Preethy Vaidyanathan

There are three high-level options:  Internal roadmap only Fully public: roadmap published externally for all customers and prospects  Customer-facing roadmap that your Sales, Customer success, Sales Engineering and field teams are trained on to share   The choice of roadmap depends on your product category, type of customers you serve, and organization structure. For instance, developer-facing products typically prefer public roadmaps, while B2B has a stronger preference than B2C for external r ...Read More

If you are unable to have a longer term roadmap view: then proactively reset expectations while increasing the cadence of communication.  There may be a number of reasons why you are in this state: product pivot, external event like global pandemic happening that changes customer and market dynamics beyond your control. Switch your roadmap in these scenarios to focus on assumptions you are looking to quickly prove/disprove before more additional investments. Then provide an accelerated pace of c ...Read More

This can happen because your product growth potential is sufficiently broad across multiple customer segments or you may be operating a complex product surface that serves different segments (eg: multi-sided marketplace).  Turn this impossible situation around, instead of asking your execs to pick one segment (which seems limiting), focus on prioritization.  Align with your exec on the primary customer segment or priority order of customer segments. This will unblock roadmap prioritization for y ...Read More

When deciding between dedicated vs. 3rd party engineering, consider the following factors: Final product experience:  Evaluate the final product experience delivery to customers. For example, with a 3rd party tech team, does your design decisions make it a longer workflow for customers because of limitations of your tech stack? Is that an acceptable trade-off? Time to market:  There is still some cost to your internal engineering teams (onboarding, training, code reviews etc) when using a 3rd pa ...Read More

What is your objective, who is your audience and what are their needs. An effective presentation of your roadmap addresses all three questions. The communication style you deploy is starting with the audience's needs and weaving in what you hope to achieve. For example:  Your audience: prospective customer, Your goal: inspire to close the deal Understand prospective customer main pain points. Highlight the main product features existing and in your roadmap that addresses the pain points and solv ...Read More

Show-and-Tell:  Start with a small, well-defined project where a PM can work closely with an engineer or two to demonstrate the value of the role and achieve some early wins. Share the impact of these wins with the wider team. For example, a feature improvement or a customer problem resolution can demonstrate a win for both the team and the business. Demonstrate Value to Engineering:  Beyond showcasing the overall value a PM brings, clearly demonstrate and communicate the specific benefits to th ...Read More

Start with the customer and business problem you are trying to solve and get alignment on the priority to solving this problem. Oftentimes, the root cause of the disconnect is the timing on when to solve the problem. Get alignment on the business impact for solving the problem (revenue, market share growth, geo-expansion, operational efficiency etc) Get alignment that this is a priority to solve now. Don't proceed if this alignment is not achieved first. Spend the time to build the case and get ...Read More

Use your product launches as a way to communicate how you are solving customer problems and driving company outcomes. Most companies these days employ communication platforms like slack, intranet boards or other standardized channels. Leverage these channels to start with the why (customer, business problem) and the what (your solution launch). You can leverage simple product announcement templates or use tools to do a quick 2-min video recording to publish. Dont just stop with the launch announ ...Read More

Establish a Framework: Establish a framework that works for the product and company stage. Simplicity is key. Organize requirements using a straightforward framework like MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have) or a Value vs. Effort matrix. Then, create a prioritized list by ordering requirements based on customer value, business value, or team voting. Prioritization Goals: Deliver Value/Early Wins: Focus on demonstrating the value of product management. Prioritize and execute on ...Read More

If your company uses Objective Key Results (OKRs) or other goal setting framework; that is the best guide for a PM to leverage. Tie your product/projects to company priority and use that to guide what are urgent and important to prioritize. However, this alone is not going to be sufficient, as new things could emerge that you need to respond to - a competitor announcement, customer request, a new technology unlock etc. You need to have a framework to respond.  As a PM, I would encourage you to a ...Read More