AMA: Atlassian Head of Product Marketing Craft, Matt Hodges on Influencing the Product Roadmap

At the stage before anything is handed over to eng for design. At Atlassian, we refer to this as the "Explore" phase–"Wonder" and "Make" come before and after, respectively. When you do this, be clear on the role PMM is playing and the type of feedback the design wants and needs to move forward. In my opinion, that feedback should not be focused on visual design.

PM and PMMs are likely to have different goals when it comes to feedback from users with early access, but I think that both should at the very least seek to understand, "to what degree have we solved the problem for customers that we set out to solve with this feature/product/release?". If you practice jobs-be-done, that question might be better phrased as "is the user able to hire our product for their job-to-be-done? Why or why not". As for PMM-specific expectations, I would base these on the goal of your alpha/beta, which you should align with PM on upfront. For example: - Validate Problem-Solution fit - Uncover and fix issues ahead of GA - Source reference customers for a marketable moment - Improve the UX before GA - Inform positioning and messaging - Inform pricing and packaging Lastly, I've never given or been involved in a project where an incentive other than, "get early/exclusive access", was offered. If you're building the right things for your customers, you should have no issue getting users wanting to participate in a beta. In theory. 😅

Product roadmaps are, or at least they should be, always subject to change. At least that is what a PM will tell you when you want to share the roadmap with a customer. 🤣 So, use that to your advantage. tl;dr Make a case for change and back that case with hard evidence Longer answer I would suggest you start with a repeatable process for ensuring PMM has the opportunity to bring its value in the form of rich customer, market, and sales insights to the table when the roadmap is being updated. In the earlier days of Intercom that was quarterly. Each PMM would produce a "GTM Recommendations Report" for their respective product or product area, which summarized the top 3-5 "problems to be solved" (intentionally not "features to build"). Each recommendation was backed with qualitative and quantitative evidence as to why it should be considered for the roadmap. This evidence included win/loss data from sales, feedback from customer support, and of course a PMMs view of the market opportunity based on their knowledge of the competitive landscape. It was PMs' responsibility to take those inputs and provide a rationale on why something made or did not make the cut. The process has since evolved, but it was a successful starting point for improving how GTM and R&D worked together. Lastly, a former team member and still good friend of mine, Jasmine Jaume, has a great post on this topic here. And, if you are looking to get that elusive "seat at the product table", check out my tips here.

Role depends on what other people/teams you have around to support you and metrics to monitor will depend on your GTM motion and business goals. Without getting specific, PMMs should care about the full funnel–from top to bottom. When you have a deep understanding of your funnel you can connect the dots where other can't and identify opportunities to improve, which may not be obvious in isolation. I think PMM should at the very least own traffic and signup metrics, but there should be shared accountability with product on goal attainment. For example, at Atlassian I'm currently working on a new product (Atlas, check it out) and we run a process called the "Business Review" (monthly for now) led by our Strategic Business Operations (SBO) team with contributions from PM and PMM. In the review we report on our progress towards our goal (Active Instances) and the performance of the key mterics throughout the funnel that have a direct impact on our goal attainment. These include: - Traffic - Signups - User/Instance Activation - Time to Activation - MAU - Revenue My role as a PMM is to partner with our analytics and product stakeholders to provide context and help construct a narrative on why specific metrics are up/down, with a specific focus on traffic and signups, which are both within more of my direct control and typically the metrics my activities are likely to impact the most.

1. How do competing offerings solve the problem for their customers today? 2. How do competitors price and package their own solution to this problem? 3. Are there opportunities to amplify a solution to the problem trying to be solved with product that's "already on the shelf"? i.e. How can we make what we build differentiated and/or defensible with features we already have? 4. What story do we want to be able to tell if we solve this problem for customers?

Research * Competitor analysis to identify gaps to fill and opportunities to strengthen your unique value proposition * Customer research to understand needs and willingness to pay * Market and analyst research to inform how to strengthen your position in your category * Win/loss analysis with sales to identify common blockers and hurdle With regard to the tangible output, see my answer to, "How do you influence the product roadmap if the roadmap has already been laid out by product?".

I don't think there's a hard and fast rule here, so I'd start by asking what you want from a Customer Advisory Board and what types of customers you'd want to participate. In my experience, specifically at Intercom, the creation of the CAB was owned by Sales & Success since they owned the relationships with the customers we wanted to participate. The goal at the time was to help us shape our "enterprise" roadmap.

This all depends on both your pricing and company strategy, which together determine to what degree revenue opportunity should be weighted when making roadmap decisions. Are you currently focused on optimizing for usage, growth, or revenue? Only you can answer that. In my experience, instead of focusing specifically on revenue, I prefer to prioritize based on "impact" of which revenue is just one measurable component. I could go into more depth on this, but the fine folks over at Intercom have a fantastic post on their blog on this exact topic–Ship outcomes, not just features, with the Product Impact Framework.

1. Seek first to understand before being understood 2. Focus on identifying where you can deliver the most impact in the short-term 3. Invest in establishing relationships with your closet stakeholders to aid in building trust over time 4. Set clear expectations with your manager on what success looks like in your role with concrete examples 5. Last, but not least, be kind and always assume positive intent