Product Roadmap & Team Structure

This week we studied about the Product Roadmap & Team Structure and case studies in “Breaking into Product Management” cohort by Shravan Tickoo

Creating product roadmaps is an essential part of strategic planning for businesses since they set forth the objectives, vision, and key milestones for the improvement and development of their products.

A product roadmap is an illustration of the strategy and vision for the product. It should include the objectives for the product, a thorough explanation of the strategy, and instructions for carrying it out with regular checkpoints. The data ought to be technical as well as business-related. It's best to sum up a product roadmap by providing answers to the following questions: What are you building, and why?

Here are some learnings :

Product Vision: The fundamental elements of a product or product line are embodied in a product vision. It also establishes a product's path, or the final state that it will provide in the future. For any product development, the product vision ought to serve as the "north star. The focus should be on the value proposition you provide to the intended user.

Eg. Microsoft: “A computer on every desk and in every home.”

Mission : Mission starts from problem space and overlaps in solution space. The core goals of a company or a project team are expressed in the mission statement. It explains the fundamental reasons for its existence along with its values, goals, and objectives.

Eg. Tesla: “Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

Goals : A product team or organization sets goals that are quantifiable and specified that they want to accomplish in a given amount of time. Usually, they are in line with the organization's or product's vision and mission. Setting goals allows to break down the bigger goal and vision into manageable steps, which brings clarity and focus to the process. They support appropriate resource allocation, success measurement, and progress tracking.

Eg. Microsoft: A computer on every desk and in every home → X% of homes with a computer

Strategy : Strategy outlines the approach or pathway that the organization will take to fulfill its mission. Making decisions on resource allocation, competitive strategies, and action priorities are all part of it. With a focus on vulnerabilities and threats, a well-crafted strategy aligns its strengths with market opportunities. A product strategy is more than just a plan it is theme to be formed on.

Eg.Tesla: Build a high-priced sports car → Use that revenue to build an affordable car → Use that revenue to build an even more affordable car → While doing so, also provide zero-emission electric power

Themes: Themes stand for broad strategic focus areas or significant initiatives that complement the needs of the client, the business objectives, and the product vision. They include a collection of related goals, improvements, or features that support the overarching product strategy.

Back logs : The backlog is an essential tool in most Agile product development teams for tracking and specifying near-term product features. But the backlog in itself is not the roadmap — a product roadmap defines a strategic view of where the product is headed over the mid to long term. Theroadmap is tied to the organization’s vision and strategic goals, often for the next 12 or more months.

Product roadmaps can be difficult for a variety of reasons, including the complexity of product development, the unpredictable nature of the market, and organizational factors. A few of the main causes of the difficulties with product roadmaps are as follows:

- Balancing Stakeholder Priorities

- Market Uncertainty

- Resource Constraints

-Scope Management

- Technical Complexity

- Competitive Pressures

- Communication and Alignment

- Market Validation and Customer Feedback

- Risk Management

- Measuring Success

We need to think like a scientist if you want to start establishing the appropriate KPIs and product goals early. First, scientists define a test, outline their hypothesis, and take measurements. Setting objectives and then measurements for those objectives is something that product managers can accomplish as well.

Prioritizing your roadmap involves making tough decisions based on strategic alignment, impact, feasibility, and resource constraints.

The other important part we covered is PRD: How to write effective PRDs -

Product Requirements, or PRD are the ultimate best friend for product managers. Making a good PRD, however, is not quite so simple, and many find it to be a true challenge. Here are the key steps to writing effective PRDs:

1.????? Goals and objectives

2.????? Gather Requirements:

3.????? Define User Personas:

4.????? Main components and Sitemaps

5.????? Initial and future features

6.????? Non-Functional requirements

7.????? Provide Mockups or Wireframes

8.????? Potential risks

9.????? Future roadmap and iterations

10.? Analytics

11.? Document Assumptions and Constraints

12.? Roll out plan

Other most important aspect we learn is Release and Post Release Management:

Release and post-release management are critical aspects of product lifecycle management. These processes ensure that? products are delivered successfully, meet quality standards, and are supported effectively after launch. Here are key components and best practices for each Phase:

Realase management:

1. Release Planning : Define precise release objectives, factors, and timelines. Features should be prioritized according to consumer needs, business value, and technical viability.Create a workflow at this phase that your team and important stakeholders can consult during a release.The workflow should provide a quick overview of the steps involved in the release process and the roles that each team member plays. Your release schedule must to consist of: Timelines, Dates of delivery & Requirements.
2. Build Release : Once the release plan is complete, you may begin developing the product's design. Based on the specifications listed in the release plan, this is the real "development" of the product.When the development team completes the product, it is delivered to a testing environment to ensure user acceptability. In doing so, the team is able to find any defects or problems that might occur in an actual setting.
3. Development and Testing : Before a product is finally deployed, end users of the target audience test it to make sure it satisfies their needs and expectations. This process is known as user acceptance testing, or UAT for short.
4. Prepare Release : In order to make sure the program is ready for release and satisfies the required quality standards, this phase entails a number of tasks, inspections, and validations. Work closely with QA teams to locate and fix performance bottlenecks, usability problems, and errors.
5. Deploy release : The most important phase in the release management process is deploying a release, which entails moving the tested and created software from the development environment into production. To guarantee an efficient and successful deployment, this step necessitates meticulous planning, synchronization, and implementation.

Post-Release Management: A critical stage in the product development lifecycle, post-release management concentrates on the tasks and procedures completed following the release of a product or feature to production. Post-release management's main objectives are to make sure everything runs well, get feedback, fix problems right away, and keep the product getting better.

After the release The QA team finds the most critical errors to fix after performing production sanity. Releases are additionally carried out gradually, which assists in anticipating and resolving issues.

We continue to examine health KPIs in technology, including production logs, API calls, and business KPIs (adoption, retention, and business indicators) that were established in the first stage. This is monitored until the product's KPIs stabilize, at which point the next release is made.

Big Thanks to Shravan Tickoo ,mentors, super mentors and all the members of Cohort for all the suport !!

#productmanagement Somi Singh Attharv Sardesai Dev Yadav Shreya Sharan Raghav Mehta Neha Rajput Harsh Wardhan Keshri Prabhansh Rai Mithlesh Labroo Thiyagarajan Seeni Bhanu Prakash Satya Srinivas