AMA: Microsoft Director - Head of Copilot for Microsoft 365 Narratives and Sales Enablement, Alina Fu on Influencing the Product Roadmap

This is when strategic planning – either annually, semi annually or even quarterly – would be valuable. When product teams can think about their north star, big picture vision, they can dedicate resources and commitment on those longer-term value features than those with low hanging fruit/quick money. I would recommend that PMMs bring in data to help support their position – do you have customer feedback, sales or customer success data, market analysis or competitive insights on the longer-term value features that can help influence how product is planning their capacity for the rest of the year? Is product leadership questioning if they want to go down a more experimental path that will give the product more growth opportunities in the long run? These are methods PMMs can utilize to refocus Product’s attention.

Our team takes it seriously and does a great job of making sure the product roadmap is accurate, updated regularly and communicated with our customers in a timely manner. It is critical to understand this deeply as it impacts all aspects of product marketing and if done well can help increase customer satisfaction and pipeline. Ultimately knowing the future of the product before the customer does and being able to layout what the future looks like can be one of your biggest superpowers. After it’s not just called marketing, it’s product marketing.

I think it’s great to share a public roadmap if your company is able to meet timelines and expectations. We provide public roadmaps for our customers on our external website. This helps establish rapport with the admins, give them enough time to prepare and signals our product direction. It would not be a good idea to share a public roadmap if the dates slip often or if features get removed suddenly as that can be very disruptive to your customers.

Some organizations don’t have PMM influencing the product roadmap at all. I believe that is shortsighted. It is valuable to have PMMs weigh in on the product roadmap, especially if their role includes market and competitive intelligence, analyzing industry trends and speaking to influential experts in their space, and having direct customer interaction or sales enablement as part of their responsibilities. Thus, I have seen success in influencing the product roadmap when PMM reports to the CEO or Chief Product Officer. I have also seen success if the PMM org reports to the CMO as long as Product Marketing is invited to have a seat at the table in the early phases of product development.

This comes down to how leaders at your organization make decisions. For this specific scenario, I wonder which functions within a company are not aligned that this feature is a priority. That would also depend on your company culture and if the company is product-led or sales-led. For instance, if this is a feature that customers are asking for, it is a deployment blocker and stalling new sales, I would want the leaders across Product/Eng, Marketing, and Sales to discuss why it is not a priority.

This depends on how your organization views product marketing. If PMM is seen as a change management vehicle, what are the established rules of communicate for product changes/updates? In my experience, If we position the initial customer feedback session as an envisioning exercise, then there is no formal commitment that what we have introduced as a concept/beta is necessarily the end product. I believe this is fair as the purpose of collecting feedback is to understand if the original vision and direction is correct. If the feedback is pointing to a different unmet need or different application of the product, then pivoting is in the best interests for the customer and the business.

Current customer requirements are helpful to give us a sense of where they are getting stuck, what are their pain points and unmet needs. A futuristic vision of the product roadmap would ideally extend at least 6+ months out and hopefully remain durable for at least that period. Otherwise, that isn’t a true futuristic vision. We recently announced our future vision of how Copilot will evolve at Build 2024. For example, we shared that Copilot as a personal assistant is expanding to include team copilot. This is our vision of expanding Copilot beyond a personal assistant to serve entire teams and departments. We are emphasizing that Team Copilot becomes a valuable member of the team and are demonstrating how Team Copilot takes on new roles across a broad set of scenarios including meeting facilitation, collaboration, and project management. This innovation is a result of our customers’ feedback and how we can make it more proactive and powerful.

My experience has been that product managers work with product design directly. I personally have not engaged with the design process beyond seeing their concept videos or Figmas. We communicate our design expectations or product experience needs to the PMs directly.

Integrating qualitative research throughout the product development and launch cycle is a multi-faceted process. If you read books on product management, they will discuss the importance of the integration of UX research, product analytics, and market analysis into product requirements to enhance user satisfaction. Companies I’ve worked at before really value qualitative research whereas some other roles prioritize quantitative research. Regardless, research should be conducted. I believe there are 4 different phases of a product lifecycle where qualitative research comes into the picture: 1. The beginning of product development – to seek direction around the concept and roadmap ideas 2. As the product goes through iteration – this can be from beta users or also known as a private preview 3. Right before launch – this can be the “preview” phase 4. Post-launch – usually done to understand if the product is meeting expectations

Depending on how broad your product is (does it span multiple categories, are there different aspects of the platform,e tc) and how many products your company offers - you may not have the capacity or there isn’t appetite to market each feature update. For instance, most of my last 5 roles have included multiple product portfolios, each product area contains at least 5-10 apps. I would NOT market each of these feature updates as they come out because our customers cannot digest that volume of information. This is where Tiering would be beneficial as you can set up a matrix of tiering principles and what level of marketing support you would offer based on the tiers. I have noticed that a lot of newer products may not have a tiering system in place. That’s a great opportunity to define what are the features that you MUST announce, which ones are nice to bundle together and if possible, group the features into categories or themes to make it easier for your customers to consume the information.

This sounds like there may be some alignment with the C Suite on what is their big picture product vision. It is hard to motivate teams and lead others when leaders don’t have a vision. It would be easier to inspire and get people to join your company’s journey when the leaders can clearly communicate the product vision

Establish trust with your PM counterparts. You can do this by bringing something of value to the table, sharing your data-driven insights with them, working WITH them and not against them, and being a thought partner they can rely on. I’ve been lucky to experience really great relationships with my PM counterparts but have heard horror stories from my colleagues. I would recommend thinking through the following: 1. What level of subject matter expertise do you have in this area? For most of my PMM roles, I started with 0 level of knowledge on the topic/space. I spent my first 30 days ramping up, listening and researching. Then, I felt comfortable to weigh in. 2. What can you as a PMM share with the PM that would make the PM’s life easier? What does the PM need but doesn’t have access to? Is this something you can help with? 3. How well connected are you with your PM’s actions? Does your PM consult you for advice? Does your PM respect Marketing in general? How was your PM’s relationship with the last PMM? 4. What skills, knowledge, or data do you have access to that your PM would benefit from? For instance, I present in front of customers more often than my PM counterparts do. I bring proof points and the field’s feedback directly to my PM. My PM appreciates the transparency and asks me “what should I do with this info” and I offer perspectives/next steps or we brainstorm on what other data is missing before we make a decision. That’s a partnership. Remember that trust is earned. It may take time. But in my experience, if you’re working at a company with great people and collaborative culture, your PM will welcome your help!