At what stage of product roadmap planning and execution should you step in as a product marketer?

Product teams benefit the most when Product Marketing stays connected from inception of new features/products to actual delivery. At inception, product marketers help with gauging potential impact and thereby help priortize the roadmap. Once a feature/ product is commited to a roadmap and is on a predicatable release timeline (90-180 day window is typical fast moving software teams) is setup, product marketers help communicate out to the roadmap to the field or key customers. As with anything else, roadmaps tend to change, and as product marketer you should anticipate and plan for such event by checking in with your product peers at least once in 4 weeks, and more frequently when the feature/release is closer to launch. These checkins can aviod nasty surprises of having to build launch plans in short order or having to delay the launch. Product marketers can skip sprint planning and weekly standups. Outside of a running roadmap, it is key to engage with product teams on annual or quarterly planning depending on what cadence does your organization do long term planning.

I think there are three stages to product planning that involve a product marketer:
1. Before the roadmap is set (helping inform what the product should be), 

2. While the product is being built (ensuring it'll make sense to customers),

3. When the product is getting ready to launch (positioning it and GTM). 

I think your question is directed at the third point specifically in which case it probably varies on the type of product launch. We have relatively minor launches where a PMM gets pulled in very last minute (e.g., the product is nearly feature complete and PM is looking for input on positioning/messaging) and we have significant launches where a PMM is pulled in months in advance to manage launch planning and all GTM related activities. So it's hard to say with a broad brush what's "right". 

To zoom out, I'd say the earlier the better and moving up to earlier stages (e.g., before product requirements are even set). That gives you a better opportunity of aligning what you see the market clamoring for to what's being shipped. 

This may be bold, but I like to help facilitate the roadmap development process when PMs are okay with it. Not all PMs will jive with this, but if you can develop a strength as being a good facilitator, that can get you a long way. The key is to provide open frameworks to support discussion. I think of myself as a “right hand woman” to my PMs and I can assert subtle influence by priming slide decks, agendas or google docs with categories, visual organization patterns, and smart open questions that help show I’m someone who you want to “bat ideas around with.” 

I see that facilitation as a way to shape the team vision and coordinate team members cross-functionally. This is often an area owned by PMs, but in my experience there is usually more than enough work to go around. My best PM-PMM relationships have been those that aren’t overly precious about who can pitch in on roadmap planning.

Sometimes you don't have that luxury. In that case, you just have to make sure that you are consulted before the roadmap is solidified for a given quarter since it has major downstream implications for your workload. 

As a strategic partner on the product team, I believe PMMs should be involved throughout the product development lifecycle. 

For larger initiatives at Lyft, PMMs create 'Market Requirement Documents' or MRDs that are meant to serve as input to the PRD. This helps gain alignment on market insights, opportunity, key use-cases, audiences, and value prop before the PM starts work on the project. 

This helps provide product teams with market and customer insights to inform product development, resulting in higher quality products and programs that meet customer and market needs.

After that, PMMs are consulted on the PRD. If UX research is conducted, PMMs often have input into the research questionnaire and sometimes sit in on sessions. Throughout the product design and UX writing process, PMMs are part of the review loop, providing feedback and input as the voice of the customer. 

As product designs get finalized, PMMs start work on GTM plans. If the MRD was written prior, the GTM plan is simply a continuation of that upfront work with more detail around the rollout and communication strategy.

To close the loop, PMMs provide GTM performance recap learnings back to the product teams. This may be new feedback from customers, or learnings on how to improve adoption.

There are varying opinions on this, but from my POV, it should be as early as possible. It's a journey to get to this though, and won't happen overnight. Also, our contributions will change as well.

In early roadmap planning, it's about ideation (both blue sky thinking, and what's possible near-term). If you have data on what feautres customers have requested, it can be a quick win for short-term roadmap prioritization. For bigger themes ti's a broader conversation abotu where the market is headed, what your unique differentiation is, and how you can continue to carve out more of a blue ocean (from the book Blue Ocean Strategy) for your organization.

When it comes to execution, it's more about communication with Product, but also the broader organization and ensuring that Sales/CS have the resources they need to effectively talk to the roadmap and why some things were prioritized.

I consider three basic steps in product development -- pre, during and post. 

Pre -- is when the product is still in concept mode. Product Managers and Product Marketers are 2 sides of the same coin. They both need to know what is problem being solved, why "company A" is uniquely positioned to solve the problem, why does it matter for the customer -- meaning does the customer even know they have a problem ?...and how is our solution / approach going to solve their problem. Is this solution unique in the market, is this market sustainable, defensible, who else is in competitiion, what other complementary products / solutions are out there. 

During Development stage-- this would differ anywhere from 6 weeks to a year or more. Depends on industry segment, complexity of the solution / approach, funding constraints etc. Product management will be more intriquately involved in the development, product marketers can help with fine-tuning the # of target customers, identifying beachheads, being available to support customer briefings, testing messaging and so on. In some companies, we can refer the final phase of development is as "beta phase" ...or "new product introduction" phase. Pre-launch. In Enterprise - we usually like to have at least 3 to 5 beta customers. 

Post - launch -- managing a rigourous launch process, communicating with analysts, PR, leveraging those early beta customers as references to pursue the next 10, then next 100 and so on. 

By breaking it down into these 3 phases typically, helps product marketing also be involved closely wiht the product teams. The awareness also helps one to dig in and help throughout the entire product lifecycle.  

Products generally don't stay still, its a process of continuous innovation. And everytime the next release is launch or to enter new vertificals, the same amount of due diligence is needed. Again this is very true for enterprise, for smaller SMB / mid-market, each phase may be shorter and quicker.  

Ahead of roadmap planning. Part of your job is to bring market, competitor, and customer context that you have gathered through your research. Bring a different point of view - something that the product team doesn't already know. This earns you credibility and they'll be more apt to invite you to these discussions.  

If you don't have the domain knowledge yet - perhaps because you're new to the role - you still need to have visibility into the roadmap to be able to do your job effectively. If you're planning a major release or introducing a brand new product to the market, you'll want to be involved early and often.