More product teams are taking advantage of the Minimum Viable Product concept—deploying products early to customers in order to learn and iterate. MVP is a fantastic approach for releasing products and features faster with less waste, and one that is often utilized in agile product management. But I’ve consistently found that it’s essential to combine the MVP with features or value propositions that directly relate to the customer’s biggest pain point. When you do this, it’s possible to release successful new products that are even less than the “minimum.” You might call this the 80% MVP. I base this 80% concept from releasing many minimum products over the years, including GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting, AppFolio, and LIKE.TG. Here are a couple of my observations: The MVP is subjective, and only by releasing can we learn what the real minimum is. Even after conducting dozens of customer validation interviews for a product, I consistently discover that one or two features I thought were necessary to include in the MVP could have been released later. I learn that there are other things that would have added even greater value. The MVP must tie back to high priority customer problems that were discovered during validation. Delivering a compelling product that relieves pain can delight customers, even if it’s lacking features. Customers are forgiving if you show them you are focusing on high-value items for them rather than striving for the “perfect” feature set. My advice to you: Skip perfection and get a minimum compelling product into the hands of real customers. Tweet this Look, you still need to deliver on the basics: products with features that are valuable, easy to use, and that delight customers. I’m not advocating releasing crap. But in my experience, to create successful products you need to combine MVP with unique and compelling value. This is how you can make your product a purple cow. Does Your Minimum Viable Product Provide Enough Value? Compelling products aren’t necessarily limited to features – it can be your pricing, packaging, or anything that solves a top customer problem. For example, with GoToMeeting, our initial product lacked many features that were available in competitive products such as video. However, our “all you can meet” pricing was a unique differentiator that solved multiple frustrations customers had with the current solutions. This philosophy works well for new products as well as future initiatives you are adding to your product roadmap. Here is my high-level process for defining a compelling MVP: First, engage customers by conducting problem discovery interviews. Define your proposed features, making sure that features tie back to problems you discovered. Validate the product in subsequent interviews. After validation, cut features further, making sure to retain one or two valuable features that hit the biggest pain points uncovered during problem discovery interviews. Cut the MVP to less than you are comfortable with. At LIKE.TG, we released the original product and continue releasing features based around this philosophy. We have several in-depth interviews with customers to understand the pain, the value, review prototypes, and understand the minimum feature set. We then ruthlessly prioritize and cut the MVP but make sure to include features that are highly compelling and differentiated. For example, our product includes a prioritization framework for making product decisions. We interviewed dozens of product managers to understand how they were prioritizing features and their challenges with prioritization. Our first release of this feature was a mere shadow of the feature we ultimately envisioned. But there were several compelling elements that made it superior to anything our customers had: It was collaborative and shareable. It was integrated with the visual product roadmap. It provided transparency. It was based on industry best practices. After releasing our MVP for the prioritization feature 1.) customers used the feature and 2.) got value out of it (or rather, they got enough value out of it). Because we solved pain with our initial release, our customers were patient and engaged as we continued to enhance the feature based on their input. We still have far to go to realize our full vision for the feature, but the stage is set for success. All product managers at one point have wondered whether they’ve prioritized the right features before releasing a new product. Sometimes deciding that your feature or product is ready for release is tough. The bottom line is to first fully understand customer problems before deciding your MVP and compelling value. Then pull the trigger faster to get your product out the door.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of something after discovering it no longer works as you expect. Especially if it’s something you were passionate about. All of us, especially product managers and entrepreneurs, are faced with this occasionally. For example, you’ve put a sprint of development effort into a new feature, and the team has now discovered new information that doubles their estimate of effort. Your Value vs. Effort estimates are out the window, and you’re now questioning whether to proceed. You believed in this feature so much and put so much time, customer interviews, UX work, and now a full sprint of effort into the feature. It’s, well, just hard to let go. I’m here to splash some cold water on you and tell you that all the work and energy you and your team put into this doesn’t matter. What’s done is done, and the only thing that matters is future costs. An essentialist product manager knows this – they know that goals, objectives, markets, and development estimates change. I’m not suggesting that you abandon every project, feature, or idea that turns out to be more difficult than expected. Successful product managers and entrepreneurs know when to persevere despite headwinds. I am saying that the equation has changed, and you need to re-evaluate whether it’s still the right thing to work on. If you say ‘Yes’ to continue to work on this new feature I described at the beginning of the article, you’re saying ‘No’ to other opportunities that might yield better results. Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {}); The Sunk Cost Fallacy A few years ago, I learned about the concept of the sunk cost fallacy, the mental errors we make when deciding to continue with a project, investment, or even a relationship long after it’s become clear it’s no longer working for us. In sunk cost theory, we will often decide to stay with something because we’ve put time or resources into it. We believe that because we have “sunk” that cost into it, we somehow need to recoup it. That’s a fallacy. In a sense, you’re “throwing good money after bad.” In Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, demonstrated that we choose options to avoid loss. We don’t behave logically when presented with the same choice framed in different ways. Think of a purchase you made a few years ago that you no longer like, but continue to use because you’ve already paid for it. You don’t want the money to go to waste after all. This is the sunk cost fallacy in action. The way to avoid the sunk cost trap is to think about how you feel about that purchase today. I think a great way of thinking is Marie Kondo’s approach to decluttering. She places past purchases on the floor and then asks whether an item “sparks joy.” If not, it’s time to donate it or trash it. The fact that you invested money in the past is no longer relevant in the decision. For product managers, sunk cost theory means that sometimes logic dictates that you stop working on something you’ve invested considerable time and energy into. It might mean that it’s time to sunset a feature or entire product if it is no longer achieving its objectives. I know these decisions to abandon a project are hard. A few years ago, I was faced with this decision on a new feature where I’ve invested a lot of passion and advanced work, and the development team had spent a lot of hours on coding. It was a complex feature. As we kept discovering new cases that had to be a part of the first release, it became clear that the development effort was going to be significantly higher than we expected. It was in our best interest to stop developing that feature and work on something easier to develop and gave customers higher value. I learned lots of lessons about avoiding these situations, to begin with, but that didn’t make the decision any easier, especially when developers I had worked closely with had been putting in the extra effort. Make Go / No-Go Decisions Based on Outcomes It’s never crystal clear whether to stop working on a project or dive in further. One way to manage the inevitable uncertainty is to relax about the exact plan and instead make decisions based on an outcome-driven goal. For example, rather than creating a list of arbitrary and disconnected features for your product, instead focus on what your desired outcome is for customers – what is the goal you want them to achieve? And are there alternatives that would help you more easily accomplish that goal? By focusing on an outcome-driven roadmap, you (and your team) have room to think about new possibilities, about different and possibly faster ways of achieving the goal. Again, the effort you have already invested rarely matters in that decision. [Free book] Backlog Refinement: How to Prioritize What Matters ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'ba6d6ffb-c21a-41c0-8f7e-7f79e553dae1', {}); Revisit Prioritization When the equation changes (either the effort you need to exert or the outcome you expect has changed), it’s OK to revisit your priorities and evaluate whether you’re working on the right things. If you use a roadmap prioritization framework such as LIKE.TG’s Planning Board, you can use the weighted scoring model to re-score the project against other items in your product backlog. Product managers know that it’s acceptable to re-evaluate opportunities (and work in progress) to assess if the roadmap still has the right priorities. Does this sound familiar? As a product manager, you’ve finally got a groomed backlog that aligns with the product vision and roadmap. Teams are cranking away and delivering. Everything is on track and then it happens—some unplanned work pops up that is deemed URGENT by someone outside your department. All eyes are on you to set the priority—do you have the tools to do it?[/caption] Focus on today (and maybe a few sprints out). Product managers expect to spell out our products’ vision, and the product looks like one or two years down the road. But it’s problematic if this planning is too detailed. One or two years out, any plan is only a fantasy and a waste of time. This thinking can keep you too biased towards completing that plan, rather than asking if it’s the right thing to be working on. There’s no way things will go exactly to plan, and the goalpost will probably change along the way. You’ll never achieve perfection. Unfortunately, this detailed planning sets an expectation in your head (and your stakeholders’ heads) that won’t come true. It sets up everyone for disappointment. My advice: Don’t plan too far ahead. Focus on the big picture vision in broad terms. Then, focus on what is in your control today to meet that vision. For your product planning, a few sprints out are far enough. Embrace Uncertainty to Make it Less Stressful In the past, I’ve wrestled with needing to control uncertainty. For years I thoroughly planned most everything and felt the need to know the eventual outcome of decisions. I spent a lot of time that, in the end, wasn’t necessary. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, so I often found myself with a lingering sense that things were out of control. As a product manager, the uncertainty manifested in really detailed and lengthy Product Requirements Documents. I know I’m not the only product manager with this challenge. All of the research, time spent writing long documents, and time spent worrying were, well, non-essentialist. Over the years, I’ve realized through observation and personal experience that the most successful and happy people are those who are willing to embrace uncertainty. They are the ones who make “risky” decisions without knowing 100% of the information. It’s especially true for product managers, entrepreneurs, and others who want to launch products or ideas. I’m much better now about letting things unfold without needing to know how the plan eventually will materialize. And yes, I get the irony that I’m the co-founder of LIKE.TG, software that helps product managers visualize their plan. If we can stop for a moment and change our thinking that we’re not in as much control as we think and surrender to it, we’re more likely to succeed because we’re open to change and opportunities we wouldn’t see otherwise. And I’ve realized these opportunities somehow align with my most important goals. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'd3fa5225-9b84-4eae-8910-23016a8b8f99', {}); Learn More To learn more about letting go of what’s not working and making a more meaningful contribution to your product management career, download my free book, The Essentialist Product Manager. This book blends my passions of essentialism and product management into ideas that you can bring into work and your life to make it all more fulfilling. Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {});

Sticking to inflexible annual planning cycles can introduce significant challenges in the era of rapid technological advancements. The static nature of traditional product planning cycles fails to consider quickly-improving technologies and unforeseen changes in the market. This approach can be a significant pitfall in today’s fast-paced environment, making your organization vulnerable to missed opportunities and increased risks. Iterative planning enables product management teams to respond quickly to changes in the market and emerging trends. The ability to adapt and adjust to changing product strategies positions companies for continuous improvement and sustained success. Ongoing planning is crucial for staying ahead in a competitive landscape. The Case for Embracing Agility Companies that have successfully embraced continuous planning showcase the benefits of staying nimble. From pivoting strategies based on user feedback to quickly adapting to market shifts, many organizations have embraced the competitive advantage that year-round planning brings. For one, product teams can go to market faster and more cost-effectively. Product managers can streamline decision-making, identify efficiencies, and reduce time-to-market by consistently reassessing and refining their strategies. Year-round planning can also help product teams improve their chances of success. Continuous planning helps product teams understand market dynamics and customer feedback while remaining competitive and making informed decisions. Implementing this proactive approach maximizes the chances of a successful product. Finally, an iterative planning process can help enhance your credibility and product leadership. Year-round planning demonstrates adaptability, strategic foresight, and a commitment to meeting customer needs. You can improve your company’s reputation by delivering quality products and showcasing yourself as a leader in innovation. Setting your annual planning processes to support year-round planning Before diving into best practices for year-round planning, product leaders should start by evaluating their current annual planning objectives. Yearly planning should not be discarded when shifting to an iterative approach. Instead, it should be reviewed and adjusted to support the flexibility and strategy of the team’s goals. Firstly, you want to review your product vision. When setting strategic corporate goals, your team should have actionable and aspirational goals aligned with the company’s overall strategy. Your organization can then leverage these strategic objectives to drive yearly prioritization decisions. Frequent reviews will set your team up for strategic reflection on progress and future change. Then, set the expectation that change is inevitable and some unknowns will be discovered later. Assuming that things will go according to plan leaves little room for innovation and adapting to new trends. Establishing a culture of continuous improvement and learning from unexpected changes is crucial. Lastly, invite your key stakeholders to provide feedback throughout the process. You want to create room for multiple perspectives and diversify ways to achieve desired outcomes. Based on the findings of our 2024 State of Product Management Report, 76% of product teams are using live meetings to communicate product strategy. Still, opportunities exist to encourage your stakeholders to observe changes and provide feedback asynchronously, like utilizing a product management platform. This can open up doors for product teams to make decisions faster and to feel empowered knowing their stakeholders are aligned with their product strategy. At the end of an annual planning process, the team should have a clear vision for the year: collective goals and how new ideas in the future will tie back to the outcomes that the company has set to achieve as a whole. Annual planning doesn’t have to be the perfect solution to your year, but you can set your team up for success by building in space to pivot. What should year-round planning look like? When implementing year-round planning practices, taking time on a regular cadence outside of annual planning is vital to evaluate outcomes and feedback and adapt where necessary. When your team checks in on your goals more frequently, it is recommended to set quarterly planning objectives aligning with the company’s overall goals during annual planning. These quarterly planning objectives can be broken down into four steps: In addition to following these key steps, there are several best practices that you should follow throughout the year to ensure you are being efficient in your product-planning processes. Best Practices of Year-Round Product Planning Maintain an open line of communication with your customers and end users throughout the entire product lifecycle. Ongoing dialogue fosters a deeper understanding of customers’ evolving needs and provides insights that guide the creation of the most effective product strategy. Talking with end users ensures that your product aligns with user expectations, resulting in a more resonant and successful end product. Stay informed on market trends. This step is essential for product management leaders. Regular market assessments give product teams insights into changing customer needs and preferences. Keep a pulse on what your competitors are taking on as their latest strategies, too. Rely on data to support your decision-making. Data and analytics can help your team get a clear understanding of feature performance and customer needs. Challenge your team’s ways of working by asking questions like, “Are we measuring the right things?” and “Are there other metrics we should be measuring?” Collaborate and communicate with your key stakeholders. The alignment between product, executives, engineering, operations/support, sales, and marketing functions is crucial for product success. Having a representative from the various departments will allow you to create a product strategy that supports other teams at the company while bringing in the best ideas. Regularly check in with your stakeholders and be transparent throughout the planning process. Conclusion The term “annual planning” alone can put a lot of pressure on product teams. But learning more about untraditional ways to set team- and organization-wide goals can alleviate some of that pressure and help product leaders embrace change and innovation. Understanding that there will need to be necessary adjustments outside the standard once-a-year planning process empowers teams to bake in flexibility and work with changing times rather than staying stagnant in a changing market. Curious to learn more? Check out our annual 2024 State of Product Management Report! We’re sharing data-packed insights into how product teams support the entire product lifecycle, from idea to launch and beyond. Download your copy of the report today!

rIn our webinar Product Managers: Treat your Strategy as a Product, Hadrien Raffalli discusses the importance of tracking market activity and tweaking plans accordingly. He has experience building products around the world, including stops in South America, Australia, Asia, and is now in Denver working for Pivotal Tracker, part of VMware. Watch the webinar, below! The Importance of Trendspotting Raffalli believes strategy missteps are inevitable if companies aren’t spotting key patterns quickly enough. “Being able to identify the details of how the market is behaving in different populations and different use cases will give you a better chance to anticipate what is likely to happen later.” Continuous monitoring and adjusting to what’s happening in relevant areas is essential for remaining relevant, viable, and competitive. “Consider: how is your market behaving right now?” Raffalli says. “What have been the cycles of adoption to get you where you are? Or, if you’re looking forward, is there a path that has been chartered for other innovations?” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5894a003-79ce-4ea3-9804-dae280a96106', {}); Also crucial is the ability to gain mindshare when trends and new technologies are still in nascent stages. Companies aren’t always in the mode of having to find and “wow” early adopters, but it’s a key part of growth. So at some point in every product manager’s job, it’s likely to be a challenge that must be met to be successful. At these points in the product’s lifecycle, Raffalli encourages product teams to consider “if there has been a path that has been charted before for other innovations” that can be replicated or informative for your own journey. “What is the order, what are the customer needs, and what is the value chain for this?” What Does a Good Strategy Look Like? Companies don’t start with a product strategy. Instead, it comes on the heels of defining a mission and purpose. However, missions and purposes are often selected well before new companies, or product teams have researched and gotten to know their customers. Because anyone can settle on a mission or purpose without doing any real work, existing on the plane of “ideals.” They’re not rooted in much more than theory and hunches. Product strategy is where things get real. “Strategy is the art of finding and exploiting leverage in the competitive landscape to achieve your purpose,” Raffalli says. To do so, he recommends the following steps: Have a purpose—Why are you doing this, and what are you competing for? Understanding customer needs and how they’re evolving—Customers aren’t standing still, and neither is their environment or options. Understand your value chain and how it is evolving—Are you solving a problem that still exists? Have new wrinkles emerged that you’re neglecting? Determine what change is likely to happen—You’re not psychic, but make an educated guess about what’s probably on the horizon. Define your actions against those changes—How you respond is just as important as recognizing things have transformed. Measure success and failure and course-correct—Hunches and guesses aren’t enough to make intelligent, data-driven decisions. Be sure you’re tracking what works and what doesn’t, then use that information to inform your next move. Notice a common theme? Things keep changing, so you better adjust to those changes. As the famous military truism goes: No plan survives contact with the enemy. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '527dc6af-8860-436f-9ca6-ae2b71b0cc99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Stories versus Maps For millennia, information was passed on as stories. From drawing on prehistoric cave walls to the tales of Viking warriors, these narratives provided instructions on how to retrace the steps of those who came before them. Raffalli says the flaw with this method for conveying information was the inability to prepare for what those storytellers hadn’t yet seen. If an invading party hadn’t already visited the target in question, they had no idea what to expect. Then came maps. These cartographical marvels enabled generals to assess the situation in advance and plan accordingly. They could seize the high ground and understand climate and topology without having previously visited the area in question. While this transformation of military strategy occurred centuries ago, Raffalli says businesses still operate based on stories. Both those we’ve heard from others, and those we tell ourselves. “We try and convince ourselves of something being right,” he says. But it’s long past due that business strategy is rooted in hard data rather than subjective tales we’ve heard or spun ourselves. “The product KPI is the ultimate expression of your strategy,” Raffalli says, referring to both users completing significant tasks or business metrics being met. “Your strategy KPI, however, are more like underlying fundamentals. So it’s how the market is moving. So it’s going to be customer needs.” Context-Switching for Strategic Planning Most product teams think strategically in terms of their product. But this often spawns convoluted thinking and strained rationales for those decisions. To be truly strategic, decisions be abstracted and purely based on strategy and the market conditions, regardless of the particular product. It can force some hard conclusions that might otherwise never even be considered. Revelations like “we are targeting the wrong market” or “our value proposition no longer exists.” But if this approach is adopted early enough and remains constant, more minor course corrections can potentially avert such drastic conclusions—or at least give companies time to minimize any negative repercussions. During the webinar, Raffalli used the example of a coding school to illustrate this. When you’re in the business of training coders, you must assess which technology people will care about in the future, along with which solutions/platforms/languages will win market share for the long term. “In real life, it’s really hard to step away from those Product KPIs and think about the underlying more important fundamental assumptions that your plan relies on,” Raffalli says. “So, in this game, we abstract away the product piece and only focus on the strategy piece.” The decision of which framework to invest in has major consequences for these firms, from hiring talent to developing curriculums and materials to enrollment. Betting on the first solution to enter the market could backfire, as it may not be the winner. Other players can swiftly follow, producing superior tech that might be faster, more efficient, or possess exciting new attributes. The first mover might initially be the most popular, but ascertaining which one wins long-term requires a deeper look at the trends than just speed to market. Raffalli implored companies and product teams to follow and ride the trends. Pay attention to search traffic, online discussions, tool usage, and other leading indicators far more informative than trailing ones like revenue. Because picking the wrong horse can be fatal, regardless of how well you execute your product. “If you think about your day to day jobs in product and defining your strategy, independently from how great your product is, probably almost half of the companies that are involved in this game, would probably die at some point and reduce the competitive field by a lot,” Raffalli says. “And that’s just by making decisions of which framework to build against.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '527dc6af-8860-436f-9ca6-ae2b71b0cc99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Product Strategy Doesn’t Work in a Vacuum All too often, once companies assess an opportunity, draft a strategy, find product-market fit, and define a plan, the sole emphasis is on execution. Hitting dates and making progress toward milestones get all the attention. But regardless of how compelling that initial product roadmap might have been original if the team isn’t paying attention to what’s happening outside its echo chamber, they may be in for a rude awakening. Raffalli emphasizes the critical role product management plays in mitigating risk. Asking questions and validating assumptions allows them to add ongoing volume by ensuring they found the plan on a realistic foundation of truth. To participate in Raffalli’s strategy game and unlock even more wisdom, check out the webinar in its entirety. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"});

As a product manager, one of the toughest challenges I and my fellow PMs face is prioritizing the right features amongst an ever-increasing influx of data from customer feedback, product analytics, and the never-ending list of stakeholder requests. The pressure doesn’t let up even after you decide on your product strategy and communicate your vision on your roadmaps. The internal pressure to deliver faster and more frequently often leaves product teams feeling like they have to slim down the scope of a feature, change the architecture, or make design decisions, all in the name of expediency. Thankfully, the product development lifecycle doesn’t always have to exist in a pressure cooker. Therefore, executing an ambitious product roadmap with proper planning is not only possible but also an exciting experience. A successful product never sacrifices the user experience. And the one area that you should never skimp on in your development recipe is user experience (UX). Creating a positive user experience is essential for innovative companies to retain customers, grow their user base, and differentiate from their competitors. At LIKE.TG, UX is always top of mind when defining a new feature, and we continue to prioritize it as we refine existing features and functionality over time. It’s something we pride ourselves on, and I am thrilled to be part of an organization that believes in the power of the user experience. LIKE.TG’s journey to enhance the user experience of Launch Management. Last December, our product and development teams were juggling development cadence and vacation schedules. So, we took a step back and considered prioritizing UX refinements that we could achieve with limited resources. We started by brainstorming the enhancements that we could ship, Kanban style. The development team, product designer, and I looked closely at LIKE.TG’s Launch Management solution. The Launch Management solution is a relatively new feature—we first released it last fall. It is a new tool for product teams that helps them manage a cross-functional go-to-market process. Inconsistent ad hoc launch processes are transformed into visible, flexible, and easily repeatable plans that live alongside the product roadmap. Despite the newness of Launch Management, we knew it was the perfect place for us to focus on UX enhancements. Our goal with updating the Launch Dashboard was to help customers see the information most relevant to them at the top via launches in descending order by date. We also tackled keyboard navigation improvements to our Add a Task flow in Launch Checklists and did an overall sweep of our UI, including minor tweaks to colors, hover states, alignment, copy, and more. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '842368a9-af78-421f-a3cb-4da00ad39f75', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Some of these enhancements may not sound too flashy on their own. Still, when viewed as part of the overall user experience, they impact how customers feel when using our product, impacting retention, engagement, and growth. I share this brief behind-the-scenes snapshot of our development process to showcase how essential the user experience is for every stage of the product development cycle. Still not convinced UX should be a priority? Keep reading to learn three reasons that will change your mind. 1. User retention: When customers are happy, they stick around. Have you ever walked into a room and couldn’t figure out where the light switch is? Maybe you finally figured it out but continue getting frustrated every time you enter that room. That’s a poor UX experience, and this stuff happens in software constantly. It’s what leads to user frustration and can ultimately impact churn. A product with a simple, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface is more likely to elicit joy in users. You may not move houses because of a light switch, but you’d likely think about switching products if it was frustrating to use daily. By providing a seamless user experience, businesses can reduce user frustration and increase joy, leading to higher levels of customer retention. 2. Increase engagement: When it’s easy to use, your customers will use it more. UX also plays a significant role in enhancing engagement. Every product team uses some metrics to track engagement, whether active use, stickiness, feature usage, or something else. By launch, we’ve usually put a lot of research, validation, and effort into a new capability, so we expect it to do well, right? Sometimes it doesn’t, and there are many reasons why that could be, such as we just got the customer’s actual problem wrong. But sometimes, it could just need some UX love to reduce complexity. A product or feature that is easy to use and provides a straightforward solution for a customer’s needs will encourage users to spend more time using it. 3. Enable product-led growth: An approachable, easy-to-use user experience will attract more customers. It’s almost impossible to be in the product world without hearing about product-led growth. The bottom line is that consumers expect to test a product. They want to buy it themselves and roll it out with little to no friction. Reducing that friction across the product interface is something UX can help with, whether that’s an easy onboarding flow, upgrade paths, or just an overall simple-to-use experience. Ultimately, UX design is a critical aspect of your product. A well-designed UX can help you minimize churn and increase engagement and product-led growth opportunities. It can help reduce frustration, increase user joy, and eliminate friction. Try Launch Management today! Launch Management is available as a part of our Enterprise plan and our two-week free trial. If you’d like to learn more, schedule 45 minutes with us, and we’ll tailor a demo to your unique launch goals and challenges. We’re looking forward to turning your next product launch into a success! hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'd4bd00d0-70a8-4c3e-8784-09d1cafeb2f8', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

As a product manager, attending conferences is not just a part of professional development but an invaluable source of inspiration and learning. Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Product-Led Summit hosted by the Product-Led Alliance in New York. During the conference, I immersed myself in the world of product and attended various sessions that provided me with unique perspectives. The learnings from the presentations were applicable to my role and relevant to the problems and themes that our users face on a daily basis. Amidst the excitement of innovative ideas and networking, I returned with invaluable insights that I’m eager to pass on to my fellow product enthusiasts and aspiring product professionals. There were many enlightening sessions throughout the event, but here are some takeaways from three that really resonated with me. 1. Understand how you are generating trust with your audience. Sam Bradley, Director of Product Management at PayPal, presented on “The Trust Factor” in Product. He shared that trust has four core drivers: security, reliability, benevolence, and connections. Security focuses on whether the product is safe and reliable to interact with. Customers want to know: is this brand safe? A lack of security is considered a severe detractor of trust and should be taken seriously. Reliability focuses on the integrity of the product. Many customers will consider whether the brand has integrity before making a purchasing decision. In Sam’s experience, customers consider PayPal secure and reliable, making purchasing decisions more straightforward when they see a “Checkout with PayPal” option when shopping online. Benevolence represents whether the product appears to put the customer’s interests first. Is the product created with the well-meaning intent to solve a problem for its customers? Connection signals whether the audience feels a bond with the product or brand. Appealing to the customer’s emotions can be a powerful driving force. Customers may look at a brand’s image and community before purchasing. Identifying which drivers your product uses to build trust with your customers is crucial. Product teams must be able to successfully measure how they signal to customers that it is clearly understood and feel that the product is trustworthy. It is easy to break trust with a customer base and can be very difficult to repair. However, it is essential to note that if something goes wrong, controlling your reaction to that moment and rebuilding well can build an even stronger bond between you and your audience. 2. Create collaborative rituals to ensure internal alignment early and frequently. Teresa de Figueiredo, Product Manager at Coda, presented “Rituals for Effective Planning and Collaboration.” As with any product development process, it can take time to ensure internal alignment between many different layers of teams. Teresa’s top three collaboration rituals are early alignment, transparently sharing project updates, and easily interpreting feedback. One way that Teresa practices driving early alignment from leadership is by using proactive prompts in the design phase. To foster productive discussion, ask questions like: What are you excited about? What are you feeling uneasy about? These clearly defined discussion points help gain alignment with stakeholders and leadership by making entry to discussion easier. The discussion is also a great time to clarify how involved stakeholders want to be. Do they want to be involved in each step or just to be brought in for significant milestones? During the execution phase, Teresa recommends having a single source of truth for status updates on any project activity. Ideally, this solution is accessible and user-friendly so that team members can easily see the status of tasks and if a blocker has appeared. A solution, like a product management platform, streamlines communication by preventing unnecessary update notifications and emails. Of course, we recommend LIKE.TG as your single source of truth! Now, your team has reached the retrospective phase. Interpreting and acting on feedback is critical, but this doesn’t always happen as smoothly as you may like. Someone may leave a vague comment on a retrospective board that a feature “felt awkward,” but what does this mean? Do other people agree? Controlling volume is a way to ensure people understand feedback and to reduce noise. As a product manager, your role is to digest feedback and synthesize comments into broader statements with which other team members can quickly agree or disagree. Team members are likely saying the same thing, and it’s your role to help clarify these comments. Photo Source: Product-Led Alliance 3. Use psychology to help your audience understand the value you bring to their life. Karapet Gyumjibashyan, Senior Director of Product at Krisp, discussed “Communicating Value to Voice AI Products.” His session focused on how Krisp, a company that provides an AI meeting assistant to cancel noise and summarize meetings, used psychology and data to increase retention. Retention is a value game, and there are three ways to convey this to customers: Show the value Make the engagement valuable Provide value over time In Karapet’s example, Krisp faced a challenge where although customers were getting their noise reduced, only the people on the other end of the call were experiencing the benefits and hearing the filtered sound. The product team realized they had to find a way to make the customer understand the value they got from the product. To solve this problem, they implemented their version of a “habit loop”–a way to encourage improved daily use of the product and reward the user for using it. The habit loop includes three components: Trigger Action Reward Their trigger became an on-screen pop-up display announcing that Krisp was not set up properly and needed activation. Their action was another display that indicated that the product was active–allowing users to feel like they were interacting with the product along with the person on the other side of the call. For their reward, they created a display that shared statistics about performance: how many minutes required noise filtering, how loud or moderate the sound was, and how long the user talked. After implementing this habit loop tool, Krisp saw a 43% increase in D14 retention. This framework is clearly helpful in communicating a product’s value to customers and encouraging them to return more regularly. Looking ahead: The lasting impact of the Product-Led Summit. Hearing from Product leaders across a wide range of industries was an exceptional opportunity that I don’t take for granted. I came back to LIKE.TG better understanding the importance of customer trust, best practices for cross-departmental collaboration, and how psychology can play a role in product strategy. Most importantly, the conference awakened a sense of community in me, as I realized that we, as product professionals, are all working towards a shared goal of personal growth and the success of our products. Our team would love to connect and see how LIKE.TG can also help you and your organization’s goal of launching a successful product. Contact us to learn more.

A crisis can bring out the best (and worst) in people. Throughout my career, I’ve seen a spectrum of responses from leaders that have shaped my views on which strategies work and which ones don’t. I had no idea that a crisis would unfold so quickly into the start of my tenure as CEO of ProductPlan. I transitioned to CEO of LIKE.TG in early February, which for those of you keeping track was a month before a global health and economic crisis unfolded. Resilient Leadership During Challenging Times As a leader, I believe in radical candor, and I have always strived to create an environment where my team feels safe to share their feedback and opinions. If you operate from a place of authenticity and transparency, then you can facilitate an environment of trust. Teams that feel safe also tend to trust each other and are, in turn, well-positioned to step up in times of crisis. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '57ff7e42-ccfa-4d9e-b5be-8a0f6ba69363', {}); Demonstrate flexibility Our team has done a tremendous job building a fantastic product and a durable business model. Anytime a company goes through change management, I believe it’s essential to honor and sustain the elements of what makes the company great—while infusing your own philosophy to move the business forward. For LIKE.TG, I recognized we needed to develop a more comprehensive mindset toward growth. We had been gearing up our offensive for several quarters investing in engineering and building out our go-to-market team to better capitalize on opportunities within the business. The results were really starting to show. However, business growth and global economic uncertainty don’t necessarily mix well. As the crisis unfolded, we had to immediately ask hard questions of ourselves and our business to assess what the correct strategy was for us moving forward. During times like these, sometimes you’ve got to play defense. First, we took a magnifying glass to the entirety of our business. We recalibrated our revenue and expense plans based upon different scenarios. We made adjustments to hiring plans and created a more rigorous and gated approach to releasing investments. On the product side, we are building a system of record to help product teams and executives better align and standardize their priorities and ultimately drive better outcomes. We have been ‘pedal to the metal’ on this strategy for the better part of 9 months. We also recognized that we have customers significantly affected by this crisis. We reviewed our product roadmap with an eye toward “what do our customers need now?” This exercise spun up some short-term wins we were able to deliver quickly. Trust in your team In a world where there’s no face to face interaction, one can fall into the trap of feeling less in control of the business. If you and your leadership team have hired right, then, hopefully, you have a deep bench of intrinsically motivated people. These are the people that will step up and do the right thing if you have done your part to convey the mission and the situation at hand. This is the absolute wrong time to turn into a micromanager. To me, the concept of a workday feels a bit antiquated for knowledge workers anyway. Our lives are such that we have them, and that means, at times, things in our life are going to intertwine with our workday. Sometimes a workout in the middle of the day is exactly the best use of your time. Ultimately, if we empower the right people to manage their time, then I’m going to bet on them doing the right thing. The decision to switch to remote work to protect the health and safety of our team happened over the course of an afternoon. About half of the company has already been remote for years, so we already had somewhat of an established blueprint. This certainly helped. For the other half, however, remote work was an entirely new practice. The transition to remote work Interestingly, I’ve noticed that since we have transitioned to 100% remote in response to the crisis, we’ve actually improved our communication. For my part, I wanted to make sure the entire team had a better picture of how the crisis was impacting our customers and our business. This has translated to a cadence of team updates where we openly share our business performance, our views of the potential impact of the crisis and how that impacts decisions we are making. I’ve observed cultures where information is kept tucked away to only be parsed out on a need to know basis to employees. That kind of culture breeds mistrust. Our leadership team also increased the frequency of our communication to stay aligned. Initially, we experimented with meeting every day before determining an every-other-day cadence was sufficient. We have also had to improve our asynchronous communication to help fight off Zoom fatigue. As we can no longer walk down the hall to ask a question or solicit feedback, Slack has become our go-to channel for establishing a shared understanding of doing what matters. We have opened up new Slack channels such as #research to serve as a central repository for relevant information. Going 100% remote has forced us to be more intentional about how, when, and why we’re communicating. Consequently, our alignment about what to do is better. We no longer need a daisy chain to keep people in the loop. Instead, we have the information we need to make qualified decisions. As such, I’ve noticed the timeframe for decision-making is faster than when we were in office. I don’t think these results would be possible without a foundation of trust. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3be75db1-0d50-46dd-b222-ce0aa84f6b08', {}); Embrace vulnerability As the CEO, strategy and culture are two of my key focus areas. During moments of great challenge, we owe it to one another to tune in to the signals and EQ indicators of how the team is doing. There’s so much scary information out there about the pandemic and the economic fallout that can really affect our morale. You can usually tell when someone on your team is having a tough day. People give a lot away. In a world where you aren’t able to comfort face to face – follow up, lean-in, and ask questions. As a team, we are forthright and honest with each other. I will often share with my leadership team when I’m struggling with an important decision. In a way, I’m hoping to elicit more information from them to help make a better decision. It’s a misguided assumption that CEOs have to have the answers. You need to be open and approachable with your team. It’s okay to say, “I don’t have all the answers.” If you want a culture where people feel safe, then embrace your own vulnerabilities. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '35d36a84-b157-43a1-acb7-b972dcb1d1ad', {}); Takeaways Even in the worst of situations, I still believe a company can flourish and achieve awesome things. Trust in one another, be flexible, and, most importantly, stay real.

Let’s imagine you’re planning a trip across the country. You know where you’re departing from, where you want to get to, and what resources you have available (like the vehicle, budget, traveling gear, etc.), so all that is left to do is to map your way there. There are a couple of ways you can do this: you can plan your trip according to the time you have available (i.e., you need to get from point A to point B in x amount of days), or you trace your route based on the sights you don’t want to miss. Another option is to be more flexible, choosing the road you want to travel and picking the stops along the way. Product roadmapping frameworks work in a very similar way. There are a few routes you can take to achieve your product goals. As you choose which one you want to take, you must consider how you will allocate your resources along the way and set milestones to check off as you get through. Let’s map this out. Recap: What are Product Roadmaps? A product roadmap is a holistic visual document that outlines your product’s growth path. A stellar roadmap includes the release of new features, key dates, product updates, and the product vision – giving context to the product lifecycle. Product roadmaps are a good way for organizations to prepare for the future. If there’s a new product to launch, the tasks and timeframes will also be clear to everyone. Why is roadmapping important for product led-growth? In the era of product-led growth, the product roadmap is essential. Roadmapping helps you list all your competing priorities and narrow them down to what’s most important and relevant for the team and stakeholders. Prioritization is another crucial part of product-led growth. According to LIKE.TG’s 2022 State of Product Management Report, it’s the most challenging aspect of product management, with 22 percent of survey respondents ranking it as their biggest hurdle. Hence, besides electing the roadmapping framework that works best for your organization’s goals, choosing the right prioritization framework to help you determine the most important tasks and milestones along the way is also important. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '527dc6af-8860-436f-9ca6-ae2b71b0cc99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); An effective product roadmap will: Support vision and strategy A product roadmap will outline how your product vision and strategy can become a reality. It should convey the strategic direction for your product and tie it back to the company’s strategy. But it should also be a source of inspiration, motivation, and shared ownership of the product and its successes. Guide teams toward success Sometimes we know what success looks like, but while managing all branches of product development, we can forget the actions needed to succeed. A product roadmap will keep you on track. Strengthen internal alignment Strong product-led teams have strong and well-oriented synergy between engineers, product leaders, marketers, customer support, and all other stakeholders. A product roadmap will serve as a guide to keep teams aligned and accountable for the same goals and milestones. Help communicate with external stakeholders and customers A strong customer and stakeholder relationship is one that acts as a partnership. Achieving that requires a transparent line of communication that can paint a picture of the company’s evolution and future. With a customer-facing roadmap, you ​​can address common questions from your customers like: What is the company working on right now? What new features and updates are coming next? Why is the company doing what they are doing? What to avoid when building a product roadmap A common and unfortunate mistake made by SaaS product teams is to treat the roadmap as a static, archival document developed early in the product development lifecycle. A successful product roadmap evolves alongside your product. Traditional roadmapping methods like spreadsheets and Gantt charts can be impractical for the team as they focus primarily on task management rather than setting actionable milestones that center on product success. A visual and collaborative roadmap can be more effective in communicating and tracking progress. Who is Responsible for Roadmapping? Creating a product roadmap is primarily a responsibility of the Product team, but it is also a group effort as it concerns all internal stakeholders. This combination of collaboration and discrete ownership gets stakeholders onboard while maintaining informational integrity and avoiding a free-for-all atmosphere. Product management begins with a clear understanding of the product’s and the organization’s strategic objectives. Then, with the desired outcomes in mind, product management creates the key themes for this portion of the product’s lifecycle. Tip: Chameleon has an excellent guide to Product Management frameworks that can help you strategize your growth path. In a remote-first world, collaboration can become somewhat of a challenge. However, there are frameworks and tools that can facilitate successful collaboration, like LIKE.TG’s dynamic roadmapping tool that offers key features that enable collaboration: Custom views: show stakeholders exactly what they need to see Roadmap level conversations: hold and document conversations within the roadmap Integrations: connect your roadmap with your tech stack to track progress, status, and completions. Watch our webinar: Working Better Together: How to Collaborate in a Remote World 3 Examples of Roadmapping Frameworks Let’s go back to the cross-country road trip analogy at the start of this article. If you’re starting to map your trip out, you typically ask yourself the following questions: Where am I beginning my journey? What is my final destination? What resources do I have? How long do I have to get there? What are the routes I should consider? Who else is involved in my trip, and what are their goals? As you answer these questions, you’ll better understand your goals and what roadmapping framework makes the most sense, given your resources, constraints, and priorities. We’ve selected three frameworks that work well for product teams. Timeline roadmaps If you’re working on a new product release and have it tied with a specific date-based event in the future, the best strategic move is to use a timeline roadmap. This type of roadmap outlines every task and step your team members need to take to achieve the final goal and the timeframe to complete each milestone. The timeline roadmap is a visual representation of a strictly time-constrained workflow. That said, this type of roadmap would suit a Scrum workflow within sprints. To make it easy to understand, you can include the upcoming tasks that need to be completed and attach key dates and other relevant information. Share the roadmap across the teams in your organization to ensure everyone is on the same page. Here is an example of a Release Plan Template Swimlane roadmaps On the other hand, if your product or feature release is not explicitly connected to a specific date, you can exclude the dates from your roadmap. Instead, you could make it quarterly-based with an overview of the planned product lifecycle development. The swimlane roadmap is also a good choice for emphasizing what is planned, what’s in progress right now, and what has already been completed. Here’s a template to help you build a roadmap aligned with your product development Flexible roadmaps Flexible roadmaps are another way of organizing the roadmap for your next product or feature release. It can be a release-based, an outcome-based roadmap, a roadmap based on customer requests, or any other type that suits your needs that aren’t strictly related to a specific timeframe. Besides that, in our guide to flexible roadmaps, we also talk about the value that lean, feedback-oriented roadmaps can bring to your team – and your customers. You can use in-app surveys to evaluate customer satisfaction, include them in feature ratings or request voting, and collect feedback to make better-informed decisions. Use the insights you gain to validate your feature ideas and further iterate your roadmap. Product landscapes vs. roadmaps While a roadmap answers the questions of “what” and “when” to build, a landscape answers the question “why”. In other words, a product landscape gives a broader picture of the product’s context. It includes the product mission, go-to-market strategy, and the overall position of the product in the market, along with the desired vision of where the product is going. Tools for Successful Roadmaps Alright, now that you know what framework works best for you, it’s time to build your roadmap. Here are a couple of tools to help you in the process. LIKE.TG: Build your roadmaps LIKE.TG is a roadmap platform that aligns team members in a visual, dynamic, and intuitive interface that concentrates your roadmapping efforts in a single, customizable space. Chameleon: Gather user feedback Chameleon is a Digital Adoption Platform that allows you to create code-free and native-looking in-product experiences that boost product activation and adoption. You can run in-app surveys to gather contextual user feedback and use it to inform your strategy. Choosing the Right Framework Whether you’re starting your roadmap from scratch or revisiting and updating your existing one, we hope this guide will help you choose the right framework. Before you get to it, let’s just recap some key points: Use your product strategy and vision to guide you in the roadmapping process. Prioritize tasks and milestones that will get you closer to your ultimate goal. Avoid static roadmaps that do not evolve alongside your product. Leverage collaboration in the process of building your roadmap. Use different SaaS tools to optimize your roadmapping process. See you at the end of the road! hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'd3fa5225-9b84-4eae-8910-23016a8b8f99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

Let’s imagine you’re planning a trip across the country. You know where you’re departing from, where you want to get to, and what resources you have available (like the vehicle, budget, traveling gear, etc.), so all that is left to do is to map your way there. There are a couple of ways you can do this: you can plan your trip according to the time you have available (i.e., you need to get from point A to point B in x amount of days), or you trace your route based on the sights you don’t want to miss. Another option is to be more flexible, choosing the road you want to travel and picking the stops along the way. Product roadmapping frameworks work in a very similar way. There are a few routes you can take to achieve your product goals. As you choose which one you want to take, you must consider how you will allocate your resources along the way and set milestones to check off as you get through. Let’s map this out. Recap: What are Product Roadmaps? A product roadmap is a holistic visual document that outlines your product’s growth path. A stellar roadmap includes the release of new features, key dates, product updates, and the product vision – giving context to the product lifecycle. Product roadmaps are a good way for organizations to prepare for the future. If there’s a new product to launch, the tasks and timeframes will also be clear to everyone. Why is roadmapping important for product led-growth? In the era of product-led growth, the product roadmap is essential. Roadmapping helps you list all your competing priorities and narrow them down to what’s most important and relevant for the team and stakeholders. Prioritization is another crucial part of product-led growth. According to LIKE.TG’s 2022 State of Product Management Report, it’s the most challenging aspect of product management, with 22 percent of survey respondents ranking it as their biggest hurdle. Hence, besides electing the roadmapping framework that works best for your organization’s goals, choosing the right prioritization framework to help you determine the most important tasks and milestones along the way is also important. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '527dc6af-8860-436f-9ca6-ae2b71b0cc99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); An effective product roadmap will: Support vision and strategy A product roadmap will outline how your product vision and strategy can become a reality. It should convey the strategic direction for your product and tie it back to the company’s strategy. But it should also be a source of inspiration, motivation, and shared ownership of the product and its successes. Guide teams toward success Sometimes we know what success looks like, but while managing all branches of product development, we can forget the actions needed to succeed. A product roadmap will keep you on track. Strengthen internal alignment Strong product-led teams have strong and well-oriented synergy between engineers, product leaders, marketers, customer support, and all other stakeholders. A product roadmap will serve as a guide to keep teams aligned and accountable for the same goals and milestones. Help communicate with external stakeholders and customers A strong customer and stakeholder relationship is one that acts as a partnership. Achieving that requires a transparent line of communication that can paint a picture of the company’s evolution and future. With a customer-facing roadmap, you ​​can address common questions from your customers like: What is the company working on right now? What new features and updates are coming next? Why is the company doing what they are doing? What to avoid when building a product roadmap A common and unfortunate mistake made by SaaS product teams is to treat the roadmap as a static, archival document developed early in the product development lifecycle. A successful product roadmap evolves alongside your product. Traditional roadmapping methods like spreadsheets and Gantt charts can be impractical for the team as they focus primarily on task management rather than setting actionable milestones that center on product success. A visual and collaborative roadmap can be more effective in communicating and tracking progress. Who is Responsible for Roadmapping? Creating a product roadmap is primarily a responsibility of the Product team, but it is also a group effort as it concerns all internal stakeholders. This combination of collaboration and discrete ownership gets stakeholders onboard while maintaining informational integrity and avoiding a free-for-all atmosphere. Product management begins with a clear understanding of the product’s and the organization’s strategic objectives. Then, with the desired outcomes in mind, product management creates the key themes for this portion of the product’s lifecycle. Tip: Chameleon has an excellent guide to Product Management frameworks that can help you strategize your growth path. In a remote-first world, collaboration can become somewhat of a challenge. However, there are frameworks and tools that can facilitate successful collaboration, like LIKE.TG’s dynamic roadmapping tool that offers key features that enable collaboration: Custom views: show stakeholders exactly what they need to see Roadmap level conversations: hold and document conversations within the roadmap Integrations: connect your roadmap with your tech stack to track progress, status, and completions. Watch our webinar: Working Better Together: How to Collaborate in a Remote World 3 Examples of Roadmapping Frameworks Let’s go back to the cross-country road trip analogy at the start of this article. If you’re starting to map your trip out, you typically ask yourself the following questions: Where am I beginning my journey? What is my final destination? What resources do I have? How long do I have to get there? What are the routes I should consider? Who else is involved in my trip, and what are their goals? As you answer these questions, you’ll better understand your goals and what roadmapping framework makes the most sense, given your resources, constraints, and priorities. We’ve selected three frameworks that work well for product teams. Timeline roadmaps If you’re working on a new product release and have it tied with a specific date-based event in the future, the best strategic move is to use a timeline roadmap. This type of roadmap outlines every task and step your team members need to take to achieve the final goal and the timeframe to complete each milestone. The timeline roadmap is a visual representation of a strictly time-constrained workflow. That said, this type of roadmap would suit a Scrum workflow within sprints. To make it easy to understand, you can include the upcoming tasks that need to be completed and attach key dates and other relevant information. Share the roadmap across the teams in your organization to ensure everyone is on the same page. Here is an example of a Release Plan Template Swimlane roadmaps On the other hand, if your product or feature release is not explicitly connected to a specific date, you can exclude the dates from your roadmap. Instead, you could make it quarterly-based with an overview of the planned product lifecycle development. The swimlane roadmap is also a good choice for emphasizing what is planned, what’s in progress right now, and what has already been completed. Here’s a template to help you build a roadmap aligned with your product development Flexible roadmaps Flexible roadmaps are another way of organizing the roadmap for your next product or feature release. It can be a release-based, an outcome-based roadmap, a roadmap based on customer requests, or any other type that suits your needs that aren’t strictly related to a specific timeframe. Besides that, in our guide to flexible roadmaps, we also talk about the value that lean, feedback-oriented roadmaps can bring to your team – and your customers. You can use in-app surveys to evaluate customer satisfaction, include them in feature ratings or request voting, and collect feedback to make better-informed decisions. Use the insights you gain to validate your feature ideas and further iterate your roadmap. Product landscapes vs. roadmaps While a roadmap answers the questions of “what” and “when” to build, a landscape answers the question “why”. In other words, a product landscape gives a broader picture of the product’s context. It includes the product mission, go-to-market strategy, and the overall position of the product in the market, along with the desired vision of where the product is going. Tools for Successful Roadmaps Alright, now that you know what framework works best for you, it’s time to build your roadmap. Here are a couple of tools to help you in the process. LIKE.TG: Build your roadmaps LIKE.TG is a roadmap platform that aligns team members in a visual, dynamic, and intuitive interface that concentrates your roadmapping efforts in a single, customizable space. Chameleon: Gather user feedback Chameleon is a Digital Adoption Platform that allows you to create code-free and native-looking in-product experiences that boost product activation and adoption. You can run in-app surveys to gather contextual user feedback and use it to inform your strategy. Choosing the Right Framework Whether you’re starting your roadmap from scratch or revisiting and updating your existing one, we hope this guide will help you choose the right framework. Before you get to it, let’s just recap some key points: Use your product strategy and vision to guide you in the roadmapping process. Prioritize tasks and milestones that will get you closer to your ultimate goal. Avoid static roadmaps that do not evolve alongside your product. Leverage collaboration in the process of building your roadmap. Use different SaaS tools to optimize your roadmapping process. See you at the end of the road! hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'd3fa5225-9b84-4eae-8910-23016a8b8f99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

As your IT department changes, the nature of your department’s role may transition to a strategic partner. You will find several product management techniques useful during this transformation, such as roadmapping. Once considered the domain of product managers, roadmaps are useful in various contexts. You can use a roadmap to effectively communicate and collaborate with your business partners at the beginning and throughout an IT initiative. Here’s a look at how IT departments can take a page from the Product Management playbook and use roadmaps to effectively collaborate and communicate with their business partners. Why IT departments use roadmaps When you become a strategic partner to your business partners, you’ll find creating and using roadmaps very helpful. Here are some specific reasons. Build clarity and understanding You’ll no longer have solution requests chucked over your cubicle walls as a strategic partner. Rather, you’ll be able to have a collaborative discussion with your business partners about the problems they are trying to solve and what potential solutions might look like. You can collaboratively build a roadmap for the initiative with your business partners to gain clarity and shared understanding about that initiative. This collaborative effort helps you clarify why your business partners want to make a change and the potential themes and epics that could play a role in accomplishing that outcome. These themes provide strategic direction to your initiative without diving into specific details too early. Communicate goals and intent You can use a roadmap to communicate information about your initiative to a wider audience. Because the roadmap contains information at a broad strategic level, it’s concise enough that people can get an idea of what you’re planning to accomplish without getting bogged down with specifics. When creating your roadmap, you’ll involve a small group of key people in the initial discussion. That means there will be several people who may be interested in your IT initiative that weren’t originally involved in those initial discussions. When you share the roadmap with them, they can get an overview of the intended benefits of your initiative, what actions are currently underway, and your plans for future efforts. For most stakeholders, that level of detail is sufficient. There will be some who would like additional data, which is where a tool like LIKE.TG comes in handy, providing custom views for different stakeholders and displaying the data most meaningful to them. Track and communicate progress A good roadmap is a living document that people can rely on to reflect the current state of your work. You shouldn’t create a roadmap, present it once, and then stash it in a drawer (real or virtual). Nor should you only update it once a quarter when you have to present your current status to your executive committee. Instead, keep your roadmap up to date regularly, so it accurately reflects what you’re currently working on and what you plan to work on next. If you set it up properly, you may even use your roadmap as your primary means of reporting status, removing the need to create multiple different status reports for different audiences. Here again, a road mapping tool like LIKE.TG can help you out. Take the Free Roadmapping Email Course ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'a314a8c9-4388-402e-b112-6e56d14b2b3b', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); How to use roadmaps and backlogs together If you’ve been using backlogs for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the problem of an overflowing backlog. This is where the backlog becomes a dumping ground for everything you could do as part of your initiative. While there’s a certain amount of comfort in having a list of to-do’s, you soon find that it’s almost impossible to discern the forest from the trees. There are too many items to manage, and it’s difficult to discern ties between highly detailed items and the broader parts of the initiative. Fortunately, our friend, the roadmap can provide a big lift here. The primary cause of the overflowing backlog is when you identify a bunch of low-level backlog items too early. To avoid this issue, use your roadmap as a broad overview of your initiative showing the themes and epics you’re considering. Avoid the temptation Avoid the temptation to dive into detail on those epics and create items in your backlog until you’re just about to work on that epic. That means your backlog does not contain any backlog items for an epic unless it shows up in the current period on your roadmap. (Or in the “Now” column of a Now – Next – Later roadmap). When you take this approach, your roadmap provides the overall view at a strategic level, and the backlog provides a more tactical view of the current time horizon. You avoid breaking epics into user stories too early, preventing wasted effort if you decide you don’t need to do a particular epic. You also have far fewer user stories to manage on your backlog. Because roadmaps and backlogs contain information at different levels of detail and have different audiences, you’ll be tempted to use different tools for each. Using separate tools works as long as the two tools integrate seamlessly. Fortunately, LIKE.TG integrates with Jira and Azure DevOps so that you can keep your roadmap in sync with your backlog and vice versa. Examples of using roadmaps There are many ways that you can use a roadmap for your IT work. Here are three examples that show how you can use different roadmaps to collaborate and communicate with your business partners. Roadmap for IT portfolio A nonprofit association wanted a full picture of its various IT initiatives for planning and communication purposes. The IT Staff created an Enterprise IT Roadmap to show the initiatives that they: were currently working on (in a Now column) were planning to work on next (in a Next column) may consider in the future (in a Later column). The initiatives were further divided into swim lanes that represented which of the nonprofit’s key objectives the initiatives addressed. Examples of those objectives include: Build an inclusive global community Deliver value to members Build brand awareness for the association These are the key decision filters that the association uses to decide whether to undertake the initiatives. When they considered a fairly significant action, they would run it through those decision filters (i.e. “Will this help us deliver value to members?) if it didn’t pass through any of the decision filters, they didn’t do it. The association used this roadmap as an aid for their regular planning discussions. For example, when one initiative was nearing completion, they’d look at the roadmap and see which initiative in the next column made sense to start next. They could also move items off the roadmap or switch items between the later and next columns if they found their needs or priorities changed. Roadmap for a custom development project A team was tasked with replacing a 20-year-old pricing tool built on outdated client-server technology. The original scope included rebuilding the tool on modern technology and adding functionality to support some new business processes. As the team investigated how staff used the current tool, they found several inefficient processes and unused features. They also realized that the target date for cutover to the new system was very aggressive. It wasn’t likely that they’d be able to rebuild everything and add the new functionality by the initial target date. IT project roadmap The team created an IT Project Roadmap to plan out the order in which they would build functionality in the new tool and communicate their plan to executives in their organization. They built the roadmap with a monthly timeline and displayed the epics they planned to work on. They also put key milestones on the roadmap so that when they moved the delivery of epics with each other, they could see whether they had a viable solution for the cutover date. The team built an initial version of the new tool by the cutover date that addressed all the users’ immediate needs. They then delivered additional functionality over the course of the next few months so that the users had the functionality they needed when they needed it in their annual cycle. The roadmap helped the team keep stakeholders up to date on their plans and convey what functionality to expect when. It also helped with the frequent discussions the team had about changing their order of delivery when they ran into challenges or uncovered new information. Roadmap for a platform build-out A team started work to merge product data from several transactional systems and provide that data to a partner to list those products for sale. As the team progressed with their work, they realized they were building a data platform that several other initiatives could use for different purposes. The team started having conversations with the other initiatives and began identifying the common patterns from all the requests. The team put together an IT Infrastructure Roadmap for the data platform to reflect their plans for building out interfaces into the platform. These interfaces included additional data sources and ways for other systems to get data from the platform. The team designed the roadmap with a quarterly time frame to convey which interfaces they planned to work on and when. They chose this timeframe based on the uncertainty of working with several departments in this large retail organization. IT teams can use this roadmap as a high-level view of their work. They also tied the roadmap to their backlog tool so they could track how individual backlog items satisfied work toward the broader interfaces shown on the roadmap. Roadmaps are a powerful IT Tool As you look for new ways to work with your business partners, take a moment to consider how you can use a roadmap to help you out. You don’t have to be a Product Manager to use a roadmap, but you can certainly use Product Management tools to use a roadmap more effectively. When you’re ready to build a roadmap for your next IT initiative, give LIKE.TG and one of its IT specific roadmap templates a try. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '59077c2b-9f35-4763-9d85-1ccddfadf1db', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

The IMPACT approach to product management’s primary goal is creating the maximum value for the broadest target audience while remaining aligned with the company’s mission, vision, and goals. Filtering everything through the IMPACT lens can be extremely beneficial. It helps product teams level set every action, process, and decision to ensure they’re staying true to that objective. But if there’s one part of product management that needs IMPACT more than anywhere else, it’s roadmapping. Roadmaps set the tone for the coming months and years. They typically direct dozens—sometimes hundreds—of people involved in the implementation and rollout of product releases. Not to mention they dictate what marketing and sales will be able to promote and sell going forward. No one wants a plan for the future that isn’t exciting, inspiring, and positioning the product for growth and success. Yet far too often, bug fixes, custom client requests, and features of dubious value take up valuable bandwidth. These items snap up spots on the roadmap that would be better filled with innovative, value-added customer benefits and revenue-goosing enhancements. Where trouble begins Most product teams don’t set out to create lackluster roadmaps, but they’re often dealt a sub-par opening hand. You ideally begin with the company’s mission and vision. However, many organizations aren’t great at strategy, so there’s often a disconnect between those lofty ideals and reality. Senior leaders’ KPIs and metrics fixate on don’t always align with the long-range objectives and key milestones required to get there. This leaves the next crucial steps up to product managers. Yet PMs are sometimes given little direction when it comes to setting priorities and goals. This doesn’t prevent them from being met with withering criticism or—even worse—deafening silence when coming up with and presenting a plan. So these roadmappers need a rubric to continually measure the overall impact of their blueprint for the product, and IMPACT can do just that. Laying the groundwork for a roadmap with IMPACT IMPACT doesn’t begin with the roadmap. It must be part of the process in earlier stages of product development, particularly during prioritization. According to its own impact, vetting and judging each potential roadmap item culls the herd and eliminates requests and ideas that won’t move the needle where it matters most. IMPACT also shouldn’t be thought of as a component of the roadmap. There shouldn’t be any swimlanes dedicated to each letter of the acronym. Nor should “Clear” or “Actionable” appear in the legend. IMPACT’s value comes into play in a few other ways. First, by utilizing the IMPACT scoring approach during prioritization, there will be far more confidence it consists of worthy endeavors stakeholders will agree on merit inclusion. The roadmap’s overarching themes should also stand up to the IMPACT test. Each major goal and the desired outcome should meet the same criteria that any individual development items have already attained. You can also judge the roadmap as a whole based on its IMPACT. Looking out six, nine, or twelve months, will the planned themes and projects deliver results that adhere to this credo? If not, what’s driving the prioritization of work that doesn’t improve things along these lines? Staying true to a roadmap’s true purpose Product roadmaps aren’t projected plans, schedules, or a laundry list of deliverables. Not that stakeholders don’t try to turn them into that occasionally. You can’t necessarily blame them—these folks are desperate for updates and information that they can use tactically to do their own jobs. Despite this frequent bastardization of purpose, product roadmaps are supposed to be about why you’re doing something as much as they explain what it is and when it might show up. To shift that mindset, product managers must change up the internal conversations around roadmaps and evolve the organization’s product culture. And here’s one more opportunity for IMPACT to play a role. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '7c551d2b-ed71-444c-888b-18461bcb6944', {"region":"na1"}); The roadmap is a canvas to tell a story, not a checklist or Gantt chart. And that story is laced throughout with IMPACT. Everything on there should fit the narrative, benefitting users while advancing the corporate strategy. I personally structure our roadmap by value areas—the value we want to deliver to create that impact. I then structure the legend to reflect our differentiators. Before I actually put anything on the roadmap, its bones already indicate what’s most important for our business. With that foundation, I can start looking at opportunities, resources, and investments. Combined with using IMPACT for prioritization within each area, I know the product delivers value in all of the most impactful areas. Interesting Roadmaps are a way to tell your story visually. They connect your audience with the journey, so they walk away with the most pertinent information. Regardless of what the roadmap contains, it all comes back to why you prioritize that work and tell a story that belies the successes and victories to come after implementation. Meaningful Tailoring your roadmap to specific audiences is key by leaving out anything that distracts from the narrative or isn’t relevant to each stakeholder. External customers need to see which problems you’ll solve for them in the coming year. And internal stakeholders want to connect the dots between what’s on the roadmap and their impact on OKRs and KPIs. People Put yourself in the shoes of the different people your roadmap is for. Next, customize it for their own areas of interest and concerns. With this relevance top of mind, decide which parts of the roadmap you want to share, how far into the future it should go, and which methods are most effective to communicate your plans. Actionable Every roadmap is “actionable,” assuming things are implemented according to that plan. But I tend to worry about what I expect the audience to do with the information they’ve just received? I’m looking for customer validation and feedback, sales and marketing to update their pitches and collateral, customer success to anticipate how they’ll roll this out to customers, and how the technical teams will determine feasibility and make things happen. That means my roadmap needs the necessary information and context to enable these behaviors and actions. Download IMPACT ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '76387af0-7ef4-49da-8b36-28e99e4f5ba3', {"region":"na1"}); Clear Roadmaps should answer existing questions and not raise too many new ones—you’re shooting for generating excitement, not doubts. That’s why conveying the why is vastly more important than the what. Measure their engagement and comprehension based on the questions they ask. Testable Roadmaps can also be tested by trying them out on different crowds. Socializing your proposed plan with small groups can generate valuable feedback instead of waiting for a grand reveal and falling on your face when presented with a tough question. Creating that space for failure and challenges gives you additional opportunities to polish things up while also acknowledging that your course may vary based on an always uncertain future. Impress them with IMPACT If your roadmap holds up to the IMPACT test, you can confidently enter any presentation. You’ll know that even if everyone doesn’t agree or approve, they can’t argue with your rationale or reasons. You could still get overruled by an executive or a flagship customer, but you can still stick to your fundamentals even if a few wrinkles are thrown your way. Most importantly, you’ll have value creation on your side as you lobby to retain the items you know will create the most impact for customers and the business. For more examples of how IMPACT can guide your product management endeavors, download the free IMPACT ebook today. Watch Annie talk through IMPACT: Processes in the webinar below.

The IMPACT approach to product management’s primary goal is creating the maximum value for the broadest target audience while remaining aligned with the company’s mission, vision, and goals. Filtering everything through the IMPACT lens can be extremely beneficial. It helps product teams level set every action, process, and decision to ensure they’re staying true to that objective. But if there’s one part of product management that needs IMPACT more than anywhere else, it’s roadmapping. Roadmaps set the tone for the coming months and years. They typically direct dozens—sometimes hundreds—of people involved in the implementation and rollout of product releases. Not to mention they dictate what marketing and sales will be able to promote and sell going forward. No one wants a plan for the future that isn’t exciting, inspiring, and positioning the product for growth and success. Yet far too often, bug fixes, custom client requests, and features of dubious value take up valuable bandwidth. These items snap up spots on the roadmap that would be better filled with innovative, value-added customer benefits and revenue-goosing enhancements. Where trouble begins Most product teams don’t set out to create lackluster roadmaps, but they’re often dealt a sub-par opening hand. You ideally begin with the company’s mission and vision. However, many organizations aren’t great at strategy, so there’s often a disconnect between those lofty ideals and reality. Senior leaders’ KPIs and metrics fixate on don’t always align with the long-range objectives and key milestones required to get there. This leaves the next crucial steps up to product managers. Yet PMs are sometimes given little direction when it comes to setting priorities and goals. This doesn’t prevent them from being met with withering criticism or—even worse—deafening silence when coming up with and presenting a plan. So these roadmappers need a rubric to continually measure the overall impact of their blueprint for the product, and IMPACT can do just that. Laying the groundwork for a roadmap with IMPACT IMPACT doesn’t begin with the roadmap. It must be part of the process in earlier stages of product development, particularly during prioritization. According to its own impact, vetting and judging each potential roadmap item culls the herd and eliminates requests and ideas that won’t move the needle where it matters most. IMPACT also shouldn’t be thought of as a component of the roadmap. There shouldn’t be any swimlanes dedicated to each letter of the acronym. Nor should “Clear” or “Actionable” appear in the legend. IMPACT’s value comes into play in a few other ways. First, by utilizing the IMPACT scoring approach during prioritization, there will be far more confidence it consists of worthy endeavors stakeholders will agree on merit inclusion. The roadmap’s overarching themes should also stand up to the IMPACT test. Each major goal and the desired outcome should meet the same criteria that any individual development items have already attained. You can also judge the roadmap as a whole based on its IMPACT. Looking out six, nine, or twelve months, will the planned themes and projects deliver results that adhere to this credo? If not, what’s driving the prioritization of work that doesn’t improve things along these lines? Staying true to a roadmap’s true purpose Product roadmaps aren’t projected plans, schedules, or a laundry list of deliverables. Not that stakeholders don’t try to turn them into that occasionally. You can’t necessarily blame them—these folks are desperate for updates and information that they can use tactically to do their own jobs. Despite this frequent bastardization of purpose, product roadmaps are supposed to be about why you’re doing something as much as they explain what it is and when it might show up. To shift that mindset, product managers must change up the internal conversations around roadmaps and evolve the organization’s product culture. And here’s one more opportunity for IMPACT to play a role. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '7c551d2b-ed71-444c-888b-18461bcb6944', {"region":"na1"}); The roadmap is a canvas to tell a story, not a checklist or Gantt chart. And that story is laced throughout with IMPACT. Everything on there should fit the narrative, benefitting users while advancing the corporate strategy. I personally structure our roadmap by value areas—the value we want to deliver to create that impact. I then structure the legend to reflect our differentiators. Before I actually put anything on the roadmap, its bones already indicate what’s most important for our business. With that foundation, I can start looking at opportunities, resources, and investments. Combined with using IMPACT for prioritization within each area, I know the product delivers value in all of the most impactful areas. Interesting Roadmaps are a way to tell your story visually. They connect your audience with the journey, so they walk away with the most pertinent information. Regardless of what the roadmap contains, it all comes back to why you prioritize that work and tell a story that belies the successes and victories to come after implementation. Meaningful Tailoring your roadmap to specific audiences is key by leaving out anything that distracts from the narrative or isn’t relevant to each stakeholder. External customers need to see which problems you’ll solve for them in the coming year. And internal stakeholders want to connect the dots between what’s on the roadmap and their impact on OKRs and KPIs. People Put yourself in the shoes of the different people your roadmap is for. Next, customize it for their own areas of interest and concerns. With this relevance top of mind, decide which parts of the roadmap you want to share, how far into the future it should go, and which methods are most effective to communicate your plans. Actionable Every roadmap is “actionable,” assuming things are implemented according to that plan. But I tend to worry about what I expect the audience to do with the information they’ve just received? I’m looking for customer validation and feedback, sales and marketing to update their pitches and collateral, customer success to anticipate how they’ll roll this out to customers, and how the technical teams will determine feasibility and make things happen. That means my roadmap needs the necessary information and context to enable these behaviors and actions. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '76387af0-7ef4-49da-8b36-28e99e4f5ba3', {"region":"na1"}); Clear Roadmaps should answer existing questions and not raise too many new ones—you’re shooting for generating excitement, not doubts. That’s why conveying the why is vastly more important than the what. Measure their engagement and comprehension based on the questions they ask. Testable Roadmaps can also be tested by trying them out on different crowds. Socializing your proposed plan with small groups can generate valuable feedback instead of waiting for a grand reveal and falling on your face when presented with a tough question. Creating that space for failure and challenges gives you additional opportunities to polish things up while also acknowledging that your course may vary based on an always uncertain future. Impress them with IMPACT If your roadmap holds up to the IMPACT test, you can confidently enter any presentation. You’ll know that even if everyone doesn’t agree or approve, they can’t argue with your rationale or reasons. You could still get overruled by an executive or a flagship customer, but you can still stick to your fundamentals even if a few wrinkles are thrown your way. Most importantly, you’ll have value creation on your side as you lobby to retain the items you know will create the most impact for customers and the business. For more examples of how IMPACT can guide your product management endeavors, download the free IMPACT ebook today. Watch Annie talk through IMPACT: Processes in the webinar below.

In March 2020, many organizations found themselves suddenly plunged into crisis. A global pandemic sparked radical, immediate shifts with lasting effects. Companies had to shift their product strategy. Some floundered, while others adjusted, pivoted, and persevered. For Brainmates Co-founder and CEO Adrienne Tan, the sixteenth of March was the day when everything changed. She still remembers everyone gathered in the office. A creeping sense of dread as clients contacted them to cancel training and in-person meetings. “It was a very somber day,” Tan recalled. “We could tell there was a real shift in the environment.” Just as jarring was the suddenness of it all since things had been going well right up until that fateful moment. “We had an amazing January and February, but March was decimated, and we were just stunned.” But Tan and her team had no time to mourn or reflect. Brainmates was forced to spring into action immediately since they had a face-to-face meetup scheduled for that evening. They had to shift their product strategy. They scrambled and switched it to an online event on the fly. “We had never run a meetup digitally. So one of the first things we did as a team that evening before going home was to run our first digital event with a few hundred people,” Tan recounted. “It was only the next day when we started trying to figure out how to rescue our business and our team.” The COVID-19 outbreak drove the experience for Tan and Brainmates. But crisis management is an unfortunate part of any company’s lifecycle. An invisible virus may not always be the instigator. Yet, how Tan handled the situation offers valuable lessons for other leaders who face a crisis. We’ve also explored resilient leadership with LIKE.TG’s CEO, as well. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '42645f4c-eb13-476a-ad53-55b55e8a9092', {}); Assess and Defend When things get turned upside down, leaders must take strong and decisive actions. But before they get too far, they first need a solid understanding of where things stand. For Tan, that meant shifting her attention from innovative product leadership to financial analysis. “The first thing we had to do was be defensive,” Tan said. “I started to plan out our cash to understand where we were economical.” Tan also realized that navigating this crisis required her to focus fully on the business itself. Thus, she began delegating her consulting-focused client interactions to the rest of the team. “My role was definitely more of a CEO role,” Tan said. “It was a clear decision to say hey, during this time, I won’t be a consultant. I’m going to have to take on that more focused leadership role, put a strategy in place to steer us out of this conundrum.” But while her focus was on the bottom line, Tan didn’t completely change her “cheesy” personality. Instead, she structured her firm’s survival and rebound around three hashtags: #safetyfirst Ensuring employee safety and helping them set up functional remote work arrangements. That includes raiding the office for chairs and monitors #extendourrunway With a core commitment to retain the team and continue paying them, cash became a central concern to keep things afloat. #liftoff Rebuilding the business for a new economic climate. The most immediate change for Brainmates was delivering their training, workshops, and other events virtually. “We were fortunate that we had clients who stuck with us and said ‘hey, we love the face-to-face training, but we’re prepared to go online,’” Tan said. “So we changed all our materials, and now we run our training remotely privately for clients as well as publicly, which is nice, but it’s been a massive shift.” Investing in the Roadmap Instinctually, when one encounters scarcity, there’s a natural tendency to hoard resources. While that’s a good strategy at the outset, sticking with that plan for long is also a recipe for long-term decline. “Once you’ve done that initial check, once you understand where you sit as a business and once you understand what you can kind of manage in terms of cash, in terms of current revenues and costs, once you’ve done that, then it’s time to shift back to investment,” Tan said. “OK, I’ve taken stock of my business and where my product is. What’s the path forward?” she continued. “I think that if you always stay in a point where I’m still holding onto my cash, I’m too worried to invest, that locks your mentality, that locks your business.” So, after shifting Brainmates’ product strategy to a remote delivery model, Tan wasn’t content to stay in a holding pattern until conditions improved. Doing so might save a few dollars, but it would ultimately lead to the business fading into irrelevance as the market evolves and moves on from the pandemic mindset. “There’s a seismic shift in your roadmap because you didn’t expect this thing to happen. ” Tan said, adding that “If you can see a path forward if you can project forward—and we have—I would continue to invest in your roadmap if you can.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '527dc6af-8860-436f-9ca6-ae2b71b0cc99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Investing in the Future For Brainmates, the arrival of a new Chief Product Officer in April catalyzed looking toward the future and not just the present. Instead of postponing this expensive hire during a precarious financial period, they moved forward to shift their product strategy. “If we didn’t invest and we didn’t put some of our revenue into future investments, it would be a challenging time trading out of this,” Tan said. “We wouldn’t have products for the new future, for the new consumer.” Brainmates performs the same delicate balancing act that many other companies are attempting during this tumultuous time. “We’ve got an eye on the existing product and making it better,” Tan said. “but we also have an eye on the future and bringing out new products to new customers.” To hear more from Tan and how other leaders have piloted their product teams and companies and shift their product strategy through unexpected ups and downs, watch the entire webinar “Resilient Leadership During Challenging Times” for free now. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {});

If your product team is like most, you have software for capturing issues, managing requirements, and tracking projects. After all, it’s essential to manage the details and deliver quality product releases. But we hear regularly from product managers who tell us it’s too hard to use the information in these tools to plan and create a high-level product roadmap for communicating with executives and other stakeholders. Here’s the problem: the current tools often develop the roadmap from the bottom-up details, not the top-down big picture. Product managers are looking to flip their process around – they want an easy way to create a high-level product roadmap without first entering the low-level details. And those details are often not defined or fuzzy at best, especially if they’re more than a couple of quarters in the future. Even though most product managers are using sophisticated product management software, the irony is that it simply takes too long to create a decent product roadmap that executives understand. As a result, far too many product managers turn to dated tools like PowerPoint and spreadsheets for planning and communicating their high-level strategy. Just this week a VP of Product summarized it nicely for me. She said “I need to find something that my executive team likes. Every year we seem to argue over templates. I want to get out of the line of fire and get some part of my weekend back.” What we’ve found through dozens of conversations with customers is that product managers and product executives want a simpler way to do top-down strategic planning and communication. They want to have productive discussions about future big initiatives, themes, or epics that move the needle for the company. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); Several product managers have told us their executive team simply doesn’t care much about the details—what they really care about is whether the proposed roadmap fits with the strategic direction of the company. Successful product managers tap into this by keeping the roadmapping process high-level and collaborative. We found that by helping product managers easily create and then share their high-level product vision, they can get the executive team, marketing, engineering management and the rest of the organization on board with the strategy. We built LIKE.TG as an elegant way to quickly create a beautiful top-down product roadmap and then present the strategy to the executive team and management. It provides product teams a way to do high-level strategic planning, entering details about business value, development effort, and other information only at the point when it’s better defined. Through this process, the product team minimizes disconnects and gets everyone on the same page earlier in the process. Is it time to turn your product roadmap process upside down? photo credit: Margaret Killjoy cc

Product teams are as diverse as the products they help bring into existence. While backgrounds and experience can vary broadly, all product managers come to work with a similar core foundational skillset that organizations rely on to build successful products. Product leaders (e.g., CPOs, VPs of product, head of product, etc.) have the weighty challenge of bringing these diverse PMs together to form a cohesive team with a unified vision and aligned goals. Of course, not all product leaders are created equal. Some stand out from the rest as exemplary in the role. What separates the average product leader from the superstars who energize their teams and provide the right leadership, support, and space to enable teams to create and steer products to successful outcomes? In this post, we’ll explore some of the key skills and qualities that elite product leaders share, and we’ll also identify what separates the standouts from the status quo. What elite product leaders have in common Truly great product leaders share ten key attributes we’ll examine more closely here. 1. Driven to lead Elite product leaders are natural-born leaders. They are driven to lead. Not only do they know what needs to be done, they know how to get it done. They make prioritization look easy. But they also trust their team and nurture their people to lead. Leadership in and of itself is a core value. Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic and senior fellow at Harvard Business School, knows a thing or two about cultivating an environment of leadership. (George wrote several books that explore leadership: True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership and Discover Your True North.) “The role of leaders,” he contends, “is not to get other people to follow them but to empower others to lead.” 2. See alignment as a cornerstone An elite product leader stays firmly aligned to vision, strategy, and an organization’s goals. The alignment of all three is considered sacred and unshakeable. But more important: this alignment is shared. And it becomes the glue that unites the product team. “It’s no longer good enough to build products customers love. Elite product organizations must work across multiple dimensions, building products customers love, that achieve the company’s objectives at the lowest cost and best use of resources. Elite product leaders are the multi-dimensional connector across teams, functions, and all levels of the company hierarchy.” (Connie Kwan, How to Run an Elite Product Organization) hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'c6a78b23-a2f3-46e3-bc23-4578f7506068', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); 3. Powerful storytellers A product leader holds a strategic and visible spot for the product team within the company and has a great deal of power in setting the tone companywide. An elite product leader understands the power of effective storytelling and why getting the story right and telling it well are so important for product teams. They use stories to simplify, engage emotions, and be memorable. And when these three boxes are checked, that story becomes shareable–an ideal outcome for a product team. In Building a Storybrand, Donald Miller suggests that the job of product is “not simply getting products to market, but also communicating why customers need those products in their lives.” Without a strong story that persuades and sticks in people’s minds, even the best products can be drowned out in a crowded marketplace. 4. Seek meaningful engagement Elite product leaders know how to motivate members of their team by meaningfully engaging them. They also encourage, support, and mentor their team members. They understand their people and know what makes them tick. And they see team members as individuals who bring unique skillsets and experiences to the group. Elite product leaders understand that building a great product begins with building a great product team that scales alongside product vision and goals. 5. Offer ongoing connection Product leaders are often responsible for hiring. Building the right team culture begins here but doesn’t end here. It’s an ongoing, intentional effort to cultivate the right culture. That intention might take setting a weekly goal for customer interactions or a daily time to check in on product usage. (Note: Elite leaders use their products.) Building a truly great team must be as intentional as building a truly great product. Elite product leaders know that “great product teams don’t build themselves or come together by chance or accident. Instead, it takes a dedicated leader to envision, shape, and nurture the team and its members so it can grow and scale with the products they manage.” 6. Intentionally build community There are many ways to generate an intentional product community. The easiest way is to relevant read books and articles and listen to podcasts. Join groups that create an external product bridge. Connect internally within the product group by launching a book club or setting up a casual monthly or biweekly meetup to talk shop. Merge internal and external communities by attending conferences together. 7. Data-driven (but not data-obsessed) Data is essential for a product team to make informed decisions. But sometimes, there’s so much data coming at the team; it’s challenging to know what to focus on or how to manage it so that it can be useful. Elite product leaders can skillfully balance the flow of data, get the right systems to manage it, and identify what’s most important. 8. Extraordinary communicators It really can’t be overstated just how essential strong communication skills are to the entire product team, but especially product leaders. Elite leaders can strike a strategic balance in knowing what to say, when, how to say it and to whom. Getting it right (or wrong) can make or break a product. 9. Amplify efficiency Increasing efficiency across product teams and organizations is the hallmark of product operations. To elite product leaders, this means long-term sustainability and effectiveness. This efficiency stems from “implementing standardization around metrics, infrastructure, business processes, best practices, budgeting, and reporting.” Further, it means enabling product teams with the tools and processes they need to do their jobs successfully. 10. Customer-driven (borderline customer-obsessed) Being customer-driven is a hallmark of a successful product organization. That being said, an elite product leader might be seen as more customer-obsessed. They take customer feedback and the customer experience very seriously. And they use this feedback to inform strategic product decisions about which goals to pursue. How do elite leaders view mistakes? Elite product leaders are not superhuman. They certainly make mistakes along the way. But they don’t bury those mistakes or distance themselves as quickly as possible from their mistakes. They circle back and poke at them, dissect them, and hold them up to the light to learn from them. Mistakes become teachers. Mistakes provide valuable insights. Leaders know this, embrace this, and put this value into action. “Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s a stepping stone to success.” Final Thoughts Effective product teams that build great products are a direct result of an elite product leader. Download How to Structure Your Product Management Organization for Success➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5a8c45d2-3eb5-402a-ac48-fe7597dd4d69', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

Product teams are as diverse as the products they help bring into existence. While backgrounds and experience can vary broadly, all product managers come to work with a similar core foundational skillset that organizations rely on to build successful products. Product leaders (e.g., CPOs, VPs of product, head of product, etc.) have the weighty challenge of bringing these diverse PMs together to form a cohesive team with a unified vision and aligned goals. Of course, not all product leaders are created equal. Some stand out from the rest as exemplary in the role. What separates the average product leader from the superstars who energize their teams and provide the right leadership, support, and space to enable teams to create and steer products to successful outcomes? In this post, we’ll explore some of the key skills and qualities that elite product leaders share, and we’ll also identify what separates the standouts from the status quo. What elite product leaders have in common Truly great product leaders share ten key attributes we’ll examine more closely here. 1. Driven to lead Elite product leaders are natural-born leaders. They are driven to lead. Not only do they know what needs to be done, they know how to get it done. They make prioritization look easy. But they also trust their team and nurture their people to lead. Leadership in and of itself is a core value. Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic and senior fellow at Harvard Business School, knows a thing or two about cultivating an environment of leadership. (George wrote several books that explore leadership: True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership and Discover Your True North.) “The role of leaders,” he contends, “is not to get other people to follow them but to empower others to lead.” 2. See alignment as a cornerstone An elite product leader stays firmly aligned to vision, strategy, and an organization’s goals. The alignment of all three is considered sacred and unshakeable. But more important: this alignment is shared. And it becomes the glue that unites the product team. “It’s no longer good enough to build products customers love. Elite product organizations must work across multiple dimensions, building products customers love, that achieve the company’s objectives at the lowest cost and best use of resources. Elite product leaders are the multi-dimensional connector across teams, functions, and all levels of the company hierarchy.” (Connie Kwan, How to Run an Elite Product Organization) hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'c6a78b23-a2f3-46e3-bc23-4578f7506068', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); 3. Powerful storytellers A product leader holds a strategic and visible spot for the product team within the company and has a great deal of power in setting the tone companywide. An elite product leader understands the power of effective storytelling and why getting the story right and telling it well are so important for product teams. They use stories to simplify, engage emotions, and be memorable. And when these three boxes are checked, that story becomes shareable–an ideal outcome for a product team. In Building a Storybrand, Donald Miller suggests that the job of product is “not simply getting products to market, but also communicating why customers need those products in their lives.” Without a strong story that persuades and sticks in people’s minds, even the best products can be drowned out in a crowded marketplace. 4. Seek meaningful engagement Elite product leaders know how to motivate members of their team by meaningfully engaging them. They also encourage, support, and mentor their team members. They understand their people and know what makes them tick. And they see team members as individuals who bring unique skillsets and experiences to the group. Elite product leaders understand that building a great product begins with building a great product team that scales alongside product vision and goals. 5. Offer ongoing connection Product leaders are often responsible for hiring. Building the right team culture begins here but doesn’t end here. It’s an ongoing, intentional effort to cultivate the right culture. That intention might take setting a weekly goal for customer interactions or a daily time to check in on product usage. (Note: Elite leaders use their products.) Building a truly great team must be as intentional as building a truly great product. Elite product leaders know that “great product teams don’t build themselves or come together by chance or accident. Instead, it takes a dedicated leader to envision, shape, and nurture the team and its members so it can grow and scale with the products they manage.” 6. Intentionally build community There are many ways to generate an intentional product community. The easiest way is to relevant read books and articles and listen to podcasts. Join groups that create an external product bridge. Connect internally within the product group by launching a book club or setting up a casual monthly or biweekly meetup to talk shop. Merge internal and external communities by attending conferences together. 7. Data-driven (but not data-obsessed) Data is essential for a product team to make informed decisions. But sometimes, there’s so much data coming at the team; it’s challenging to know what to focus on or how to manage it so that it can be useful. Elite product leaders can skillfully balance the flow of data, get the right systems to manage it, and identify what’s most important. 8. Extraordinary communicators It really can’t be overstated just how essential strong communication skills are to the entire product team, but especially product leaders. Elite leaders can strike a strategic balance in knowing what to say, when, how to say it and to whom. Getting it right (or wrong) can make or break a product. 9. Amplify efficiency Increasing efficiency across product teams and organizations is the hallmark of product operations. To elite product leaders, this means long-term sustainability and effectiveness. This efficiency stems from “implementing standardization around metrics, infrastructure, business processes, best practices, budgeting, and reporting.” Further, it means enabling product teams with the tools and processes they need to do their jobs successfully. 10. Customer-driven (borderline customer-obsessed) Being customer-driven is a hallmark of a successful product organization. That being said, an elite product leader might be seen as more customer-obsessed. They take customer feedback and the customer experience very seriously. And they use this feedback to inform strategic product decisions about which goals to pursue. How do elite leaders view mistakes? Elite product leaders are not superhuman. They certainly make mistakes along the way. But they don’t bury those mistakes or distance themselves as quickly as possible from their mistakes. They circle back and poke at them, dissect them, and hold them up to the light to learn from them. Mistakes become teachers. Mistakes provide valuable insights. Leaders know this, embrace this, and put this value into action. “Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s a stepping stone to success.” Final Thoughts Effective product teams that build great products are a direct result of an elite product leader. Download How to Structure Your Product Management Organization for Success➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5a8c45d2-3eb5-402a-ac48-fe7597dd4d69', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

In an ideal, data-driven world, every product, project, and program would come gift wrapped with its own precise set of goals, objectives, and KPIs. There would be no bad strategy. The rationale would be crystal clear, as would measuring its success. Bad Strategy Happens The world is a messy place. There are many occasions when half-baked ideas get greenlit, fuzzy concepts are approved, and individual initiatives are largely disconnected from the corporate strategy. If one even exists at all. These are not the stories we like to tell ourselves, but they’re far too often the realities we face. A lacking strategy or bad strategy is nothing to celebrate. However, it’s not necessarily a forgone conclusion that it will all fail. In fact, it may even be an opportunity for the lucky/unlucky soul who has one of these incomplete ideas dropped on their desk. But it will require a little research and detective work, some insightful analysis, and a dash of storytelling savvy to bring it all home. 5 Product Strategy Tips from a VP of Product If and when you find yourself inheriting something with no concrete, measurable connection to the business’s desired outcomes, it’s your job to connect the dots and ensure the product actually ends up being helpful in the end. Here are some pointers for making lemonade from that bag of lemons. 1. Get to the why. First and foremost, you must figure out why this product matters to the business. The executives who lobbed it your way might have their stated reasons, but those should be taken with a big ol’ grain of salt. Instead of blindly following orders and assuming there must be a good reason to build what was requested, take a giant step back. Create two columns, and in the first, jot down what’s important to the company. If there are shared goals, objectives, targets, etc., use those as a starting point. But don’t hesitate to peel back the onion and get to the heart of the matter. Treat this just like you might a customer request for something specific. You must understand why they’re asking for it in the first place. To start, list out everything that matters to the business. In the other column, start coming up with everything this particular product could do for the business. Do this even if they don’t immediately line up with those corporate goals. It’s not yet time to rule anything out. Just get all the possibilities on the table. For example, let’s say someone asks you to build out user review capabilities for an e-commerce site. But the only reason they gave was that “everyone else has one.” While keeping up with competitors is a valid rationale, user reviews could obviously offer more benefits than simply checking another box in your competitive analysis table. In this case, one additional benefit would be increasing confidence for potential buyers. This could lead to increased gross sales, more new conversions/customers, or better search results. Those could then be linked with existing (or even unstated) business goals. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {}); 2. Define your own version of success. If you’ve found yourself with no targets, KPIs, or other measures of achievement, it’s time to draw up your own. While this might feel daunting, it’s a unique opportunity to define your own goals for a change. Your homegrown KPIs should make sense in the context of the larger business. If the revenue model is based on subscriptions, then “increasing page views” is a lousy thing to track. However, it’d be excellent for an ad-based model. So concentrate on what you can measure that really matters. At the same time, you want to be sure you’re measuring things relevant and actually influenced by the product in question. While the company’s goal might be landing a strategic set of clients, for instance, your product probably can’t do it by itself as that’s really a sales effort. Ensure anything measuring product success is within the control of the product itself. Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch in this area. There are well-established metrics that products and companies rely on. Ones that you can crib from, borrowing what’s best for your situation and dodging any vanity metrics. Download Product Success Metrics ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '18f5a8aa-393b-4397-9fd4-f7758c1edf55', {}); Then, once you’ve decided what you’re going to measure, it’s time to pick some targets for your product metrics. They should be a stretch but attainable and realistic. Quantitative measurements are always easier, but a dash of qualitative might be appropriate as well. You’ll eventually need to secure buy-in from other stakeholders. But now you’re giving them something to react to and OK versus asking them to figure it out themselves. Even if you’re wrong, you’re going to end up with more information than you had before. For a busy executive, this mode of interaction is often preferable. Even if it’s not exactly the most rigorously researched method. 3. But track everything. Even if you have a pretty good handle on which metrics matter for the product and the business, you never really know what the future holds. Tracking absolutely all data and everything is absurd, but tracking what’s reasonable to the goal will ensure you have flexibility. It’s always a good idea to be sure the reasonable instrumentation is in place for every reasonable data point. This way, instead of answering “I don’t know” when someone throws a curveball at you, you can at least counter with “we’ll have to run a report on that.” You may even get curious yourself about something that wasn’t originally on your radar, so the more available data the better. However, how much information you’re communicating and socializing should remain narrow and relevant to those previously identified goals. You don’t want to open yourself up to second-guessing by churning out reams of reports no one ever looks at… until someone does and you’re caught on the back foot. 4. It’s OK to be wrong. Figuring out what success looks like for a new initiative is an ongoing process. At the start, you’re mostly operating on assumptions. Over time, you can course-correct based on what you’re seeing once real people begin interacting with the product. But kicking things off on unsure footing can be an extremely uncomfortable feeling, especially if you’re still trying to establish your credibility. So come right out and say that you’re unsure if these are the best ways to measure success. You’ve got to start somewhere, and over time there will be many opportunities to adjust the goals and measures of success. Making this a collaborative exercise versus trying to perfect it all yourself can also help. Not only are two heads (or more) better than one in this case, but you also create some cover if a higher-up is less than pleased with your proposal. 5. Make a plan to circle back Since you’re going to market with less than 100% confidence, it’s key to acknowledge this reality and formulate a timetable for revisiting it. Confirming your strategy’s efficacy, the relevance of your metrics, and the alignment with corporate objectives should be a standard operating procedure. But in these cases, it’s optimal to acknowledge the elephant in the room and establish a cadence and process for how things will be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Not only does this keep you from barreling in the wrong direction for too long, but it also lets everyone else involved know they’ll have ample opportunity to assess and chime in early and often. This openness to feedback and nimble approach can make any foray seem a little less risky. Bad Strategy isn’t Unusual A temporarily aimless product or company might seem like an anomaly, but it’s far more common than you’d think. Old or bad strategies can die off before new ones are happened upon. Business models can fail without the company folding. We’ve seen far too many examples of companies rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a mediocre existence. In the late 1990s, no one would have pegged Apple to turn into the juggernaut it is today, despite its early successes and subsequent stumbles. And there are just as many cases where a product’s original purpose fizzled out, but an “off-label” use case turned it into a success, such as bubble wrap, which was originally intended to be wallpaper. You’re also not alone. When we asked product managers how they felt about strategy, plenty of folks didn’t think their company was killing it. 60% sought more clarity regarding their company’s vision, while 40% felt their current strategy communication was pretty average. A lack of strategy isn’t the same as being saddled with a bad one. You don’t have to fight against inertia and momentum heading in a bad direction. You need to kickstart things and give them a push toward what you hope and believe is a success. Adopt a growth mindset. Establish a culture that prizes experimentation. Prepare for and accept that failure, missteps, and setbacks may come your way. Most importantly, start somewhere and push forward—you don’t know where you’ll end up until you get there. 点击播放声音 @keyframes VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } @keyframes VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } .volume__small-wave { animation: VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite; opacity: 0; } .volume__large-wave { animation: VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite .3s; opacity: 0; } 1:00:16●●●●●●●●●●●Meet the PanelAgendaPoll #1Product KPI vs. Strategy KPIProduct Strategy GamePoll #2How do you identify early adopters?What does a good strategy look like?How do you communicate strategy?Live Q&AThank you! #wistia_chrome_23 #wistia_grid_71_wrapper .w-css-reset{font-size:14px;} #wistia_chrome_23 #wistia_grid_71_wrapper 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In an ideal, data-driven world, every product, project, and program would come gift wrapped with its own precise set of goals, objectives, and KPIs. There would be no bad strategy. The rationale would be crystal clear, as would measuring its success. Bad Strategy Happens The world is a messy place. There are many occasions when half-baked ideas get greenlit, fuzzy concepts are approved, and individual initiatives are largely disconnected from the corporate strategy. If one even exists at all. These are not the stories we like to tell ourselves, but they’re far too often the realities we face. A lacking strategy or bad strategy is nothing to celebrate. However, it’s not necessarily a forgone conclusion that it will all fail. In fact, it may even be an opportunity for the lucky/unlucky soul who has one of these incomplete ideas dropped on their desk. But it will require a little research and detective work, some insightful analysis, and a dash of storytelling savvy to bring it all home. 5 Product Strategy Tips from a VP of Product If and when you find yourself inheriting something with no concrete, measurable connection to the business’s desired outcomes, it’s your job to connect the dots and ensure the product actually ends up being helpful in the end. Here are some pointers for making lemonade from that bag of lemons. 1. Get to the why. First and foremost, you must figure out why this product matters to the business. The executives who lobbed it your way might have their stated reasons, but those should be taken with a big ol’ grain of salt. Instead of blindly following orders and assuming there must be a good reason to build what was requested, take a giant step back. Create two columns, and in the first, jot down what’s important to the company. If there are shared goals, objectives, targets, etc., use those as a starting point. But don’t hesitate to peel back the onion and get to the heart of the matter. Treat this just like you might a customer request for something specific. You must understand why they’re asking for it in the first place. To start, list out everything that matters to the business. In the other column, start coming up with everything this particular product could do for the business. Do this even if they don’t immediately line up with those corporate goals. It’s not yet time to rule anything out. Just get all the possibilities on the table. For example, let’s say someone asks you to build out user review capabilities for an e-commerce site. But the only reason they gave was that “everyone else has one.” While keeping up with competitors is a valid rationale, user reviews could obviously offer more benefits than simply checking another box in your competitive analysis table. In this case, one additional benefit would be increasing confidence for potential buyers. This could lead to increased gross sales, more new conversions/customers, or better search results. Those could then be linked with existing (or even unstated) business goals. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {}); 2. Define your own version of success. If you’ve found yourself with no targets, KPIs, or other measures of achievement, it’s time to draw up your own. While this might feel daunting, it’s a unique opportunity to define your own goals for a change. Your homegrown KPIs should make sense in the context of the larger business. If the revenue model is based on subscriptions, then “increasing page views” is a lousy thing to track. However, it’d be excellent for an ad-based model. So concentrate on what you can measure that really matters. At the same time, you want to be sure you’re measuring things relevant and actually influenced by the product in question. While the company’s goal might be landing a strategic set of clients, for instance, your product probably can’t do it by itself as that’s really a sales effort. Ensure anything measuring product success is within the control of the product itself. Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch in this area. There are well-established metrics that products and companies rely on. Ones that you can crib from, borrowing what’s best for your situation and dodging any vanity metrics. Download Product Success Metrics ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '18f5a8aa-393b-4397-9fd4-f7758c1edf55', {}); Then, once you’ve decided what you’re going to measure, it’s time to pick some targets for your product metrics. They should be a stretch but attainable and realistic. Quantitative measurements are always easier, but a dash of qualitative might be appropriate as well. You’ll eventually need to secure buy-in from other stakeholders. But now you’re giving them something to react to and OK versus asking them to figure it out themselves. Even if you’re wrong, you’re going to end up with more information than you had before. For a busy executive, this mode of interaction is often preferable. Even if it’s not exactly the most rigorously researched method. 3. But track everything. Even if you have a pretty good handle on which metrics matter for the product and the business, you never really know what the future holds. Tracking absolutely all data and everything is absurd, but tracking what’s reasonable to the goal will ensure you have flexibility. It’s always a good idea to be sure the reasonable instrumentation is in place for every reasonable data point. This way, instead of answering “I don’t know” when someone throws a curveball at you, you can at least counter with “we’ll have to run a report on that.” You may even get curious yourself about something that wasn’t originally on your radar, so the more available data the better. However, how much information you’re communicating and socializing should remain narrow and relevant to those previously identified goals. You don’t want to open yourself up to second-guessing by churning out reams of reports no one ever looks at… until someone does and you’re caught on the back foot. 4. It’s OK to be wrong. Figuring out what success looks like for a new initiative is an ongoing process. At the start, you’re mostly operating on assumptions. Over time, you can course-correct based on what you’re seeing once real people begin interacting with the product. But kicking things off on unsure footing can be an extremely uncomfortable feeling, especially if you’re still trying to establish your credibility. So come right out and say that you’re unsure if these are the best ways to measure success. You’ve got to start somewhere, and over time there will be many opportunities to adjust the goals and measures of success. Making this a collaborative exercise versus trying to perfect it all yourself can also help. Not only are two heads (or more) better than one in this case, but you also create some cover if a higher-up is less than pleased with your proposal. 5. Make a plan to circle back Since you’re going to market with less than 100% confidence, it’s key to acknowledge this reality and formulate a timetable for revisiting it. Confirming your strategy’s efficacy, the relevance of your metrics, and the alignment with corporate objectives should be a standard operating procedure. But in these cases, it’s optimal to acknowledge the elephant in the room and establish a cadence and process for how things will be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Not only does this keep you from barreling in the wrong direction for too long, but it also lets everyone else involved know they’ll have ample opportunity to assess and chime in early and often. This openness to feedback and nimble approach can make any foray seem a little less risky. Bad Strategy isn’t Unusual A temporarily aimless product or company might seem like an anomaly, but it’s far more common than you’d think. Old or bad strategies can die off before new ones are happened upon. Business models can fail without the company folding. We’ve seen far too many examples of companies rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a mediocre existence. In the late 1990s, no one would have pegged Apple to turn into the juggernaut it is today, despite its early successes and subsequent stumbles. And there are just as many cases where a product’s original purpose fizzled out, but an “off-label” use case turned it into a success, such as bubble wrap, which was originally intended to be wallpaper. You’re also not alone. When we asked product managers how they felt about strategy, plenty of folks didn’t think their company was killing it. 60% sought more clarity regarding their company’s vision, while 40% felt their current strategy communication was pretty average. A lack of strategy isn’t the same as being saddled with a bad one. You don’t have to fight against inertia and momentum heading in a bad direction. You need to kickstart things and give them a push toward what you hope and believe is a success. Adopt a growth mindset. Establish a culture that prizes experimentation. Prepare for and accept that failure, missteps, and setbacks may come your way. Most importantly, start somewhere and push forward—you don’t know where you’ll end up until you get there. 点击播放声音 @keyframes VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } @keyframes VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } .volume__small-wave { animation: VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite; opacity: 0; } .volume__large-wave { animation: VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite .3s; opacity: 0; } 1:00:16●●●●●●●●●●●Meet the PanelAgendaPoll #1Product KPI vs. Strategy KPIProduct Strategy GamePoll #2How do you identify early adopters?What does a good strategy look like?How do you communicate strategy?Live Q&AThank you! #wistia_chrome_23 #wistia_grid_71_wrapper .w-css-reset{font-size:14px;} #wistia_chrome_23 #wistia_grid_71_wrapper 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I’ve spoken with so many product managers who have a dream of becoming an entrepreneur or launching their own product one day. Every one of those conversations is exciting because that was my dream too. After a decade of working with others to launch successful SaaS products, I took the plunge to launch a startup in 2013. As I continued to help launch products, I realized that I was prepared to dive into entrepreneurial life myself. Our surveys at LIKE.TG support this trend of product managers (PM) desiring the entrepreneurial life. In LIKE.TG’s 2021 State of Product Management Report, we learned that 27% of product managers said they wanted to start their own company in the next 10 years.