AMA: Green Dot Principal Product Manager, Ashwin Arun Poothatta on Product Roadmap & Prioritization

As problem solvers, it is easy for PMs to fall into the trap of taking on every request and getting stretched thin. However, this is not sustainable nor efficient in getting things done. To assess the value of a task, PMs can ask themselves or stakeholders the following questions. * Why is this important for the customer, product, or company? * What is the expected outcome and timeline? * How will it help teams achieve their goals? If a task is deemed worth pursuing, it's important to align with stakeholders on your contribution and set a timebox for it. This exercise can be applied to individual tasks as well. There may be times when it's difficult to say no, such as to senior management requests. In such cases, PMs can ask their managers for support in pushing back or understanding the value of the task.

It is natural for leaders to be ambitious and get enticed by potential growth segments. To avoid confusion and inefficiencies with the organization’s limited resources, leaders need to identify a primary customer segment that the product truly solves for, while exploring other segments for long-term opportunities. Start by using data to identify a primary segment that aligns with company strategy and vision, and get executive buy-in to focus primarily on that segment. Clarify that you plan on exploring ancillary segments with limited scope in the roadmap and the consequences of spreading the organization thin including a failure to achieve company goals. Finally, work with executives to define goals for each segment to determine what to include on the roadmap and ensure the product and organization is best set up for success.

Managing a product without guidance from company leadership can be intimidating, but it also presents a valuable opportunity for a PM to establish themselves as a trusted leader. Below are some steps to work through this challenging yet exciting situation. * Understand your customers and market: If you don't have a strong grasp on your customers or market, seek out stakeholders across the company you can learn from. Bounce ideas off them and get feedback to help you craft a comprehensive vision about the problems your customers face, the market and competitive landscape, and how your product will address these holistically. * Validate your roadmap with customers: Before finalizing your roadmap, validate it with customers to ensure it aligns with their needs and expectations and use their feedback to refine it further. * Work with stakeholders to educate leadership: Once you have a clear and validated product roadmap, work with your stakeholders to help educate leadership. Gather feedback and alignment from them and enable them to drive the company's vision and strategy in the long term.

It is important to consider the build vs buy decision where it makes sense as teams are often focused on building everything, resulting in inefficiencies and a lack of focus. While using 3rd party services can be a strategic move to accelerate your roadmap and free up resources and time, it is important to decide if it aligns with your long-term goals and strategy. To make the decision, consider the following questions with stakeholders * Is the functionality core to your product and will it differentiate you in the market? * Do you need out-of-the-box functionality or customizations? * Are there industry-leading services you can use? * Will using a 3rd party service accelerate time to market? * What are the implementation and maintenance costs compared to building in-house? * Will the 3rd party meet your user's service level expectations? It is also wise to gather feedback from other customers of the service and the impact it had on their product and users, as these decisions require significant investment in capital, time, and effort.

Reducing sales influence over a product roadmap can be challenging, especially for companies that rely heavily on sales to acquire and retain customers. However, it is critical to ensure that sales directives do not interfere with the company's long-term goals or vision. To gain some level of autonomy, PMs can take the following steps: * Revisit the strategy and vision with the executive team and sales leadership. This will help them visualize how sales-directed priorities will impact the ability to achieve long-term goals instead of a roadmap based on the needs of customers and the market. * Highlight the risk that a sales-directed roadmap could result in a heavily customized product that doesn't scale well long-term with real-world examples. This could threaten the company's survival. * Lastly, involve stakeholders that support your approach and share your concerns to ensure a holistic and customer-centric approach to product development and growth.

In general, a product roadmap should be shaped by product strategy, vision, and goals rather than prioritizing initiatives or features based on whether they benefit existing customers or prospects. However, there are scenarios where a focus on existing customers may be justified. * High-value customers at risk of churn, which could threaten the company or product's survival. In such cases, addressing the needs of these customers may take precedence over other priorities. * Early-stage companies building a product with feedback from their customers. In this scenario, a focus on existing customers can help build out a product that is well-received by prospects and the broader market.

As a PM, it's important to seek input from and align your roadmap with executives regularly. Executives can be valuable in several ways. * Executives can help define strategy. They can use their expertise to guide your roadmap and prioritization based on company strategy * Executives can help refine the roadmap. They can challenge initiatives and question timelines or impact to help sharpen your roadmap before sharing it with the broader organization. It's crucial to back up initiatives with data where available, such as customer feedback, reduced churn, increased conversion, and build effort, to tell a story consistent with company goals and vision. * Executives can help identify gaps in the roadmap based on their exposure to leaders and decision-makers Effective executive communication is a two-way street, and it's essential to convey and defend your story and vision while being open to input that will help the company put its best foot forward.

Product marketing is an essential partner for PMs throughout the product lifecycle. They can provide valuable insights on the customer and competitive landscape to help define roadmap and priorities. They can offer perspective on product messaging and positioning and identify what is or isn't working in the market. Working with Sales, Marketing, and leaders in the organization, product marketing can provide feedback on gaps in the product that are turning away prospects, identify unmet customer needs, and drive revenue with upsell opportunities. Additionally, they can help align the organization with the roadmap by defining messaging and positioning. In short, product marketing can supplement a PMs understanding of the market, help identify gaps, drive revenue and improve product outcomes by working cross-functionally. This partnership can ensure that the product meets customer needs, is well-received in the market, and aligns with the company's goals.

A product roadmap is a tool that communicates strategy, goals, metrics, features, initiatives, and timelines to the organization. It is key to achieving alignment and buy-in from leadership and ensuring that teams are on the same page. Regular communication with stakeholders, especially when changes occur, is essential. Below are some key stakeholders and their expectations from a roadmap. * Sales and customer success need to understand feature timelines and the value they add to customers * Marketing needs to understand the initiatives, features, and value to different segments to prepare a go-to-market strategy * Engineering needs to understand the overall vision, outcomes as well as feature details and complexity for execution * Customer support needs to know about enhancements and timelines to keep customers happy Note that depending on the organization, Finance, Legal, Operations and others may also need to be in the loop on the roadmap. By getting a complete picture of stakeholders in your company and understanding each team's needs and communicating effectively, PMs can drive product success and meet customer needs.