Product planning: Yes, it can be collaborative and fun
Product planning: Yes, it can be collaborative and fun
Over the past few weeks I have been working with members of product and engineering teams on our product plans for the mid-term (6-9 months). I’ve been through this exercise many times over my career and have experienced various ways of addressing this problem. There is one process which I have found to be quite productive, collaborative and fun. I’ll be going through it in this week’s post.
Before going into detail on the process, it might be helpful to outline some of the main objectives of product planning. The first is obvious, and that is to agree on a product roadmap that is aligned with the company and product strategy. A roadmap needs to be in service of the company’s strategy by enabling business and company goals. The second, is that of cohesion especially between members of the engineering and product organizations. The third, is attainment. The roadmap that we agree on ought to be in service of our strategy but also realistic. The fourth is a bit more subtle and is motivation. Not only should we feel that the goals are attainable, but we should be motivated to deliver them. This is the icing on the cake so to speak.
Product Strategy Filter
The first step in the process is to list out all the potential investments and filter them out by their alignment to the Product Strategy. This step is almost entirely done by the Product Management team. The list of potential investments will be derived from market research, customer discovery, internal feedback from support, customer success, sales and engineering amongst others. These investments need to be assessed based on their support of the Product Strategy. Investments that do not benefit the strategy are eliminated and conversely those that do proceed to the next stage.
An example might illustrate this filtration process. Suppose that one element of your product strategy outlines the need to “deliver a self-service product to win small and mid-sized customers”. Under this strategy investments like transacting online with credit cards would be permissible. However, investing in FedRAMP might not be aligned and thus eliminated. Your product strategy is essential in investment prioritization, focus and overall alignment between product, engineering and the GTM functions. I will be dedicating an entire post on this topic.
Capacity Filter
The first step is one the Product Management organization, alongside CTO/CEO are responsible for. They outline the strategy and the list of investments that are all in support of it. Sadly, not all of these investments will be attainable, at least not in the 6-9 months time-frame which this framework is concerned with. The main reason is capacity constraints. You, much like most software startups, are probably constrained by your engineering capacity. There’s far more work than the engineering team can deliver in a reasonable time-period. Therefore, an additional filtration process will be applied. This one will most definitely require the introduction of members of the engineering team to the process.
This next step then, takes as input the list of strategic investments that were all deemed supportive of the Product Strategy and filters them based on resources available. The resources here should be exhaustive and cover all resources needed to deliver on each investment. This is also where the process becomes collaborative.
This second filtration process is done by teams. Each team is composed of software engineers, product managers, UX designers and so on. The intention of making this a team process is cohesion and perspectives. The software engineers and UX designers on the team can highlight the cost, complexity and dependencies between investments. Product Manages can provide business context for the investments and a sense of prioritization.
One of the key requirements for this step is giving the teams a view of the capacity constraints. Those can be expressed as the number of available product development teams or similar measures. You might want to project future bandwidth too, if you will be hiring and confident in your ability to do so and onboard those new hires during the same timeframe required to deliver on your roadmap. Hint: don’t do that…
Each team will independently evaluate the strategic investments and select ones that they believe are both attainable given the resource constraints and of highest value. It’s worth noting that this process is fuzzy, ambiguous and uncomfortable. Bandwidth - product development capacity - is hard to truly measure. Not only that, but the list of investments can be vague and open to interpretation. That’s intentional and expected at this early stage. The intent is for each team to make their own assumptions on scope, cost and value. There will be a point of convergence that brings it all together.
The Merge
The last step is that of convergence and is one which is best done in person with all participating teams. During this step, teams will share their respective roadmaps, debate them and attempt to settle on a merged roadmap, that represents what the product development teams will work on in the near-term.
Due to the inherent ambiguity of this exercise, it is worth noting that before debating and merging, I have found it very fruitful to spend time recapping the Product Strategy and going through the list of Selected Investments collectively with all participants present. This helps with alignment, scope and assumption discussions. It also gives teams the chance to revisit some of their decisions in light of new information.
I’ve done this exercise various times now and find it very useful. But like all tools and processes it isn’t a panacea. The most critical advice I can offer is to make sure that teams do their work before the merge discussions occur. The “homework” portion of this exercise, in which teams independently debate and assess investments is absolutely critical. It can reduce the amount of time spent during the merging phase to debate and discuss investments. It also allows the teams to collaborate, especially between the software developers, product managers and designers. You should also strive to reduce bias. The independence of the teams is crucial. So is the freedom they are given to select investments from the list of Strategic Investments.
I would also recommend that you set some time-constraints for this exercise. Don’t try and map out a roadmap that is years out. Most of the items 9 months out will be a guess and subject to change based on market dynamics or new information. Instead focus on what is needed to be done in the immediate and very near term. You should also apply this process on a regular cadence, perhaps once every quarter.
My litmus test for the success of this process is twofold. The first is the general overlap between teams on their selected roadmaps. The more, the better. If you find yourself staring at highly divergent team roadmaps, that’s a sign that you need to spend more time on context setting, especially at the strategic level. That, or your list of Strategic Investments is too big. A reasonable guideline is to share a list that is ~2x the size of your available capacity. The second, which is a side-effect of convergence is energy and excitement. You should feel palpable energy from the participants and eagerness to start working on the finalized investments.
I know I do, I just felt it this past week when we did that very same exercise!
Things I am reading/listening to
Generative AI: A Creative New World I’m a big fan of Generative AI. Will we witness movies, games or other media types that are entirely produced by AI?
Databricks vs Snowflake These two data titans, and a few others like Dremio, are on a collision course. At stake is a huge market.
SaaS metrics More goodness by Sammy Abdullah. Two things that caught my eye. 30% growth is very good. 19% of profiled companies generate an operating profit. That’s not great and explains some of the recent market carnage.