Lindsey and Chad talk about product roadmaps. Are they dead? Lindsey and Chad think they just smell.
We also say an emotional goodbye to Lindsey as she moves on to new adventures. We miss you!
Buffer Transparent Product Roadmap (https://trello.com/b/PDIV7XW3/buffer-transparent-product-roadmap)
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Transcript:
LINDSEY: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Lindsey Christensen.
CHAD: And I'm your other host, Chad Pytel.
LINDSEY: And today we're going to talk about product roadmaps.
CHAD: Product roadmaps. [laughs]
LINDSEY: Whoa. This is the topic. I feel like recently I've seen some thought pieces that product roadmaps are dead. So I'm curious if you think product roadmaps are dead.
CHAD: No, I don't think that they're dead, but I want to make the distinction too. I've never believed in a public product roadmap because I think that sets you up for just disappointing everyone involved, your customer, yourselves. And I think that there's a balance to be struck there. Saying that product roadmaps don't have a place, to me, in my mind, is like saying planning, having plans doesn't have a place and that just doesn't ring true to me. I think you should plan out what you're going to be working on. But I'm sure we'll get more into it. I also believe things about not having big backlogs and not doing too much planning and that kind of thing. So it depends on what you mean by a product roadmap.
LINDSEY: Well, yeah. I think that therein lies the issue. You can do it well, and you can also [laughs] run it into the ground. But you mentioned having it public and that being a bad idea. And I think at the core of product roadmaps is communication and alignment and getting all of your stakeholders on the same page about what you're building and why. So to me, I would think those stakeholders are the leadership team of the company, if this is a product company and product is the main business driver, the leadership of the company, the product team, of course, and engineering, sales, and marketing as well. Am I missing others? Clients, customers.
CHAD: Right. Customers.
LINDSEY: How do you feel about it? Does that count as the externally facing do not reveal?
CHAD: Oh yeah, it does for me. So we've all seen the companies that say that they're going to do something and then in a best-case scenario, that becomes a deadline which was arbitrarily made in the first place that everyone is stressing out over, that sales is potentially making promises that are either going to need to be broken or are going to need to be super stressed over. And then in a worst-case scenario, you end up not delivering on that roadmap as you essentially promised. And you actually end up with disappointed customers.
LINDSEY: So you would recommend not telling the customers about future features.
CHAD: Yeah. I think there's a balance to be struck there. So certainly, if you know that you're working on something now like actively working on something and a customer were to ask you about that thing directly, I might say, "Yeah, we're working on that now, and we're excited about getting it out to you." But I have only [chuckles] ever been a part of when a team is saying, "Q3 of next year, six months, nine months down the road, this specific feature is going to make it to customers." That's a real recipe, in my experience, a real recipe for lots of people being either really disappointed in that not happening or really working unsustainably in order to hit that in the first place. It's really hard to plan software that far in advance.
We just had the CEO of Dragon Innovation on the podcast. And I think that even then, you have to be careful with hardware, but at least with hardware or other kinds of businesses, it's a little bit easier to say, "Our goal is to have this incorporated in the product, o