Do features belong on roadmaps?
Short answer: it depends.
On this episode of Drea Says Product Things, I tackle the age old question of “do features belong on roadmaps.”
Once again I’ve included both video and transcript below so you can follow!
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Hello, my name is Andrea and this is Drea Talks Product….or is it Drea says product things.. eh, we’ll figure that out.
Anyway, today we are going to talk about roadmaps.
apparently last week I triggered some of you when I said that roadmaps are not a list of features and I am not going to apologize for that.
Someone even tried to quote back to me Roadmaps Relaunched which for those that don’t know, I am in the book. So thank you for that.
However, I do really wanna touch on one really important point, which is features on roadmaps. So I’m gonna try to do that in two minutes or less.
So do features belong in roadmaps? The real answer is it depends.
So one thing that the book is really clear about is that for the things that you have committed resources to, that you know what you’re working on, that you have solutions that you’ve defined.
Yes, it is okay for those items to be expressed as features. And that is actually true because if you know what you’re working on, why not just say it?
There’s two things to keep in mind though. The first is that just because some things are features doesn’t mean that all things have to be features.
The second is that if you know what it is that you’re working on, don’t just leave it expressed as a feature.
For example, if you know that you’re working on a Slack integration or a Jira integration or a Salesforce integration, don’t just leave it with that name. Make sure that you’re actually outlining what is the benefit and what is the value to the customer.
This will ensure that there’s a bias removed from the viewer’s point of view, and that you’re actually taking the time to explain why that solution is a good solution and why it is that you chose to actually pay attention to it at this point in time. And most importantly, you’re gonna communicate what the value is.
So no, having some features on your roadmap is not the worst thing you can do, provided that you’ve done discovery and you know what those solutions look like. But that doesn’t mean that every item on your roadmap has to be the same way.
And that is it, features on roadmaps in two minutes or less.
Come back again for more wisdom.