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Top 5 Mistakes To Avoid While Creating Product Roadmap
A well-developed product roadmap has a huge impact on adding value to an organization’s goals and results and boosts the chances of product success. However, as per the research around 95% of products tend to fail, and product roadmap mistakes are one of the major reasons for it. As a product manager, you can identify major gaps in product roadmap effortlessly through roadmap planning tool like Antrika to ensure your product adds value to customers’ needs.
Adapting a product roadmap should be created to align various teams and stakeholders with the capability of communicating product goals, and outlining product design, and plan. At the end, the purpose of a product roadmap is to have a clear visual representation of product strategies, functionalities, and simple solutions. So make sure your product roadmap offers great value to the organization and customers with the right solution.
Whether you are focusing on product development or trying to acquire product goals, your priority should be on optimizing the product roadmap the right way with robust product roadmap software. In this blog, we will walk you through a few common mistakes that product managers need to avoid to boost product success, and Feedback Management Plans to plan product development affordably.
What is a product roadmap?
A product roadmap is a visual strategy that focuses on aligning product goals with business goals. In short, a roadmap built through product roadmap software aids in deciding the process, resources, feedback data, and actionable strategies to turn a concept into a successful product.
Additionally, product roadmap offers a strategic approach to designing your product as per the requirements and allows organizations to meet product value with the organization’s goals and bottom line with a strategic view. You must inculcate best roadmap practices via a centralized roadmap planning tool to serve the purpose in the right direction.
Before you move on with planning your product backlog, it is important to understand the factors that you need to avoid to save your time and effort. In the next part, we will nail you through the 5 common mistakes to abstain from.
Top 5 mistakes to avoid in your product road mapping process
Opting for a centralized product roadmap platform can aid in optimizing the roadmapping process, but isn’t enough. Implementing best product backlog practices to ensure your product development process is aligned with the market demand and business goal. For your better understanding, we are listing below a few practices that should be a big no to your workflow.
1. Prioritizing on output rather than outcome
One of the most common mistakes most product managers practice is what they hope to complete and not why organizations think a suitable solution will add value to customers’ lives, the market, and the business.
A product’s success varies on how effectively it solves a particular problem that the audience is looking for. It is important to have a clear view of the solution your product offers rather than focusing on introducing only new product features. Sounds confusing?
Let’s assume you have a grocery delivery app. If the grocery delivery feature just states that delivery at your doorstep will be offered, it won’t help the audience understand in which way you are helping them compared to other competitive organizations.
But if you mention free delivery until a certain cost of purchase or delivery in 20 or 30 minutes will have you gained a clear view of how you are solving the customer’s concern over the competition. This approach works for every kind of product, you must prioritize offering feature-rich solutions and not the list of features just because the market is loaded with such solutions.
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What’s the solution?
When you begin building a roadmap, ensure to build a habit of mentioning the reasoning behind a certain item. For instance, if you think offering free delivery on a specific amount of purchase will solve the problem of customers, then besides that this feature will help us attract more leads. You can easily optimize, and plan the roadmapping process with product roadmap software.
2. Utilizing a roadmap as a guarantee
If you allow your stakeholders to view the list of items mentioned in the product roadmap as proof and promise that those factors will be done within a specified deadline, then you may end up taking yourself in a troublesome situation. As a product manager, you may fall into trap and must seek to avoid mistakes like:
Adding a specific deadline to each action mentioned in the roadmap
Not clarifying to stakeholders that the product roadmap is the blueprint of the strategic plan for the product or an optimized goal and not a guaranteed contract.
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What’s the solution?
There are 2 possible solutions to this circumstance. The first includes a communication strategy through a roadmap planning tool. Whether you present a product roadmap with your stakeholders or internal team, you must include clear communication that outlines your current plan and goals with the product.
The second solution is to ensure you have the right tool like centralized product roadmap software to strategize the roadmapping procedure with the right groups. For instance, product developers need to have access to the technical data and a specific timeline to plan the completion of the project and prioritize the workflow.
Whereas, when you share the product roadmap with your sales team, avoid mentioning specific timelines as there are chances that enthusiastic sales reps will mix and match the roadmap dates and accidentally share with customers. You can’t afford such disasters, right? This is the reason why you need to create customized road mapping processes with a product roadmap platform like Antrika.
3. Having a product roadmap without determined goals
Most often product managers are observed to include factors and features as per the request of stakeholders. While it’s okay to include suggestions and ideas from stakeholders, it needs to be well-planned and researched to make sure the product adds value. However, just relying on stakeholders’ demands can create a biased product roadmap.
If you have an established product with defined goals and vision, then you should also have relevant KPIs aligned with the product’s vision to help measure how well the product is performing. If your product roadmap fails to have this process, then it will end up being just a list of trending features recommended by your stakeholders.
What’s the solution?
If you mismanage then your team will be confused between stakeholder’s decision and your internal discussions. So, it is important as a product manager to collect data, perform research, collaborate with your team, and figure out what problems matter to offer specific solutions.
Meanwhile, set a meeting with stakeholders to make them understand why a specific problem needs to be addressed and how it will add value to your organization. For this process, you can create a separate set of product roadmap via a roadmap planning tool by utilizing different goals to make sure every group remains aligned with the process.
If you find it overwhelming to build a different set of product roadmaps then Antrika’s roadmap planning tool can be your helping hand.
4. Not aligning product roadmap with business goals
It’s okay to feel overwhelmed to follow the urge to implement multiple features altogether, but your product should solve a specific problem and add value to the business. It is obvious that you have a well-planned approach, and strategy for your product development but before you proceed with the planning road mapping process through product roadmap software you need to delve in and ask how relevant or realistic the approach is.
Remember, your product roadmap should be focused on a strategic approach, and thorough research, and not the random recommendations of the team or stakeholders, or your inner thoughts which do not have a connection with your business. In short, you may find your competitors implementing different strategies, but you need to identify an actionable plan through a product roadmap platform that aligns with your business and brings you profit with an improved brand image.
What’s the solution?
Make sure your approach, decisions, and ideas are catered to thorough analysis and focused towards business growth. When you sit down to strategize a roadmap or brainstorm for new ideas, keep one factor in mind: the idea should bring real value to the business. Once you achieve this, it will be one of the best road mapping practices.
5. Creating a static file-based product roadmap
Most product managers fail to update or change the product roadmap timely as they find it tedious and time-consuming to customize the roadmap based on the plan change or current circumstance. To avoid such a scenario, implement a centralized roadmap planning tool like Antrika to make every detail accessible at your fingertips.
If you present the product roadmap as a spreadsheet or presentation slides then you will need to manually update the file whenever any changes appear to the strategy. Also, when it’s time to share the product roadmap with different sets of groups, managing every change with those files will get frustrating.
What’s the solution?
Don’t worry, it’s an easy fix. You don’t need to juggle between manually updating the product roadmap for different purposes. To solve this problem, Antrika offers a centralized roadmap planning tool to make viewing, adding, changing, or adjusting road mapping details very easy.
Optimize your product roadmap process with Antrika
Building and sharing customized product roadmaps can feel challenging at times. You need to share the right information with the right set of groups like stakeholders, audience, and your internal and meanwhile, ensure product strategy aligns with business goals. While the process feels overwhelming, you can easily fix the roadmapping process by abiding by the practices discussed in the blog.
If you want to know more about how to optimize product roadmap with Antrika or product management pricing, get in touch with us today !
