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 roadmaps. If you have customers doing long-term commitments 2-3+ years, they would typically want to see the product strategy and roadmap over that period of time. If you choose to create an external roadmap, focus on: * Content creation and * Commitment to keeping your roadmap up to date Curation can be done with high-level descriptions such as customer problem solved and feature summary vs. specifics on the implementation, quarter or halves of the year vs. specific dates. You can also provide personalized talk-track and messaging for your field teams to highlight different aspects of your roadmap based on the audience. Lastly, create rigor within your organization to keep the roadmap updated periodically.

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 communication that shows how you are making progress towards validating in the market and what decisions you are taking with the feedback. For example, if you are used to communicating your longer-term roadmap quarterly, move to a monthly read-out instead. 

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 party tech team. Consider if this is a short-term vs. long-term strategy. Sometimes for business reasons, an important project acceleration is required. A long-term strategy is more beneficial if this is not just for a project, but rather an investment for continued roadmap acceleration. Cost-benefit analysis: Consider roadmap feature time to delivery and accelerated business outcomes between the two options vs. cost implications (incremental 3rd party spend). Benefit vs. cost analysis will be helpful to determine whether to use only your dedicated engineering team or pick a hybrid of internal and 3rd party tech team for faster time to market.

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 your teams. * Reiterate how choices, trade-offs, and investments re-affirm the aligned customer segment priority with your execs when presenting the roadmap. * Periodically review customer segment priority with market data to ensure your product strategy evolves as your business grows.

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 solves them effectively * To address your goal, weave in visuals, other customer testimonials, case studies to drive inspiration and show what success would look like if they adopted your product offering Your audience: Sales, marketing, field teams, Your goal: drive adoption of upcoming features * Present roadmap themes, features that solve customer/market problem and how they help drive customer goals * To drive your goal to pitch the new launch and drive adoption, connect the launch to what your GTM will care about. Is it part of top asks from existing customers, does it help unlock new customer segment or vertical and how this can help your cross-functional team in-turn be successful to hit their quarterly goals

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 announcement, follow-up with product results. Use things like 30-day adoption stats, customer success stories to show how as a PM, you are not just the product-expert but you are a product-leader that ties the feature to business results.

Your strength is being the leader in product and technology. Your superpower is connecting this to how they solve customer problems and drive business results. Top three things to consider: * Start with the why including customer problem and business goals * Understand company priority (this year, this quarter) and draw a connection between your product/project to the company priority. This will help re-iterate to your c-suite why they should pay attention and care * Create a demo. This can be prototype, slides on a powerpoint. Use this opportunity to storytell how the solution solves the customer problem. Visualizing has tremendous power to capture audience attention

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 ALWAYS HAVE A RUNNING LIST OF YOUR PRIORITIES. WHEN SOMETHING COMES UP, THEN WITH YOUR MANAGER OR EXEC TEAM, HAVE AN OPEN DISCUSSION ON WHERE THIS NEW REQUEST FITS IN THE PRIORITY - DOES IT TAKE #1#1 OR #10#10 SPOT. ONCE EXPECTATIONS ARE ALIGNED, THEN IT'S EASIER FOR YOU AS PM TO CONTINUE TO STAY FOCUSED.

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. 1. Get alignment on the business impact for solving the problem (revenue, market share growth, geo-expansion, operational efficiency etc) 2. 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 alignment before you proceed 3. Once you have achieved both (the why and timing), then the resourcing ask will be what is needed to address the business objective If you spend the time building the case including why it needs to be solved now, then the resourcing request will be a much easier discussion.

There are three broad categories of customer feedback: improvements to existing products, strategic customer problem areas when you zoom out for long-term planning and active customer engagement on existing roadmap. Improvements to existing products: * This is usually the most robust feedback loop where both product teams as well as cross-functional partners in sales, support, customer service all have customer insights on how current products and features can be improved. This is something to continue to nurture. Strategic customer and market feedback: * This is an area of investment to specifically focus. This typically happens in alignment with the company 's strategic planning process. This is an important area to continue to confirm strategic bets and long-term planning. Active engagement on roadmap: * An area to focus to ensure that there is continuous engagement with your customers throughout your product development cycle. Active investment here will be very beneficial to architect product launches are consistently set up to drive successful adoption.