Product Roadmap Evolution
A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that maps out the vision and direction of your product offering over time. A product roadmap communicates the why and what behind what you’re building.
To reach the end product goal, a product roadmap is created which is a tentative timeline of major releases along a calendar year.A product roadmap has the following attributes
- Communicates Direction to- Internal teams & External stakeholders
- Outlines the steps to be undertaken by the team
- Set goals for future releases
- Flexible enough to accommodate uncertainties
Formulating an effective product roadmap involves determining the priorities and making sure the roadmap is aligned with the business goals.
Roadmap Prioritization
Prioritising the roadmap can be based on the following
- Market scenario
- Impact on users and business value
- Alignment with the Vision
Prioritising a roadmap in an agile context is a complex process. It goes without saying that the process has to be simplified. One way to do this would be by organising the requests in groups also referred to as buckets. The buckets are usually formed in the following manner.
- Short term bucket: This includes actions that are a must have and are to be worked on immediately
- Midterm bucket: This includes actions that are dealt with immediately after short term items
- Long term bucket: This includes actions that are great to have and are treated eventually
Once this is done, a tentative timeline is fixed upon, and the same is conveyed to the various stakeholders. It is important to have a collaborative roadmap that offers ongoing visibility. Also, as a PM, you have to continuously update the roadmap whenever you get inputs from the stakeholders or customers.
Instamojo 2014
Instamojo is an Indian private sector enterprise and online payment solution provider. The company was founded by Sampad Swain, Aditya Sengupta, Akash Gehani & Harshad Sharma in 2012 and is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. The company provides on-demand payments gateway facility and and e-commerce offerings for small and medium enterprises.
Let's take an example of Instamojo to understand the concept better. Below is the hypothetical Long term bucket, roadmap for 2014 –19.
Say Instamojo prepared this roadmap in 2014 incorporating their vision of how company would scale and how market would accept them. If we look more closely, in 2014 company is focusing more on performance and stats update. These roadmap is set with respect to the current market scenario. Below is a Midterm bucket view for few quarters of 2014.
But over the year the changes in market will influence the vision and this changes will reflect in company roadmaps. Lets see it in more detail.
Fast forward 2019
Market became more robust and filled with competitors. The benchmark was lift higher and now company has to build new features to stay afloat in market.
Mobile wallet and payment platforms became necessity of user’s daily life. And business competitions put companies in a soft spot to go revenue neutral and more user acquisition and activation.
The vision too evolves based on the market. Now Instamojo is targeted to selling digital goods & collecting payment online. And Instamojo also offers various solutions to today’s era Entrepreneurs, Solopreneurs & Freelancers.
From the previous road map set in 2014, where company had a vision to work on IOT devices and database refactoring by 2019. But based on new insights from current market, roadmap prioritization will happen and company will realign itself to meet the new milestones.
By September of 2019 Instamojo would be expecting to release mojo Payment and mojo Capital, which is to tackle the robust market changes. And it's only through roadmap the company is able to align whole team to their new vision.
Conclusion
Roadmaps are bound to get modified based on market scenario, impact on users and business value and the vision of the company. The essence of agile needs to be captured in the roadmaps for company to adapt to the fast paced environment they are in. Roadmap is just a vision of the upcoming future, it may or maynot change.
