Hey all,
Hope you’re having a great summer so far. I was legitimately going to take the month off to collect my thoughts and work on the Product Momentum Gap book (coming soon, promise) — but then someone triggered me into writing about outcomes 😅
So why outcomes?
Outcomes can mean two things: the outcome for the business (what you’re trying to achieve) and the outcome in the context of product (what’s the change in behaviour for the user and how do we measure that.)
When it comes to roadmaps, we’re always communicating the latter. We’re communicating how any change in behaviour will provide value to our audience. Of course, this takes a bit of finesse and work, and it’s not as easy as simply putting a bunch of features on any type of roadmap.
Roadmaps are a great way of:
Starting a conversation with customers and leads
Build relationships
Create transparency across your organisation (and with your market)
Acts as a great product marketing tool as you show where you are vs where you want to be
But all of this must focus around value. Without communicating that, all you’re doing is displaying a bunch of capabilities without the benefits they bring.
With that in mind, here’s the roundup for this month:
How to create an outcome oriented roadmap
The team at Thoughtflow asked me to write a little bit about how to go from an Opportunity Solution Tree to a roadmap, focusing on outcomes and communicating value throughout.
Unleashing confidence for powerful outcomes
Providing clear and actionable feedback is crucial to supporting your team and ensuring they remain focused on delivering value. To make the feedback process effective, keep it simple, allowing your team to understand and apply the guidance offered. I’ve included a little template for everyone to use when it comes to outcome reporting.
Why feature-driven leadership falls behind and what to do about it
It’s time to stop making product teams and product leadership accountable for the amount of features they release, but rather for the outcomes they’re able to accomplish. Having the wrong driver can cause teams to be demotivated, create all sorts of tech debt, and cause the risk of business failure.
Why companies should embrace public-facing roadmaps
Don’t run for the hills, this is a good thing to have! Public-facing roadmaps can help build transparency, empower your team have better conversations, and even work as a fantastic product marketing tool to help establish your product in the market.
Until next time,
Andrea
Love this approach, Drea. I find covering some of the upcoming features can get buy in on the user level but being able to tie it all together with how you're going to drive outcomes at the higher level really helps get buy in from stakeholders.