AMA: Meta Product Marketing, Reality Labs, Kavya Nath on Influencing the Product Roadmap

Managing product teams that struggle with scoping releases and handling changing release dates and minor updates requires clear communication, collaboration, and effective project management strategies. I have personally found that it is most effective when the product marketer communicates through the perspective of the customer. Communicating how all the changes and updates will impact the end user and working back through all of the things that need to happen internally to ensure the end user has a good experience will allow product and engineering teams to see the downstream impact of how they release new products and features. A few tactical ways to do this: 1. Set Clear Expectations: Clearly communicate the importance of accurate scoping and adherence to release timelines and emphasize the impact that changes in release dates can have on customers, stakeholders, and overall project success. 3. Collaborate and Monitor Progress Closely: Work closely with product managers, developers, and other stakeholders throughout the release planning process. Encourage open communication and collaboration to ensure alignment on release scope, timelines, and priorities. Ask if you can be added to release stand-ups or start your own with key stakeholders. This will help PMMs identify any scope creep or delays early on and work with the team to address them proactively. 4. Establish Prioritization Criteria: Define clear prioritization criteria for features and updates to help teams determine what should be included in each release. Emphasize the importance of focusing on high-impact, customer-driven changes. And also be clear on what PMM will support and will not support. 5. Encourage Iterative Improvement: Foster a culture of continuous improvement with the product team. Introduce a retrospective or "retro" that allows key stakeholders involved in release scoping/planning/execution to have a safe space to review how releases have been going and identify areas for improvement.

I think this varies by organization and which 'ways of working' your company prioritizes. Personally, I have found it most effective to create a presentation based on the research and insights you're wanting to share that tells a story of why those learnings matter. Aligning the learnings to recommendations and where they would be most impactful when applied helps to bolster the narrative. My biggest piece of advice is to always have a perspective on the insights you're sharing and why they're valuable, even if the findings are not in line with what you were expecting. Next, use that presentation to go on an internal roadshow, where you present your findings to a group of stakeholders that would benefit from hearing about the learnings and how it applies to product, and broader business objectives the company is working towards. The best part about customer, market, and competitive insights is that the information is relevant in a lot of different areas. Take a hard look at what your data is showing and think about all the different ways it can be used to refine strategies, support customers, and drive new product initiatives.

Some criteria I've used to evaluate whether a request or idea should go to product are listed below. Evaluating these things can help you make more informed decisions about which ones to pursue and prioritize. * Strategic Alignment: Does it fit with our long-term goals and vision for the product or company? We want to make sure it moves us in the right direction. * Market Demand: Is there real interest or need for this idea in the market? We look at customer feedback, market research, and competitor offerings to gauge demand. * Feasibility: Can we actually pull it off? We consider factors like available resources, time constraints, and technical capabilities to assess feasibility. * Impact: What kind of impact will this idea have? We look at potential benefits like increased revenue, improved user experience, or expanded market reach. * Risk Assessment: Are there any potential risks or downsides? We want to identify and mitigate any risks, whether they're technical, market-related, or otherwise. * Resource Allocation: Can we dedicate the necessary resources to make this idea a reality? We assess whether we have the people, time, and budget to take it on. Ultimately, the product team makes their decision on whether to move forward and how to scope new requests by utilizing prioritization frameworks they have in place to evaluate rank initiatives based on their strategic importance, potential impact, urgency, and feasibility. This helps ensure that resources are allocated to initiatives that align with overall objectives and offer the most significant value.

I think an external-facing roadmap is pretty much a requirement these days. I have always advocated for and will always advocate for this to be a part of our sales toolkit. Product Marketing is uniquely positioned to own this because we can take a roadmap that is being created internally and tell our product story around why we're building what we're building, who it's for, and the value they will get from it. It's a great way to elevate your product positioning and continue to validate it by what the company is prioritizing to build as part the value it aims to deliver to customers.

There are a couple of different ways to share a roadmap externally. Over the course of my career at various different companies. I've done this a few different ways: * Publish on website: For companies that release quickly having an external roadmap on their website is a great way to show how customers can expect the product to evolve month over month and where you're putting immediate investments. This is typically more something an early stage start-up would do to help validate their value prop and messaging. * Sales Asset: For larger companies that have longer sales cycles, PMM teams (in partnership with PM) create external facing roadmaps that are shared as part of the sales process or customer success engagements to build trust with current and prospective customers and get buy-in on future vision and priorities. * Webinars: For companies that don't want to publish online but create roadmaps as sales assets, we've hosted customer and partner facing roadmap webinars where we share what's coming, typically in one year segments. This again allows us to create a consistent drumbeat with the audiences we want to build trust and take on our product journey.

The best way to ensure customer research and insights are relevant and actionable/useful for product teams is to align research to short-term, mid-term, and long-term product goals. Aligning on goals and priorities the product team is setting up gives product marketers a view into how they're thinking about the evolution of the product vision which can then be actioned into research that can then feedback into more detailed roadmap planning. Key things that product marketers can do to drive impact of customer research and insights: 1. Involve Product Teams Early: Involve product teams in the research process from the outset. Collaborate with them to understand their needs and priorities, and involve them in defining research objectives, hypotheses to test, and methodologies. 2. Share Insights Effectively: Communicate research findings in a clear, concise, and compelling manner that resonates with product teams. Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative data, storytelling techniques, and visual aids to bring insights to life and make them more actionable. 3. Provide Context and Recommendations: Provide context around research findings by highlighting key trends, patterns, and customer pain points. And offer actionable recommendations based on key findings that product teams can use to inform their decision-making and shape the product roadmap. This last piece is probably the most important thing. Showing that your role is not just to conduct the research, but also to interpret it and provide ideas on how product managers can action on insights is invaluable in building trust as collaborators and integrating the PMM role into how PMs works. 4. Integrate Research into Roadmap Planning: Integrate research findings directly into the product roadmap planning process. Use insights to inform feature prioritization, define user stories, and validate product hypotheses. Ensure that research is an ongoing and iterative part of the roadmap planning process, rather than a one-time event. You can do this by creating work-back schedules for research plans that align with the annual/bi-annual/quarterly roadmap planning process. 5. Measure Impact: Track the impact of research-driven initiatives on key product metrics, such as user engagement, retention, and satisfaction. Use data to demonstrate the value of customer insights and make a case for continued investment in research efforts. Make note of which features were added or introduced to roadmaps in the planning process based on customer insights and research you provided and follow-up to see how those features are being adopted.