Product Roadmap

What Is a Product Roadmap?

It is a product document that defines the vision for the product, containing a breakdown of the feature list of what we are building that is spread across sprints to ensure the development team has the capacity to develop the features and the QA team has the capacity to test the features that are being built.

Product Roadmap

What approach to use in defining the roadmap?

Different product team approach their roadmaps differently. Some common best practices are:

Value proposition vs. effort - the feature that gives the maximum value proposition while requiring the least amount of effort, is planned first.

Feature heavy roadmaps are built when there is a high level of clarity on the vision for the product.

Time sensitive roadmaps are generally built to meet a time sensitive goal that is generally critical to business operations.

A day in my life as a Product Manager

As a Product Manager, I am expected to juggle a wide range of activities, from developing the Product Vision and Strategy, to creating and validating the user Personas through research, and surveys, so that I can understand the user's pain points, and motivations.

This will include conducting a strategic review, preparing the business analysis report, and recommending the strategic initiatives on what Product or product features the organization will need to build, the budgets required, and the benefits it could bring to the business.

The next step is to define the Product, and write detailed product requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria. I will researched on competitors' UX, and work with the UIUX design team, to ensure the product designs and wire-frames will serve the intended purpose of the product. The product user interface will have to be intuitive for the users.

The product releases will be delivered using the agile methodology, where I will prioritize, and make engineering trade-off decisions, and maintain the Product Backlog. I will attend the Daily stand-ups, providing clarity to the Engineering teams, on what needs to be delivered, and why it needs to be delivered in Sprint Planning, and Sprint Grooming.

It's about setting the success metrics, driving, and aligning cross-functional teams to collaborate, and to deliver great digital products to meet the set success metrics.

During Sprint demos, as a Product Manager, I will have to have an eye for detail, to test, and to see if a Product feature has been delivered as what has been defined. Product Managers are the champions for the users.

At Sprint Retro, it is time for everyone to share their experiences on what worked well, what could be improved, and what the team will commit to make things better in the next Sprint. It is all about make improvements, and making iterations to build and deliver better products.

As a leader in Product Management, I took the initiative be a Digital Transformational leader, where I will keep an eye on the latest Technology trends, and tools, to share my knowledge, and introduce the relevant tools to the teams, to encourage the usage of data to get actionable insights for better decision making, and to encourage everyone to have a "Product" mindset.

In short, my job as a Product Manager is the job of a mini CEO, minus the grand title and all the perks.

What does a Product Manager Do? by Daphne Tee Chui May

You can connect with me on my LinkedIn.