AMA: Okta Group Product Marketing Manager, Swaroop Sham on Influencing the Product Roadmap

For the definition of reviews, I will consider analyst product evaluations also as reviews. It is also important to know that not all public reviews have the same weight.  From my own experience, well articulated, attributed - negative feedback can have the right impact on product roadmap decisions. It allows the PM-PMM team to even reach out for further investigations and understand the key gaps for the customer. It also gives the team a chance to respond to the feedback by providing acceptable ...Read More

“Develop a number of direct and in-direct forums to pass feedback to the product team”.   In the course of my experience, I have seen a combination of the following specifically for roadmap feedback and chatter from the field: Setup Weekly PM-PMM roundtables and 1:1 - Focus on sharing feature feedback, product gaps based on customer conversations, compete for notes. Offer Office hours: Develop the idea of office hours in conjunction with the sales enablement team to provide PMs with direct feedb ...Read More

"Be pragmatic"Yes - sometimes, deals tend to have revenue opportunities linked to them, and the PMM-PM team needs to decide on the trade-offs about making changes to the roadmap that have revenue linked to them. In such situations, it is important to be pragmatic. Some of the questions to think about while considering revenue linked feature development are: Customer and deal pipeline impact - How many opps and current customers will be positively impacted by building the feature now?Timeline - H ...Read More

With so much at stake, a lot can go wrong when trying to influence the product roadmap. When tensions run high, PMMs might risk their most important relationship by: Not providing Sufficient Quantitative and Qualitative data. Most PMs are data-informed and driven. Insufficient quantitative and qualitative data on the impact of a feature is a sure shot way to fray the relationship. Focusing on the how: Many PMMs are technically savvy and understand the product’s capabilities and anyone. PMMs shou ...Read More

“Repeatedly sell your roadmap internal and externally”Key Elements: Any good roadmap does three things. Set product vision, showcase product features, and set expectations on timeline and capabilities. The product vision sets the directional tone for the product while the product feature goes into the nuts and bolts, showing the key capability, use-cases as well as product limitations. Cadence: At Okta, our key roadmaps are overhauled and developed end-to-end approx once a year. Every quarter, t ...Read More

Yes, launches are a big element of the PM-PMM equation, but this relationship is much more than helping us launch things. Done right, Product Managers and Product Marketers form a strategic team for the product area in an organization. This relationship typically guides the product development, adoption, marketing, and overall success of the Northstar metrics for the product. The PMM team is key to developing the product's strategic messaging built off customer understanding. This strategic mess ...Read More

First of all, most well-heeled product managers tend to be strongly opinionated but open to reasoning and change. The PM-PMM relationship is one of the most critical relationships for product people, and the success of the relationship has a direct impact on your success. Here are some methods i commonly use.  Effective questioning: My fav go-to strategy when dealing with a strong-willed or challenging to work with PM (or anyone for that matter) is the "Idea of Influence with good questions." I ...Read More