{"id":3721,"date":"2015-11-24T16:47:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T16:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?p=3721"},"modified":"2023-01-11T11:37:27","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T11:37:27","slug":"why-release-dates-are-irrelevant-to-product-managers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/why-release-dates-are-irrelevant-to-product-managers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Release Dates Are Irrelevant To Product Managers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What\u2019s a product roadmap with dates? A release plan. Or at least it might as well be. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m going to say this again and again until my voice is hoarse and my fingers run out of steam. I\u2019ll be a crotchety old lady waving a cane at you saying the same old thing, if I have to: <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cStop putting dates on your roadmaps!\u201d<\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is my one and only mantra for a reason. Product managers who refuse to put dates on their product roadmaps do a better job than product managers who do. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They adapt faster when plans derail. They drag-and-drop priorities so product teams don\u2019t find themselves stalled. They run a tighter ship &#8211; and speaking of ships, that\u2019s exactly what they do. They ship better products faster. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And though this is controversial, I stand by this: PMs that refuse to work with dates also end up with more successful careers. Or at least the opposite of what Jeff Gothelf outlines here: <\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">3 things happen if you fix scope &amp; time:<br><br>1. You reduce scope<br>2. You move deadline<br>3. You work 80hr wks to hit deadline then everyone quits<\/p>&mdash; Jeff Gothelf (@jboogie) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jboogie\/status\/668788954452357124?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 23, 2015<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why? Because they\u2019re doing their job, not a project manager\u2019s. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.svpg.com\/the-product-scorecard\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They\u2019re focusing on the KPIs a product manager is actually responsible for<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: churn, retention and usage.<\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They do something even bigger than that though. They shift their entire organization\u2019s mindset away from the intuitive, near-manic desire to meet a series of release dates, with something far more sustainable for their business. \u00a0<\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marty Cagan, a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group (previously at companies like Netscape, eBay and Hewlett-Packard) <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/svpg.com\/roadmap-alternative-faq\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">talks about how product managers help set a new pace at their companies<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by replacing that obsessive focus on release dates with themes and goals instead: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe idea is that rather than have a somewhat random collection of features on your conventional roadmap each quarter, why not introduce a focus to the work and have a theme for the quarter. &nbsp;An example would be to have a big focus on ease of use in Q1, and then a big focus on on-boarding in Q2, etc.\u201c<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With a theme at the heart of their work, \u00a0these product managers don\u2019t need to rely on dates. They have the flexibility to pursue that quarter\u2019s goal in different ways. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As Cagan suggests above, once you get everyone to start thinking in terms of themes, you free up the way your team thinks about priorities too. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-operate-in-terms-of-time-horizons-not-dates\">Operate in terms of time horizons, not dates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you approach your roadmap in terms of themes, you suddenly have <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.invisionapp.com\/product-design-roadmap\/\">a lot more flexibility in the way you set and approach goals<\/a>. You also don\u2019t really need to deal with delivery dates anymore. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s because on this kind of roadmap, product priorities are like movable blocks. You can move one thing up the list because you believe it\u2019ll have an immediate impact on the conversion. You can move another thing down because it\u2019s no longer important.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/roadmap-details-600x409.png\" alt=\"product roadmap template\" class=\"wp-image-4449\" width=\"450\" height=\"307\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><a href=\"\/blog\/how-to-build-a-product-roadmap-everyone-understands\/\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Related: How To Build A Product Roadmap Everyone Understands<\/span><\/a><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is in stark contrast to roadmaps with deadlines stamped on them that look like Gantt charts. When these dates aren\u2019t met (they almost never are), they cause internal delays, stalling and a perpetual company-wide feeling of being behind schedule. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Time horizons &#8211; an intentionally vague representation of time &#8211; are much more useful to a product manager because they free you up to move your priorities around as circumstances around you change. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s why themes pair really well with time horizons. Both are flexible. Both allow you to plan your product and give you space to revise when you face a sudden resource gap, a budget shortfall, or any of the other banal roadblocks that come up between planning and production.<\/span><br><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/about-us\/our-roadmap\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At ProdPad<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, we call our time horizons \u201cCurrent\u201d, \u201cNear-Term\u201d and \u201cLong-Term.\u201d <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@noah_weiss\/now-next-later-roadmaps-without-the-drudgery-1cfe65656645#.1s7u0ssrx\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At FourSquare<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, they go with \u201c#now\u201d \u201c#next\u201d and \u201c#later\u201d. Whatever works for you. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After all, time is a somewhat more abstract concept when you\u2019re a product manager.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Update: We developed&nbsp;a 5-part e-course to help you set up and introduce a theme-based roadmap at&nbsp;your organization. <a href=\"https:\/\/get.prodpad.com\/theme-based-roadmap-course\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sign up here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s a product roadmap with dates? A release plan. Or at least it might as well be. I\u2019m going to say this again and again until my voice is hoarse&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"pp_uni_tag":[],"class_list":["post-3721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-roadmaps"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Release Dates Are Irrelevant<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Replace that obsessive focus on release dates with themes and goals. 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