{"id":1308,"date":"2013-03-19T10:16:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T10:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?p=1308"},"modified":"2022-11-30T17:15:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T17:15:37","slug":"embrace-the-inconvenient-truths-of-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/embrace-the-inconvenient-truths-of-product\/","title":{"rendered":"Embrace the Inconvenient Truths of Product"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a title=\"Marty Cagan on Twitter (@cagan)\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cagan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marty Cagan<\/a> recently wrote about his frustration with the all-too-common process of creating product roadmaps, the process of painstakingly putting together a &#8216;plan&#8217; for the coming months and quarters, signed off by a vast set of stakeholders.<br><br>His article on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.svpg.com\/the-inconvenient-truth-about-product\/\">Inconvenient Truths of Product<\/a> resonated with us, as he outlined two very good reasons why this style of roadmapping simply doesn&#8217;t work:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;The first such truth is that at least half of our ideas are just not going to work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;If that&#8217;s not bad enough, the second inconvenient truth is that even with the ideas that do prove to be valuable, usable and feasible, it typically takes several iterations to get the implementation of this idea to the point where it actually delivers the expected business value.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>As we&#8217;ve <a title=\"Roadmapping without dates\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/roadmapping-without-dates\/\">mentioned before<\/a>, our previous version of the <a title=\"Product Roadmap Tool\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/features\/roadmaps\/\">product roadmap tool<\/a>\u00a0was built with the intention to help organise these &#8216;old style&#8217; roadmaps, quarter-by-quarter, month-by-month, on a feature-level granularity. <strong>We got that all wrong<\/strong>.<br><br>Last year, we released a new version of the roadmap\u00a0that <a title=\"Product roadmap put to the test\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/product-roadmap-put-to-the-test\/\">suits us and our users much better<\/a>. It throws out the notion that your roadmap needs to be so granular, and accepts the uncertainty that will\u00a0<em>always<\/em> exist when building a product.<br><br>Marty Cagan very accurately sums up those two inconvenient truths and urges product teams to embrace them.<br><br>The ProdPad <a title=\"Product Roadmap Tool\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/features\/roadmaps\/\">Roadmap Tool<\/a>\u00a0is designed with these facts in mind, with the goal of helping you embrace the fact that you <em>don&#8217;t know<\/em>\u00a0exactly what should be in your long-term product plans. \u00a0We want you to remain flexible while still providing your team with a sense of product direction. \u00a0As a result, our roadmap software features the following:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"http:\/\/prodpad2017.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pipeline-within-roadmap.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pipeline-within-roadmap-1024x462.png\" alt=\"ProdPad Product Roadmap Tool\" class=\"wp-image-1121\" width=\"512\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pipeline-within-roadmap-1024x462.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pipeline-within-roadmap-300x135.png 300w, https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pipeline-within-roadmap-768x346.png 768w, https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pipeline-within-roadmap.png 1417w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Manage a product pipeline within the roadmap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Three columns: Current, Near term, and Future<\/strong><br>You can rename these if you wish, but they are purposely given high-level, non-date-specific titles so as not to imply promises of delivery that just aren&#8217;t certain. \u00a0However, they still provide your team with the insight they need to keep moving in the right direction.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Time versus Certainty axes<\/strong><br>A concept for roadmaps we <a title=\"@simplybastow: Roadmap on two axis: time and certainty. The 'ooos' and 'ahhs' in the room suggest this is a Good Idea. #PCampLDN\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/simplybastow\/status\/41512029965520896\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">first heard about at a talk at ProductCamp London<\/a>, organises your roadmap items by time and by the likelyhood that you&#8217;ll get to them. &nbsp;Drag and drop roadmap cards across columns or above and below other cards to build out and update your roadmap.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>High-level &#8216;Roadmap Cards&#8217; instead of features<\/strong><br>Features are simply too granular and likely to change, and just end up cluttering the roadmap. Rather, with the ProdPad roadmap creation tool, you create Roadmap Cards, which represent high-level chunks of work to be completed. These are less likely to change on a weekly basis, and allow you to associate any number of ideas or features to the cards, giving you that crucial link to your product backlog.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Are you embracing these inconvenient truths and changing your roadmapping habits? We&#8217;d love to get your feedback. Get in touch at <a href=\"mailto:hello@prodpad.com\">hello@prodpad.com<\/a> any time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marty Cagan recently wrote about his frustration with the all-too-common process of creating product roadmaps, the process of painstakingly putting together a &#8216;plan&#8217; for the coming months and quarters, signed&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[116,163,171,184],"pp_uni_tag":[],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-roadmaps","tag-marty-cagan","tag-product-management","tag-product-management-process","tag-product-roadmapping"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - 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