadmap publically available, and what do you include (vs your internal roadmap)

    Mike Flouton
    Mike Flouton

    Boxford Capital Managing Partner | Formerly Barracuda, SilverSky, Digital Guardian, OpenPages, Cybertrust • 2y

    I might have given you a very different answer to this question a year ago! I used to be paranoid about hiding my roadmap from my competitors, and would share broadly internally and with customers to maximize feedback, yet lock it down for everyone else. GitLab is the most transparent company I've ever worked for, and for the most part our roadmap is on our public website available to anyone. I can't tell you how liberating it is to be talking to a customer who has an obscure question about an a ...Read More

    2,243 Views
    1 request

  6. How does your product team usually work with your product marketing team with building the roadmap?

    Mike Flouton
    Mike Flouton

    Boxford Capital Managing Partner | Formerly Barracuda, SilverSky, Digital Guardian, OpenPages, Cybertrust • 2y

    I've always said a good PM and PMM should be joined at the hip. The PMM should be bringing market insights to the table and act as an excellent sounding board for their PM. That should be throughout the lifecycle.

    Far too often what happens is the PM builds something, throws it over the fence at a PMM, and then the PMM is stuck trying to reverse engineer the "why" behind why it was built. That leads to failed products and poor launches. Engage your PMM counterparts early and often.

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