AMA: Meta Senior Director of Product Management, Poorvi Shrivastav on Roadmap Planning

October 24, 2023 @ 11:00AM PT

How do you get autonomy for prioritizing your roadmap when your sales process is very sales heavy, and sales leadership wants to dictate priorities?

Poorvi Shrivastav

Meta Senior Director of Product Management • 2y

Love this question and have witnessed this scenario often. I'd say try to establish a common framework with your sales leadership so noise doesn't misguide signal when it comes to prioritizing customer feedback. Maybe a feature gets priority if there are X number of smaller customers asking for it or a larger customer (provided we can platformize the feature) is worth Y ROI. Whatever be the framework, you need a common understanding because these requests aren't one off so product and sales lead ...Read More

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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)

Poorvi Shrivastav

Meta Senior Director of Product Management • 2y

This is the best scenario in my opinion. Reason being, as a product leader you can both help define the future of your product as well as develop confidence and guide your leadership, which will help your career prospects as well.

Again, having the confidence in your conviction and guiding leadership with rationale is the key here. Lean into your cross-functional partners like data science and design to plan roadmap and then guide your C-suite towards that direction.

2,671 Views

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

Poorvi Shrivastav

Meta Senior Director of Product Management • 2y

I think it depends on whether the product has a market fit or not. If it's pre market fit, then we'd want to lean towards prospects to ideally find a core group of sticky users. If it's post market fit, then you balance customers and prospects to both drive engagement and adoption.

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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?
Poorvi Shrivastav

Meta Senior Director of Product Management • 2y
I think there are a lot of frameworks when it comes to prioritization. At the end of the day, what is important for me is a combination of

prioritization

sequencing

to arrive at a confident and well executed roadmap.

Whatever be the framework, there are several signals to utilize

Feedback criticality from customers

Important of the product/ feature in the product maturity cycle

Competitive pressure or innovation

Upwards input/ company alignment

ROI (Cost benefit analysis)
3,713 Views
2 requests
Which stakeholders have input into your roadmap, and how to balance giving them influence vs control?

Poorvi Shrivastav

Meta Senior Director of Product Management • 2y

It varies. Mostly the stakeholders fall in four categories Customers especially in B2B larger enterprise products (there is sometimes more control here) Partners like engineering, design, data science etc. who provide feedback and help crystalize the sequencing of work Senior leadership who often wants a concrete, confident and rationale driven roadmap but sometimes might also have top down asks [Optional] For core, platform or internal products - Internal stakeholders like other product leaders ...Read More

2,336 Views

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It’s impossible to get our exec team to focus on one segment. How do I balance prioritizing my roadmap while building for different segments?

Poorvi Shrivastav

Meta Senior Director of Product Management • 2y

I think executives in all shape and form need guidance from domain experts. They are looking for product leaders to have confidence in their conviction and share the same confidence with executives. I usually form my opinions based on data and experience with the help of my team and then present to executives, reiterate multiple times with the help of visuals and then share broadly with teams after alignment. Sometimes, I'd use competitive (e.g. a market is already saturated in a particular segm ...Read More

2,925 Views

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

Poorvi Shrivastav

Meta Senior Director of Product Management • 2y

I think public roadmaps make sense once you are post product market fit but it's important to remember to only lookout 6 months or so (with safe harbor for future usage/ purchasing statements). Once you are post GTM fit, then it makes sense to go further out to 12 months and provide dates for 6 month launches. I typically suggest including major product changes that the team is fairly (> 90%) confident on delivering along with separate comms on other smaller changes that might be relevant for ...Read More

2,708 Views

1 request

AMA: Meta Senior Director of Product Management, Poorvi Shrivastav on Roadmap Planning

View AMA Answers

How do you get autonomy for prioritizing your roadmap when your sales process is very sales heavy, and sales leadership wants to dictate priorities?

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)

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

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?

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

It’s impossible to get our exec team to focus on one segment. How do I balance prioritizing my roadmap while building for different segments?

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