Great product teams understand what a product does and how it works are interconnected and interdependent...and focus on the boundary between the two.
What exactly is the Roadmap Integrity Process? In a nutshell, it’s a lightweight methodology for transforming a list of vague and often, half-baked ideas for new features, enhancements, and even engineering/architecture work, into a solid operating plan that accounts for execution risk.
Uncertainty is the missing link in how we plan and execute software projects. By asking one simple question for every project, long before you start, you can have a very good idea how many challenges you are likely to face along the way.
We've invested more effort into formulating business strategy and the best practices of building software than we have into figuring out how to accurately map one to the other. As as result, sometimes things are lost in translation.
Dependencies are not bad. Far from it: that’s how you get the leverage you need to succeed and scale in business. But consider what happens if things don’t go as planned: if who or what you’re depending on isn’t as negatively impacted as you would be, watch out.
Only you can decide whether your company must publicly disclose your product roadmap. But never disclose anything before you know what it really is, whether it works, whether customers even need it, or when you can deliver it.
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Roadmap Integrity is a consulting company founded by Bill Bliss with one simple goal: to help senior managers make their companies more effective at creating great software that delivers maximum business impact. It's based on what Bill's learned after almost 25 years of software projects at Microsoft, Expedia, and several smaller companies and startups.
If you'd like some help creating a compelling product roadmap that maximizes business impact, we can help. Here's more information, or contact us.
This work by Bill Bliss and Roadmap Integrity, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
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