Top 5 Things to Remember When Updating Your Roadmap

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Welcome back to our weekly newsletter, where we dive deep into the world of product management.

This week we are in the Elevate phase of the E3 Framework.

We're focusing on a critical aspect of product management: updating your roadmap.

Here are the top 5 things to remember when updating your roadmap

1️⃣ Reassess Priorities with Evolving Objectives:

As our business landscape continues to shift, it's crucial to align our roadmap with evolving business objectives. Take the time to reassess priorities and ensure that each epic on your roadmap is still in line with the overarching goals of the organization.

Use Case - Initially, your roadmap prioritized improving the website checkout process to reduce cart abandonment rates. However, as you observe a significant shift towards mobile shopping and an increase in app downloads, you reassess priorities. Recognizing the importance of mobile optimization for user experience, you realign your roadmap to prioritize the development of both the website and mobile seamless checkout flow, ensuring alignment with evolving business objectives and customer behavior.

2️⃣ Consistently Evaluate and Refine Outcomes:

The anticipated outcomes of your roadmap epics should be continuously evaluated and refined. Adjust them as necessary to prioritize customer satisfaction and maintain market leadership. Remember, flexibility is key in the ever-changing world of product management! As you learn more about your customers, your business, and your market - you are bound to have new ways to slice and dice data and forecasts to better understand expected outcomes.

Use Case - You launch a feature allowing users to save their favorite pet products for easy access later. Anticipating increased user engagement and retention, you monitor user feedback and metrics closely. However, after analyzing data, you notice a decline in user adoption and engagement with the feature. In response, you refine the feature by adding personalized product recommendations to the saved items section, improving user satisfaction and driving higher conversion rates. You partner with marketing to ensure we keep visits high enough to understand if this new iteration is better meeting our customer’s experience expectations to keep them coming back and using the feature.

3️⃣ Identify Emerging Risks and Opportunities:

Stay agile in your approach by identifying emerging risks and opportunities. This enables you to respond quickly to market changes and pivot your roadmap as needed. Keep a close eye on market trends and competitor activities to stay ahead of the curve. Most importantly, keep close to your customer feedback channels to see if trends are emerging with an issue or opportunity that may be a better value add if you were to prioritize it over the work you have up next.

Use Case - With the rise of voice commerce and smart pet devices, you identify an emerging opportunity to integrate voice-enabled shopping capabilities into your eCommerce platform. Recognizing the potential to enhance user convenience and stay ahead of competitors, you pivot your roadmap to prioritize the development of voice search and voice-enabled checkout functionalities, tapping into a growing market trend and differentiating your platform.

4️⃣ Provide Accurate and Updated Timelines:

Transparency is key when it comes to roadmap updates. Ensure that your team is informed of any changes and provide accurate timelines for new capabilities. This helps maintain trust and ensures a seamless launch of new features. Remember - it’s smart to give a specific date of when something launches if it is within 2 months, but after that, I’d stick to a week, month, or quarter depending how much further out it is. If you lock in a date, it removes your agility to re-prioritize as you learn more about your business, customers, and market.

Use Case - You announce a new feature allowing users to track the delivery status of their pet food orders in real-time. Initially, you set a specific launch date based on development estimates. However, unforeseen integration challenges arise with third-party logistics partners, delaying the feature rollout. Instead of sticking to the original deadline, you communicate transparently with stakeholders, providing updated timelines based on the revised development schedule, ensuring a smooth and reliable launch.

5️⃣ Pitch Deck and Problem Worth Solving:

Remember that each epic on your roadmap should have a solid pitch deck and address a problem worth solving. Keep the focus on delivering value to your customers and solving their pain points effectively. Most pitch decks never make it past the “observations” of why this is truly a problem worth solving.

Use Case - Before adding a feature to your roadmap for personalized pet food recommendations based on pet health and dietary preferences, you create a pitch deck outlining the problem: pet owners struggle to find the right food for their pets' unique needs, leading to uncertainty and dissatisfaction. By addressing this pain point with personalized recommendations powered by AI algorithms, you aim to enhance user satisfaction and increase repeat purchases. The pitch deck highlights the problem, proposed solution, and anticipated benefits, ensuring alignment across the organization and driving product development efforts.

🚀 BONUS TIP! Communicate to all stakeholders when your roadmap changes. Make sure co-creators are aware within your sprint planning sessions, but more broadly, your stakeholders are aware across the business.

Stay tuned for more insights and tips from the E3 Framework. Have a fantastic week ahead, and remember: keep elevating!

Until next week

Jason