AMA: Momentive Vice President Of Product Management, Aleks Bass on Product Roadmap & Prioritization

I find that this type of division can be misleading. In many industries, there is little difference between what an existing customer would want vs what a prospect would want. Many times, the two would like to see the same kinds of capabilities built (but their priorities might be different). I think more about the buying centers I’m targeting, the use cases they have that my product can solve, and prioritize the roadmap based on the importance of those.

Prioritization is the most important role of the product management function, and there seems to be a general sense that there is one major moment of prioritization that culminates in a completed roadmap. The reality is that the exercise in prioritization starts much earlier. Like many organizations, we are resource-constrained and have many more ideas than we can realistically action. Therefore, prioritization is one of the most important things we can do to help the company succeed. This means we are constantly prioritizing at all levels of work, not just the roadmap items. Prioritization starts with the product strategy, and decisions around what we want the product to be known for, who the target buyer and users are, and how we plan to differentiate from other key players. It continues as you prioritize the problem spaces PMs and Designers are encouraged to explore and validate. It continues still as the opportunity sizes and strategic alignment of those problem spaces surface ones we choose to pursue solutions for, and so on and so forth. By the time you get to the prioritization of features for a roadmap, you have already made a series of decisions around priority that have led you there. We craft specific stages and ceremonies within our product development lifecycle to intentionally make those choices in a less biased and more intentional way. Even with the best prioritization processes though, you may still find yourself comparing a series of features to each other, trying to decide which is a priority for your roadmap. In this case, here are some elements our team thinks through: 1. Strategic Alignment - Are these items helping us intentionally pave our way to our intended future state, or are they requests that aren’t well aligned to our vision? 2. Perceived Value - Will customers/prospects find this feature or product valuable, especially when compared to the competition? 3. Technical Feasibility - Can we build it with the people, tools, and expertise we have? 4. Commercial Viability - Will this product or feature provide a positive financial impact on the business? 5. Product Differentiation - Will this help us differentiate against the competition? 6. Retention/Expansion Driver - Will this help us keep our existing customers happy, or provide opportunities to expand into other user groups, use cases, buyers, or fulfill other market needs? Depending on where your team lands on the quant/qual continuum you could simply assess these (or similar) elements categorically and make a call, or if you really like to be a bit more concrete, you can create a scorecard that you use to evaluate all features or initiatives against this set of criteria of your choosing.

There are several stakeholders that have input into our roadmap, a few main partners and collaborators are listed below: * Other Product & Design Teams * Sales/CS teams * Marketing & Growth * Research * And more… Most cross-functional partners just want to be heard and want to understand whether their requests will be addressed or not. This is why transparency is a key element in all 3 of the following tips to help you maintain the balance between influence and control: 1. Give your cross-functional partners an acceptable avenue to advocate for customer requests and surface themes they are hearing from the market. We have a very specific process for capturing requests. All requests get routed through a feature request or feature feedback form that is centralized for our product team to analyze and address. We look at the data coming through those channels monthly and roll up the insights quarterly. The expectation is set that we will evaluate all requests but that there is no commitment to addressing any specific requests. An important aside is - As a product leader, be grateful for the feedback that you receive, there are many organizations that aren’t benefiting from the insights you are getting straight from the customer-facing teams. 2. Help your cross-functional teams feel heard; be transparent about realistic outcomes they can expect. In all of the organizations I’ve had the privilege of working with, the friction between cross-functional product requests and roadmap prioritization was anchored on a misunderstanding of the product management function. Helping your cross-functional partners understand your process, their input’s role in it, and the outcomes that result should help alleviate some of the pressure to “just put it in the roadmap”. 3. Close the loop - even internally. My team has a quarterly meeting with our cross-functional partners to give them an update on 1) the requests we’ve received, 2) which items have been delivered, 3) which items are in progress, 4) what our current expectations of delivery are, and 5) which ones we’ve recently received. We also address the items they have requested that we will not be delivering and do our best to explain why (e.g. not aligned to our current strategy, not a point of differentiation, we don’t have resource capacity for another large initiative right now, etc). This meeting alone has had an incredible impact on our ability to keep our team aligned with our cross-functional partners.

The most helpful way to maintain alignment with the exec team is to align early and often on the product vision and strategy. Those conversations will likely surface gaps or areas of misalignment that you can address or close at the strategy level before you ever get into a roadmap discussion. If however, you find yourself at the receiving end of some exec input that isn’t aligned with a strategy you have socialized, there are several ways to handle it. 1. Pull the suggestion into your input process and work the idea through your product development lifecycle to see if it will make it through your process fairly and as intended. Many suggestions will likely fall into this bucket and will eventually land on the roadmap, but the tricky part will be keeping the exec in the loop about the progress. 2. Sometimes, the suggestions are fantastic, but the team is occupied with a longer-term project that is sequential in nature and it would be extremely disruptive to their progress or their morale to reprioritize something else. In this case, I’d raise this concern to the exec in question. Compliment the value of the idea, and mention that the team is not quite in a good place to take it on, but that you will explore it with them as soon as they complete their current work stream. 3. The suggestions could be coming quickly and often, and way too frequently for your team to be able to accommodate them. In this case, I’d leverage tradeoff conversations. If this new idea is going to be prioritized on the roadmap, what item (of equal or greater effort) comes off? 4. There are scenarios in which the suggestions are not aligned with the product strategy and vision the team has agreed to. If that’s the case, it’s important to surface it so that either the strategy can be adjusted to accommodate more of what the broader team was expecting or to stop investments like these from distracting the team.

Our Product Marketing team is a key cross-functional partner and therefore provides us with suggestions, feedback, and market factors they are noticing through several channels. This is one of the ways in which our PMM team influences the roadmap. Additionally, our product marketing and product management teams work closely together to define key elements of the product strategy (key buyers, use cases, value proposition) as well as the go-to-market strategy and enablement activities. These pre & post roadmap activities help us make sure we have alignment between what we are building and how we are talking about it in the market. Once the PM team generates the level 1 and 2 roadmaps, our PMM partners help us create alternate versions that are tailored for different audiences. For example, we create a version for internal partners like Sales that aligns with our enablement storyline, a version for current and future customers which showcases our strategic investment themes, as well as a version for industry analysts to help them understand our competitive strengths.