How do you influence the roadmap for highly technical products?

• Have a learner’s mindset. In your spare time, keep reading technical briefs, whitepapers, documentation, and even JIRAs to understand your products' architecture and technical details. This will help you better understand and better position yourself when discussing the feasibility of a new roadmap item with your PMs.

• You can also ask to be a fly on the wall for product and support ticket review meetings to familiarize yourself with the terminology.

• I’ve also made it a personal goal for my team and me to attend a few technical workshops and complete product courses every quarter to stay updated with the latest happenings. My team hosts monthly office hours for customers with product SMEs, too, where they hear directly about how the customer uses the product, what problems they face, and what could be done better.

• Beyond learning things yourself, give back to your technical counterparts by educating them on the competitive landscape, customer insights, market research, etc., and showing how their work aligns with the business goals. 

• Subscribe to relevant tech newsletters and blogs and follow key tech influencers in your industry. If you find something worth including in your roadmap, develop your hypothesis on ‘why’ and ‘how’ and take it to your PMs for early vetting. 

• Ask to present in engineering, sales engineering, or support/PS meetings. In these meetings, you can showcase an initiative and solicit feedback to build a case for influencing the roadmap.

As someone who has solely worked in tech, this is a great question! Because you want to build rapport with your product team when you make suggestions, but also need to understand the technical side of things.

A couple things to consider here:

• Speak the (technical) language: Learn enough about the product’s architecture, tech stack, and engineering constraints to accurately frame your suggestions in terms that resonate and build trust/confidence with technical teams. For example, do you know what an API is? (r)ETL? what does it mean, and how does that work within the architecture and what problems do they solve (specifically)? If you're not sure, ask the product or engineering team for an explanation and/or demo.

  • HOW to do this:

    • Review technical briefs, whitepapers, JIRA tickets, and technical documentation.

    • Subscribe to industry newsletters, follow key technical influencers, and engage with blogs to stay on top of emerging trends. When you spot a potential roadmap opportunity, develop a well-reasoned hypothesis around the “why” and “how,” and discuss it early with your PMs for alignment.

      • Some suggestions here

    • Immerse yourself in technical convos - for me, I like making a best friend with a Solutions Architect or Solutions Consultant and listening to how they speak in customer/prospect conversations.

    • Host monthly office hours with product SMEs to hear firsthand from customers about how they use the product, the challenges they face, and what improvements they’d like to see. These insights can inform and validate your recommendations for the roadmap.
      

• Educate and Align with Technical Teams - Share what you know best/what you are working on like competitive landscape insights, customer feedback, and market trends with technical teams to connect their work to broader business goals. This creates a shared understanding and helps align priorities.

  • If you are bringing a specific idea to the table, collaborate with engineering to assess the complexity of implementing your ideas BEFORE sharing with product to make sure they are technically achievable within the current roadmap.

• Present and Gather Feedback - Offer to present at engineering, sales engineering, or support meetings. Use these opportunities to showcase initiatives, gather feedback, and build a compelling case for your ideas and show you're willing to "get in the trenches" with the team!