The roadmap is not the territory.

People who only see but don’t create product roadmaps may be inclined to ask, “How hard can it be?” to create one. After all, good product roadmaps appear deceptively simple in presenting the problems you aim to solve with your product. Here are some resources that explore the complexity underlying the seemingly simple product roadmap, including some mistakes to avoid and a developer’s attempt to understand what’s involved in creating an effective product roadmap.

Meanwhile, in product news, AI continues to invade every part of developers’ workspace, layoffs in platform teams at Google, an impending cut in funding that could affect access to the internet, and a startup helping people flip houses.

Building effective product roadmaps. Earlier this year, Ant Murphy ran a webinar on building effective product roadmaps. In this article, Ant shared the results of the polls he ran during the webinar and summarized the key points, including the difference between roadmaps and plans, elements of a great product roadmap, and tailoring your product roadmap to your audience.

Strategies, evolution, and essentials for building product roadmaps. Recognizing the core essentials of an effective product roadmap, such as clear communication, measurable objectives, and prioritized initiatives, lays the foundation for success. However, navigating the pitfalls inherent in crafting effective product roadmaps is essential to avoid common challenges like making unrealistic promises or overemphasizing specific features. Nima Torabi produced this in depth guide to help you create and maintain effective product roadmaps.

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This Week’s Interview: Mastering Product Roadmaps Creating compelling roadmaps that effectively communicate your company and product goals is essential for gaining stakeholder buy-in and driving successful product development. In this discussion, Mike Belsito digs in on how to best approach roadmaps with Tami Reiss, a seasoned product strategist with nearly 20 years of roadmap-building experience. You'll gain invaluable insights and hands-on practice to elevate your roadmap design and presentation skills. LEARN MORE This video and many others like it are available on our Member Hub. If you don’t have access to the Member Hub, you can join the community today for free.

A call to product leadership - fix our roadmaps!

John Cutler recently shared a video on Linkedin (from which the above screenshot is grabbed and you can click) that elicited great anxiety across the product world. Cutler said he "should have added a trigger warning." Some, like Jason Fried of 37Signals, balk at the idea of a roadmap. Instead, the 37Signals crew focuses entirely on what can be achieved in the next 6 weeks. But then there's the rest of us who are encouraged, nay pushed, to provide an accurate reading of how our products will evolve over the next 6-12 months.

It's easy to blame the c-suite or sales for this urgency, considering it's common to sell promises of further improvements in SaaS rather than available features. It's a competitive world out there. We are tripping over each other to underscore that we are the ones who deserve both money and time investments. And then industry-altering transformations, like the rise of AI tech, further push us to take a more fanciful view of what's coming next. But what on earth is the point of this other than encouraging collective delusions?

If we believe Cutler's take that ever-moving roadmap priorities are common, what can be done to encourage a company that does not tend to pivot on a dime to drop or improve processes like these?

Surely, the answer is to empower PRODUCT. With decent Product Management leadership sitting or leading the c-suite, we can have someone with the right sensibilities (or simply sense) to right this wrong with more sophistacted development prediction models or to do the dramatic and ditch both internal and customer-focused roadmaps altogether.

And hey, aren't we also missing the magic of delighting customers with new offerings that surprise them?

Paul McAvinchey

Co-founder, Product Collective

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AI is my CoPilot. GitHub recently announced that it was expanding past GitHub Copilot and GitHub Copilot Chat to create an AI-infused development environment - GitHub Copilot Workspace. Now, your team can brainstorm, plan, build, test, and run code in natural language. This new task-centric experience leverages different Copilot-powered agents from start to finish while giving developers full control over every step of the process. So, who’s the copilot in this setup? Google Layoffs. This week Google laid off staff from its Flutter, Dart and Python teams weeks before its annual I/O developer conference. 200 people were let go across Google’s “Core” teams, including those working on app platforms and other engineering roles. Even though the timing is a bit curious, Google said the layoffs were due to “reorgs that are part of the normal course of business.” Internet assistance program cuts subsidy payments ahead of funding drought. Regulators and telecom industry members are ratcheting up the pressure on Congress to renew an expiring internet subsidy program, which just downgraded its monthly subsidies from $30 to $14 as it enters its final month of operation. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which has helped subsidize internet access for as many as 23 million households since 2021, will fully cease providing financial support at the end of May if lawmakers fail to imbue the program with new funds. If you work on a B2C product, this program cut may impact your active user numbers come June. Do people still flip houses? Flipping houses is not for the faint of heart, no matter how fun or easy HGTV might make it seem. One startup wants to simplify the process by offering a different way to borrow money to fund such a purchase. Founded in late 2020, Backflip offers a service to real estate investors for securing short-term loans. Beyond helping users secure financing, Backflip’s tech helps investors source, track, comp, and evaluate potential investments. Think of it as a cross between Zillow and Shopify.

7 fails of roadmap making. Roadmaps often feel like a necessary evil. They’re an essential bridge between the overarching company strategy and the practical realities of your quarterly OKRs. Unfortunately, many product leaders are doing them wrong to the point where they not only miss their purpose but also frustrate everyone around them. Although there are plenty of guides for approaching road mapping, sometimes it’s helpful to focus on the warnings. So Leah Tharin shared the seven major issues she sees teams make when it comes to roadmaps.

How to create a product roadmap. For most of his career, Mike Wolfson has worked as a tech lead, which kept him close to the product process but not firmly in the land of product management. He wanted to learn more about creating a product roadmap, so he conferred with his contacts in product management and developed this plan for creating a product roadmap. The plan looks at building a product roadmap from a developer’s perspective.

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Resources and news curated by Kent J. McDonald.