What features are you purposefully leaving out of your latest product roadmap and why?
It’s a question that all product professionals should know the answer to. But before PMs can narrow down certain functionalities based on demand and target audience, they must be able to align all teams behind the core mission.
These local product managers are getting buy-in through frequent feedback sessions in which they tailor feature conversations to each department. In the end, however, successful planning comes down to client satisfaction. At Forward Financing, Product Manager Lauren Beaudry said she leverages a matrix to rank ideas by impact.
“Since all decisions are based on the objective ranking system, we can compare competing priorities and make sure we are maximizing our impact on the business,” Beaudry said.
Before launching Examity’s most recent online proctoring product, Brian Collins, senior vice president of product and engineering, said employees had to make sure the team was fully ready to adopt it. That meant tailoring discussions about the product roadmap to appeal to all departments concurrently, including marketing, account management and engineering.
When developing a product roadmap, what steps do you take to ensure there’s alignment across teams from the get-go?
Roadmap alignment starts with listening. What is the market demanding? What are our customers asking for? What do teams want or need to be successful? What are untapped opportunities or challenges that are blocking our progress? If the product roadmap is focused on addressing the same opportunities and challenges that other teams in the company are focused on, there’s a foundation for strong alignment.
Then, when establishing product targets, it’s still about listening and communicating. For example, clients who depend on the products we build need to understand what we are –– or are not –– planning to deliver and why.
Different teams within the company can have diverse demands for the products we create.’’
How do you maintain that alignment throughout the development cycle?
Different teams within the company can have diverse demands for the products we create. As a result, the kind of information we share and the nature of that collaboration differs. When Examity launched the Winter2020 version of our online proctoring product earlier this year, we focused on improved usability for test-takers. For marketing and sales, that meant sharing visual designs, doing feature walkthroughs and collaborating on demos as the experience evolved.
On our operations and account management teams, validating feature trade-offs and delivering detailed training was critical. In the end, we delivered a product that not only met our objectives but ensured everyone at Examity was ready to adopt it.
As project needs change, how do you re-prioritize the product roadmap and keep teams aligned?
To some degree, needs will evolve as products are built. If requests are addressed in stages and there is visibility into the changes as they occur, the course corrections are often self-apparent. A major or sudden change, however, can be jarring –– not to mention disappointing for those who were either building something great or those who were waiting to take advantage of that great thing being built.
In these situations, it is critical to incorporate the change and the rationale behind the change into the roadmap. The further you are from the decision, the less obvious the change usually is. Acknowledging a change, communicating the reasons behind it and accepting the impact of that change will go a long way in keeping teams on board and advocating for the new direction. Overall, it becomes much easier to maintain team and goal alignment if we can apply changes incrementally.
At Forward Financing, Beaudry has team-product alignment down to a science. She ranks each new idea by its business impact on a matrix that includes fields like customer and partner experience, cost savings, revenue growth and increased efficiency. This spring, as business needs shifted in response to COVID-19, Beaudry was able to pivot her organizational strategy to address the influx of feature requests coming in.
When developing a product roadmap, what steps do you take to ensure there’s alignment across teams from the get-go?
Everyone at Forward Financing is aligned and focused on our mission to help small businesses thrive. Our five-person product management team executes on this mission by collaborating with each stakeholder group to understand the opportunities that will drive us toward our goals. When I meet with stakeholder groups, I leverage a matrix to rank ideas by impact on the business and level of engineering effort required.
Next, I combine the top priorities of all stakeholder groups into one roadmap. Often, we need to make hard decisions and tradeoffs. Since all decisions are based on the objective ranking system, we can compare competing priorities and make sure we are maximizing our impact on the business. Once teams believe in the framework, it is easy to align around decisions that are made this way.
Often, we need to make hard decisions and tradeoffs.’’
How do you maintain that alignment throughout the development cycle?
By planning for feedback sessions at every step in the process, we can ensure the end result meets the expectations of all stakeholders across the company. Development is an iterative process. So the more we can show stakeholders our work along the way and get their feedback, the better the end result will be. User experience mock-ups are key here, since stakeholders can provide much clearer requirements when they can see what the end result will look like.
For example, we recently worked on revamping our internal tools for our sales team. Using feedback, we changed the mock-ups at least three or four times before they were ready to go to development.
As project needs change, how do you re-prioritize the product roadmap and keep teams aligned?
Our collaborative environment and transparent communication from our leadership team keep us aligned when our product roadmap inevitably needs to be re-prioritized. Before a quarter starts, I create an illustration of each sprint, showing which strategic projects are scheduled for completion. When priorities change, as they often do, I am able to then easily show team stakeholders the impact to the roadmap and scheduled projects. Remaining flexible and open to change is a requirement of the job.
After carefully planning and creating a Q2 roadmap in March of this year, we had to adapt and start fresh to address the changing needs of the business due to COVID-19. Since there were so many urgent requests coming in daily, we switched from working in two-week sprints to using a Kanban board. We organized what work was “backlogged,” “up next,” “in progress” and “completed” into columns.
We were able to rapidly re-prioritize as new requests came in while providing transparency to all stakeholders on their status. When we need to re-prioritize, we stay aligned and make decisions by keeping Forward’s mission top of mind.
