Can a roadmap be a substitute for strategy? | Grant Hunter
In episode 62 of Talking Roadmaps, Justin Woods interviews Grant Hunter, co-founder and COO of Product Growth Leaders. They explore the critical distinction between roadmaps and strategy, with Hunter emphasizing that roadmaps should serve as clarity and alignment tools, driven by an overarching product strategy. Key insights include managing roadmaps for B2B versus B2C, the importance of sequencing, and the need for visualizing roadmaps for both internal teams and external stakeholders.
Grant is COO and cofounder of Product Growth Leaders. A former product executive, educator, and consultant, Grant uses a strong facilitated approach to help product leaders and their organizations develop product strategies that help them focus on the right things, while empowering the entire organization to do things right. His approach focuses on building strategy and business capabilities in product teams, while helping them manage their products.
Prior to founding Product Growth Leaders, Grant was a product and business executive with a track record of turning products and portfolios around and delivering profitable growth, and a product management consultant. He has been a professor of Business-to-Business Marketing and Marketing High Tech Products and Services in the Rutgers MBA program and was an Instructor for Pragmatic Marketing.
Grant is the host of Product Growth Leaders’ weekly Product Conversations on relevant product management topics. He is also a co-author or the Quartz Open Framework, a non-proprietary framework for product management.
Here is an audio-only version if that’s your preferred medium - and you can access it through your favourite podcasting platform if you prefer (Apple, Spotify, Amazon).
In the next episode we are talking to Pawel Huryn, he’s a product leader, author and founder @ Product Compass. So watch out for Season 1 - Episode 63!
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Grant Hunter
Okay, now we have a story, until we got them to the point where they were like, what is this vision of what we're trying to do? And so, we had to pull in marketing in the CEO to really help understand what are they pitching to investors, how are they talking about this, before we could touch, and we ended up never going back to that list of Jira tickets. And so, it has, you have to have that strategy. And sometimes people are looking for a roadmap because there is no strategy.Justin Woods
Welcome, everybody, to the "Talking Roadmaps" channel. My name's Justin Woods, and I'm one of the co-hosts here. And today, I'm joined by Grant Hunter from Product Growth Leaders. Grant, it's great to have you here. Please introduce yourself.Grant Hunter
Thank you, Justin, for having me. As you said, my name's Grant Hunter, and I'm a co-founder and partner at Product Growth Leaders. Last time it was Steve Johnson, who many people know has been on your show before with Phil, I believe. I come from a long background, actually, I called myself an accidental product management person, although coming outta grad school, I think product management was a place I wanted to get to. I started in market research, moved into alliances and partnerships, and in marketing, and then I was doing product management with marketing title and so many product, said, "Hey, let's make you director of product management." So, my first title ever was Director of Product Management, but it was always on the strategic and business side, in the B2B space, middle market enterprise where sort of, I've cut my teeth, as they say.Justin Woods
Yeah, and I think that's where I've known you from as well, Grant, from that kind of area, B2B, product management.Grant Hunter
Took a while to become a full-time coach, instructor, advisor. But Steve and I have been doing Product Growth Leaders now, you know, three full years, and really focused on helping companies get better at product management, product success on purpose, right? Let's make sure we're doing it intentionally. And so, that's what we're focused on. Very much in a fish with you while helping you fish, build capabilities and get stuff done, in that sort of focus of what we're looking at.Justin Woods
If you're enjoying the channel, subscribe, hit the bell icon and give us a like. Grant and I have already had a chin wag beforehand, before today's session, and we are really looking forward to this today. So, Grant, it's great to have you on board. So, Grant, great to be with you. Let's get stuck into the kind of the first questions, which I guess is, what do you think the purpose of a roadmap is?Grant Hunter
There's two words that always come to my mind are, to help with clarity and alignment, right? So, clarity, let's make sure that we're clear about what we're trying to do. And yeah, I think it was Janna Bastow who said, a prototype of your strategy. And I think that, you know, as I see it, as I've experienced it, too often when people struggle with roadmaps because they really don't have a strategy. And so, the roadmap becomes a ability for us to start getting clarity on the strategy, but also on sort of where we're expecting to go. But then once you have that clarity, it helps drive alignment, right? This is now internally, at least, we're trying to drive alignment in where we're going. That being said, for B2B enterprise customers and middle market customers, you know, if they're making a commitment to you, to your company, to your product, you know, this is a three, five plus year commitment. And so, they need some clarity and alignment as well as to, where are we going? Making sure there's, our vision, our direction is aligned with them, and their vision and direction, to make sure that they're getting on the right bus, you know, the product is aligned with where they're thinking they're gonna go. And I think, so both internally and externally, it helps provide clarity and alignment.Justin Woods
Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned, of course, from the B2B space, I think there's a massive difference in terms of how road mapping might work in the B2B space versus the B2C space. And I'm looking forward to kind of bringing some of your expertise there. But yeah, the clarity and alignment, totally agree. And so, if the roadmap is about clarity and alignment, who do you think the audience should be of that roadmap?Grant Hunter
You know, there is multiple audiences. So, we talked about internal and external. So, there is a public roadmap. The public, and I'll start there 'cause I think there's, it's easier to find that, it's potential customers, right? So, they can see it. And within that, it's gonna be the functional buyer who's looking at, is it solving the problems they want? But also a technical or compliance-based buyer who's looking at, is there, you know, tech stack, is where they're going aligning with where we go, it's a cloud or it's prem, it's AWS versus Azure or whatever it may be. They've got two-factor authentication. I was talking with a client earlier who is in the healthcare pharma's logistics space, and they're like, all of a sudden two-factor authentication went from a nice to have to a have to have because of everything that's happening with change healthcare. So, we have those audience buyer, there's also partnerships, right? If we have true good partnerships that we're engaging with, we're integrating with, they need to have some understanding of how a roadmap impacts them, where it's going and that type of stuff. So, externally, I'd say those are the, you know, some would say, analysts, as well. And maybe if you're filing to go public or if you're a public company, there's gonna be some interest in where that roadmap goes. But to me, it's aligned with the customer. 'Cause if we have the customer aligned and clear on what that roadmap is and the value they'll get from it, I think that's what really the Wall Street or, you know, investment bank type people, sorry, City of London people would need to know. Internally, the really, the audience should be all of your collaborating peers, right? You have the senior leadership team because you're painting a vision to them of, here is our plan, here's where we're going, this is how we're gonna execute on your strategy. And the reality is, product management is where strategy meets execution. We are sort of that connecting bridge for it. So, we need to make sure leadership is clear, that we understood their strategy, but also that our roadmap, our plan for executing on that is aligned and we can, we got aligned and clarity there. Then, you know, it just, going upstream and downstream, you've got design and development, we're aligned with them, and they should be part notes. I like product management to own the roadmap, but you know, I've facilitated sessions where I needed engineering and design in there because like, oh, we can't do this before we do that. And that helps build it. So, they're going to be a key contributor to it. But once we have that alignment with them and then it's now into marketing and sales, it's into support and services, and consulting, more, depending on what your ecosystem is, the leadership has to be prepared. This is a way for us to get people to know what's coming so they're not surprised. Steve's working with a client now who it's like, the launch happens, and they're like, people are like, "I didn't know this was coming." And it's like, it would be nice if we were on all student team, we'd actually communicate and work together. And our roadmap is a great, I don't wanna, it's not too granular, I think sometimes when it gets too granular it loses it's, and if it gets too high in the sky, it's, you know, it's sort of a goldilocks, it needs to be just right at that right level.Justin Woods
It does. Gosh, there's so much that you shared there too that resonated with me, where I wanna unpack. There was one term that you mentioned, which is, "all of the collaborating peers." And I thought that was such a lovely sentence to summarise the fact that this is a group effort, even though potentially it's owned by one team or maintained by one team, it really is jointly owned. Another bit that you mentioned was around customers, partners, analysts, investors. And I think that's one thing that is often, quite often forgotten, especially in early stage B2B startups or even any startup looking for investment, is that a lot of investors are going to look at that as an indication of where they're planning on going. And is that a good fit for investment? Is that something that people want to get behind? And so, Grant, I'm really grateful for you bringing that up, 'cause I think that's one thing that often is forgotten. You know, an external roadmap is not just about your customers, it can be about analysts and investors as well.Grant Hunter
And I remember somebody teaching me once when I was in product management, the two axes of the Gartner SOAR blocker, the magic quadrant. One is completeness of vision, one is ability to execute. And what they do is, they, you know, over the years represented them roadmaps, and they're gonna judge, do they think the roadmap will align to what they think the future is? That's where you complete the vision. The ability to execute is, they're gonna go back and look at those roadmaps you presented to them and see, did you deliver on? That's how your ability to execute it. So, it's not just the investor enlist, it is the Gartners, Forresters, those types of people who are, you know, a key partner in this ability to get to market, right? And, again, one thing I wanted to say on the collaborating peers, the word, stakeholder, is getting so abused, and nobody knows what it is. And so, I've started, I've stopped using stakeholders for your internal, and I'm, I like collaborating partners or collaborating peers, because it really gets to the fact that it's a team sport. It's that we need to be in this together.Justin Woods
It does, yeah, absolutely. And I have seen that word, stakeholder, being used for anybody that has a stake, and kind of like, again, I think collaborating peers is a much nicer term for it. So, Grant, I might steal that one going forwards if that's okay. One thing that you, again, I wanted to pick up on was, you talked about this piner sky strategy, and sometimes it's so nebulous that we really struggle to kind of bring it down and make a roadmap out of it. I've certainly found that with some of my clients I've been working with, you know, they've gone and worked with the consultants, they've been sold the dream, there's all of these different terms and then they're struggling to go, well, how do we take these seven pillars and actually create something actionable against them? And I'm wondering in your experience, what is the relationship of a roadmap to some of those strategic things like vision, strategy, objectives? How does that fit in? Do you feel?Grant Hunter
"Good Strategy Bad Strategy" is one of my guiding by Rumelt, is one of my guiding things when I think about strategy, as with "Playing to Win" by Roger Martin. But what in "Good Strategy Bad Strategy" Rumelt has as kernel, what are the three keys to a good strategy? You need to have a current situation diagnosis, you have to have a guiding policy. And that's really where the vision, vision mission type stuff comes in, boundary setting. And then you need to have a coherent set of actions. And to me, the roadmap is that coherent set of actions. And, you know, there's gonna be the nearer term, actions, which are things that we know we're gonna do next, but you know, or we're working in now, then there's stuff that's next. Based on everything we know in that current situation, based on that, those guiding principles, we now have a, okay, based on everything there, here's our coherent set of actions. And it may be more detailed at an initiative level or near term, next quarter, next task. But further out, it's more portfolio level, different problems, different markets, different, that type of stuff. And so for me, this is where we help connect it because if we're painting an end state, right? Where we're trying to get to, whether it's with a company or with a portfolio or division or with a product itself, we really need to start with the mind and bring in where we're going, and have a decent ability to communicate what that is. And then the roadmap just becomes the plan to get from point A to point B, and the places in between. And so, I think it, to me, it falls into that coherent action plan, what that we're trying to do.Justin Woods
Yeah, exactly. I think, again, that fits with what I've seen often kind of a poor strategy leads to a poor roadmap. For some people I've worked with, the roadmap is seen as their strategy, and I think you and I can see where there's massive problems lying there as well, in that your roadmap is not your strategy. In fact, Saeed Khan talks about the roadmap being an output from strategy. And I think that's the right way of looking at things as well.Grant Hunter
I had a client I was working with a few years ago, and they came to me saying, "we owe the board a roadmap." They didn't say strategy, said, we owe the board a roadmap. And the VP of product went and took a product leader of course thinking that would answer it to work with them. And they came back probably even more confused about what to do than ever. And so, they brought me in. And often when we work with people that's in that, as I said earlier, we, you know, fishing with you while we teach you to fish. And my first day in their office, I come in and they had a war room set up with every Jira ticket printed out. And this is how they were trying to build a roadmap from the bottom up. We have all these tickets, how do we organise them? And I said, wait a second, let's go back, talk to me about what do you guys do as a company? They were, you know, an integrated solution, hardware, software, networking type stuff. It was a pretty comprehensive solution. But I, like, okay, what does all this do? What does it, oh, it helps with safety and helps with productivity. Okay, now we have a story. Until we got them to the point where they were like, what is this vision of what we're trying to do? And so, we had to pull in marketing and the CEO to really help understand what are they pitching to investors, how are they talking about this, before we could touch. And we ended up never going back to that list of Jira tickets. And so, it has, you have to have that strategy, and sometimes people are looking for a roadmap because there is no strategy, and that's a term that they think is, you know, to our point, we've talked about it, as Saeed says, it's the output of the strategy. As Janice said, it's a prototype of the strategy. It's not the strategy itself, it's the byproduct.Justin Woods
But as you know, Grant, and I think we can empathise with a lot of people, and I've been there myself. That scenario that you just painted is very familiar, especially when you come in and there isn't a robust product management function or product management wasn't done quite the right way, or a startup is growing and you are the first in to take over from, you know, the CEO, as a product management function. Often you are faced with that, you know, that backlog of Jira ticket items. And the best thing you could do is maybe some affinity mapping to look at the common denominators and boil them up. But like you said, the right thing actually is that, in order to prioritise your backlog, the first thing to do is see which of those align towards your strategy. That's the best way to do it. But often that is the missing part. And I've actually found that, I've brought a roadmapping tool into a previous organisation as a way of being able to demonstrate that I needed to have a product management strategy, but there wasn't a company level strategy for me to tie into. It's like, I will do what I think is best, but I actually wanted to use it as a lever to demonstrate there was a gap.Grant Hunter
You know, the roadmap, as we said, it's a clarity and alignment tool, and we need to get there, and you know, it's a critical thing to make sure that we're aligned. And you talked about strategy and alignment, in those buckets. And I've done the affinity map bottoms up, and actually, where I've seen that work the best is in a platform roadmap. So, I was working with a large company with multiple divisions, who was trying to build a platform to sort of do the heavy lifting up the 60, 70, 80% single sign on, right? You know, API, whatever it may be. So, they actually rolled up all the roadmaps from all of their divisions to start looking at, okay, where are there similar things across all these products? Okay, let's do identity access once, right? Let's do what a content cashing wants, right? Let's do some of these things so everybody gets it the same way. And then the platform can, will provide that lift. That's where we can get some of the efficiencies of scale. But in that case, you really needed to do it, 'cause it's not really the external strategy of where we're trying to go, it's more of the execution of how do we deliver it in the most efficient way. And that's where I think it can work out that way. But even at that way, it was not at a Jira ticket level, it was more probably at an epic level type thing, so...Justin Woods
Yeah, I think it has to be at that level. Otherwise if you've got a backlog of a thousand Jira tickets, that's not the way to start. I think it needs to almost be, I think there is a bit of bottom up and top down, but it's predominantly gotta be, but it's gotta be top down from that perspective.Grant Hunter
The bottom up for us is, when, back to the client, the bottom up for us was, once we had this constructed, and we talked about it in our previous conversation, I always build this product stack, right? And always had at least three layers to it. I mean this is a product media person working in PowerPoint. So, the three layers were a rectangle layer, which was data or content layer of a rectangle, which was application layer, tended to be the biggest one, in a rectangle that was interface layer, which would have your user interface, but APIs, and other integrations and that type of stuff. And within the application, we would start identifying what problems are we solving. So, in that situation, inside that application layer, there was a layer that was Productivity, and there was a layer that was Safety, right? Okay, within safety, what are those things that we're trying to solve? Oh, personal safety, vehicle safety, environmental safety, whatever these may be. Well, we start building out this, a complete, if we execute, build out our full vision to what we think gets our SAM and TAM being the same, right? We've done everything, we've got every feature in there we think right now. Here's what it looks like. Then, to figure out how do we get from where we are now to there, that's where we start like getting into more of the bottom up type stuff. Okay, well, we can't deliver on this thing until we have this thing. So, let's start in, it's getting design engineering in a room, and really, you know, putting a timeline out there, okay, and putting post-it notes on, this before this, and drawing lines. And that's how, and now all of a sudden what we did in that, I call it a visual roadmap, using that product platform, you sell the, you build the strategy, you communicate the strategy that we're executing against, you communicate the vision of what in three years or five years the end state looks like, finish looks like, and then you do deletes, right? You copy, delete, okay. And so, what do we have now? Let's delete everything that we don't have now. And now we have, okay, here's where we're today, okay. What are we putting back in? What are we doing next half? What are we doing next year? And all of a sudden, instead of being a problem-based, you know, now, next, later, it's actually a visual thing. And I found that, you know, board members and salespeople were able to understand it better. 'Cause once you've painted that completely in a now, next, later roadmap, you're never showing what that end state is. It's sort of, you build to it. So, this kid, you know, it's a unique way that I've been using ever since I was a product manager. I started to start communicating what's in my head as to where are we trying to get to and what are those, based on everything we know, what are the steps to get there?Justin Woods
Very much so. And I think what you've touched on there is the importance of sequencing sometimes, and that these things have to have some form of order. We might not even call 'em hard dependencies, as such for dependencies, but there is a sequence, a logical order. And I think that's more the case when you get down working with your collaborative peers on saying, look, what do we think we can achieve? And then it's the next level down from that. I think that some levels we do wanna keep things more in a now, next, later approach, or something that's a bit more oriented around problems to solve. But arguably, there's a level and a discipline of roadmapping that is going to be more visual, more timing, not visual as such, but more time-based, more sequenced. And I think that is absolutely important as well.Grant Hunter
What I've seen is, the more business oriented the audience, the more the visual in the higher level makes sense. It's the conversation with those collaboration peers and how we're gonna execute against this that makes sense. The board, as you start getting too deep into the weeds with a board, you know, most of these people, you know, I've done a lot of private equity or VC board meetings, and, you know, they understand the finances, right? They understand that they might understand sales because they get that. And so, the higher level the story painting the vision, where we're gonna go. And that, it wasn't just technical requirements, what are prerequisites and stuff? It was contractual, hey, that we know this big customer is coming up for renewal in two years. We know this is the number one thing on the list. You know, the head of sales is gonna be very happy that feature for that, you know, major renewal is before that renewal comes in. Or there's an industry standard coming out of compliance related thing, you know? So, we also mark those, when we are building that timeline, we mark each of those industry client type things, and it helps you decisions. 'Cause sometimes, you know what? It's in my roadmap. I didn't have it until two years out, but we've got a major deal that they want it. Yeah, let's bring it forward, we could do that. And that's the negotiation you do.Justin Woods
It is. And I think, you know, it's... I know some people are against having dates on the roadmap, but I think everything, it's just, it has to have a place sometimes. When I was a product manager at Dell, I looked after the e-commerce basket for EMEA. So, 16 different countries. I had to have things on my roadmap with dates such as the switch maestro changeover from one payment type to another one. If we missed it and we didn't support it, it was a big deal. There were other ones around key government legislation dates that we had to have on there. And I think those things are okay. What isn't okay is we play the roadmap Tetris and try to fit everything in and put a timeline on it. That's where it doesn't become right. So, it's great to see that you've addressed that balance because dates on our roadmaps can be very much be important for alignment.Grant Hunter
And depending on your industry, I did a lot of work in the supply chain for retail and consumer goods. The EAN, GS1 standards. And it's like these people are like, yeah, you have to have everything ready to go by August if you're doing, or actually by June if you're doing back to school just to get it into the stores for back to school, right? If Christmas is a day, if there's a major conference in your industry, great. It does have to be part.Justin Woods
Grant, I love these stories and that you are weaving your experiences into today's chat. It's brilliant, thank you. Grant, I'd love to talk a little bit about what you believe some of the key elements or content of a roadmap should be. And we've already talked about this, maybe there's different levels, but maybe you could elaborate on what you feel some of the key elements or content of a roadmap should be.Grant Hunter
Again, we've talked about different levels. So, I think at the, you know, most granular level, it's gotta be a problem to solve and who we're solving it for, a persona on market segment, internally. I was working with a client today, this morning, before we did this call, and they've realised that their UX is bad, and the more of their product company consumes, the harder it gets for them to navigate. And so, that's not a market problem we're solving. Yeah, it's their own problem, it was probably tech debt, I'll call it tech debt 'cause they probably took some shortcuts when they built it, UX-wise. You know, sometimes... Yeah, and so sometimes we're gonna put things on there, the problem we're solving is, we're migrating to the cloud or we're doing something else, but we have to identify that problem we're solving. It could be a platform problem, it could be a, you know, we're moving databases or something like that. So it could, or more often than not, it should be a externally focused, here's the problem we're solving for the market, it could be a compliance thing. But if we get to that granular level, I tend to like it on epic level, to get down to an epic level, right? Sometimes depending on how comprehensive the solutions, an enterprise solution, an epic level may be getting down. I may not show, you know, I talked about the visual roadmap. I may not show that epic on the full vision, but it's a, here are the epics we're delivering within this sub box of safety of the person, and you know, when we get there. So, we have to have that epic level. And the reality is, most of those Jira tickets I find, I read, are not even epic level. And so, we need to get the epic level. But I think it also goes to these themes, right? Okay, this fits within safety, and safety for the person. And so now we're tying it back to thematic elements. And so, we can be doing, oh, we're moving into, we're going from being North American base to being moving into Europe. So, those themes, market segments and problems to solve, whether those are external or internal, the markets that can be internally, we're trying to solve some of our own issues. But I think those are the things. And then you have some level of time grade, right? And I like to put, if there are time elements, a major compliance event in the EU, a major trade show. You guys, you know, you're going to pack expo, and you need to, well, that should be in there because that's gotta be driving stuff. I guarantee you Apple has the Worldwide Developers conference as a date on their calendar for the roadmaps, and sometime in late September.Justin Woods
You'd hope so, Grant, they're telling us about it all the time. So, if they don't have it internally, there's some big problems.Grant Hunter
Yeah, so, but that's, those are things. So, we need to have those elements to understand. It's also at a different level of how we're doing this, right? There's different things I'm gonna communicate to a head of finance of the leadership team. And so, again, as we talked earlier, I'm gonna be at a higher level of that, it's gonna be tying it to the strategy where when I'm talking with engineering and stuff, it's gonna be at, a as low a level as possible, talk about it and thinking about platform decisions they have to make. Talking about, "Hey, we don't think we're gonna get to this until two years from now, but be aware that we think we need to get here 'cause that may change how you do something now."Justin Woods
Yeah, absolutely. It's so important for that. And, again, communication, alignment, expectation management, it is so vital. So, thank you for sharing some of those ways that you like to visualise and start. I think you're right, it depends on the different flight levels that you are, or like you said the three, the stack. Do you have any tools that you use that you prefer for managing and visualising a roadmap? And we mentioned girl PowerPoint there, right?Grant Hunter
You know, when I was doing this, you know, 20 some years ago, there weren't tools like Aha! and ProductPlan, and you know, ProdPad, and all those types of things. So, you know, you may do with Excel and PowerPoint. And so, in that, in the visualisation of it, I haven't worked with those tools to see how they allow you to do visualisation, so I wouldn't wanna talk to it. You know, now Miro is a place that we, you know, easier to collaborate on Miro with your peers than it is PowerPoint, right? I could do the exact same thing in Miro that I could do. And I'm not getting into a sigma level thing where I should be, where I'm wire framing stuff. This is pre-wire frame, right? This is really strategy of the product and vision of the product, and just looking at what are the buckets that we're trying to get to. So, to me, anything, to do that, anything that's got circles and squares and rectangles and triangles that I can, you know, in colouring, so I can, you know, different colour code things, that's where I do this. And really, it all comes back to who's the audience for this, right? It's easier in a tool like Aha! or whatever that you can integrate with Jira to, when you're talking with design and engineering who lives in those worlds. Let's talk to that type of stuff. When's the last time you were at a board meeting? Every time you're at a board meeting, what is the main thing being used to communicate? If you're talking strategy, if you're trying to sell this, if you're in a sales presentation, trying to share with a client, PowerPoint. So, you know, yes, there are these great tools, but if we're gonna talk about clarity and alignment, we need to then also be able to present that story as part of that storytelling that we can get into there.Justin Woods
I'm so happy you said that because actually I feel the same. And that might surprise folks in the audience from, you know, my background as an Aha! expert and a roadmap tooling expert. But I truly believe that these tools are great for managing your roadmaps and potentially presenting your roadmaps as well in the absence of something. But ultimately, you've gotta meet your stakeholders, or sorry, your collaborating peers wherever they are in the systems that they use. And I remember, I think it was chatting with Holly Donahue actually a while back who's a CPO at Purple, talking about actually where she found the most roadmap traction was to create roadmap artefacts and put it in the places where her stakeholders or collaborating peers actually were on the day to day. Because if you say, oh, hey, go to this URL and it will create this presentation for you and here's the roadmap. I mean if a roadmap never gets looked at, is it truly a roadmap? And it kind of misses the point. So, Grant, I'm really glad you said that, I think I agree. Talk to me a little bit about a best practise in roadmapping. What do you think is a really good practise?Grant Hunter
For me, I think the best practise in roadmapping is actually doing the strategy work first. And we talked about, it's an output of, it's a prototype of. If you don't really have your strategy, how do you make those trade off decisions? How do you decide what's on it? And so, I've worked with a lot of clients who, A, didn't have a strategy, a product strategy. We had to do that first. But B, didn't have a corporate strategy. And so, even in that situation, what I do is, I work with them to create this assumptive strategy. So, based on what they say, what they talk about, what they prioritise, you can sort of start the back of the napkin out what you think the strategy is, from the corp. You can build that guiding policy as Rumelt will talk about from a corporate level in actually, you know, when you then present your product strategy and roadmap, alignment and clarity, right? You know, based on my, what I hear, what I see, here's what I'm, here's the corporate strategy that I'm working from. And if this is, you know, let's talk through this, let's get alignment and clarity on that. Once we have that, okay, based on that, here is our strategy, based on that, here's our roadmap. Again, the roadmap is the byproduct that comes after that. And so, the best practise is, you have to have 30 in alignment on the corporate strategy and on the product strategy before you can do a roadmap.Justin Woods
Yeah, that's so, so true. So actually, if folks out there are really struggling with your roadmaps in terms of what to put or what it should show, start to think about, well, if the roadmap is the steps of the execution of your strategy, or like you said, the prototype of, or the output from, if you're struggling with that, actually it's time to take a step back and think, actually what is our product strategy? Or even, as I've mentioned previously, what is our company strategy to this? And then actually start to focus on that first. Because otherwise, if we don't have the direction, we could be taking steps in completely the wrong place.Grant Hunter
And, you know, then it's also realising that there is multiple types of roadmaps, right? There's a portfolio like level roadmap I like to look at, which is really looking at an Ansoff matrix type view of things. What are the markets and segments, and what are the problems we're solving, right? And this is a, you know, thinking more portfolio division, company-wide, you know? Where do we go from here? Now, some of those adjacent segments and personas may be product extension into that, but some of them are gonna be new products you need to build and you know, how do you find your ways, it's easier to move into something that already knows you. I was working with a client, and they had a product that was in one specific industry for compliance. They had a really good idea using the exact same, 80% of the same platform for a new product, for a different industry. And they wanted to go right into it. I said, "No, no, no." I said, "Does your current industry have a similar problem?" "Oh yeah, they do." I'm like, "Okay, first let's solve that problem for your current industry. Right now you're moving from problem A to problem B, and now problem B, it's easier to go into market two if you already have problem B addressed somewhere else with some references of clients that they might identify." And so, at a portfolio level you need to understand these things. And part of the roadmapping is having those conversations, building a grid, right? At a portfolio level of market segments and problems to solve, and where are we now? I always make that green. And then it's like, okay, where can we go? In logically, what makes sense? If you think of Ansoff's matrix, the growth strategy matrix, some people call it. So, existing in new markets, existing in new products, existing in market penetration. That's good. The better you can grow within there first, that's gonna be higher success rates. As soon as you move into a new market or a new product or a new problem to solve, you're putting more risk into the equation. But the lower right-hand corner is diversification, new, new, that's the hardest. So, if you're gonna build a new product for a new market, that becomes a little more risky. Can you find a path that can keep, get you there a little better? Can you take your current product into that market first? Just establish yourself. Or can you solve that new problem for your existing market before you move into the next one? And these are... And then you're also looking at the landscape of who's the competitors, what's the penetration rate? There's a whole bunch of stuff we go into, all about building out this portfolio level one. And then within that, we can get down to what we talked about with that one client. It's like, what does this product look? What is a complete whole product, as Jeffrey Moore would call it. What does the whole product look like? What is included in it? And now tell that story of how within this market and problem sector, what does complete look like? What does the whole product look like? And how do we get there? And so, different levels of advocacy, add that for the platform roadmap we talked about earlier. So, and me, I look at, I at least three, depending on how big you are. If you only have one product, your product roadmap is there, right? But as soon as you start scaling and moving into new products and new problem and new markets, you need to think portfolio level. And as soon, and when you're doing that, you start thinking platform level two, because it's like, okay, I've got multiple problems to solve. I got, how, what can I do similar across 'em?Justin Woods
There was a tonne of value in there, Grant, thank you for that. I think it's so important, again, to take a step back from these and think, and look about the whole landscape around marketing and strategy, because all of that ultimately does shape your roadmap. I wonder if there's a pet hate that you just really don't like to see on the roadmap, Grant? What do you see on there? You just go, ah, let's just get rid of that bit, I don't like it.Grant Hunter
It's, to me, there's nothing specific, there's nothing general that I see all the time, right? The biggest pet is that, it's feature-based and technology-based, not problem in market-based. Or the, you know, in an extension of that, the biggest pet peeve is, people who say they have a six month roadmap. That's all it is. Because in that case it's a release plan, it's not a roadmap. And so, I think maybe I do have a big pet peeve. The big pet peeve is, people not realising the roadmap is a strategy output, a strategy document, not a tactical. And you know, we did a benchmark with somebody and the majority of respondents said that their roadmap was one year or less. And yes, I know you're agile and I know, but especially in B2B enterprise, maybe in B2C that could work a little better. But at B2B enterprise, where contract lengths are three, five years, and contract values are seven figures plus, if you can only tell... I was working with a client who worked in the FinTech sector, and one group worked with banks, and one group was internet, you know, point solution type stuff. And we asked the question, there's a roadmap session we were talking with like, okay, what level of confidence do you have to have second half year two? And the big course type stuff said 99.9%, because the banks have to be planning their schedule. They have to be, so it's like building a rocket to go to the moon, there's no, compliance-wise, they have to be ready for it, they have to be planned for it. Big change management, 'cause it's a system that run the bank. Where the internet people are like, we're not 99% second quarter, right? And so, you need to understand that in a enterprise space, the bigger the client is, the bigger the contract is, the further visibility they need to have out. This really needs to allow the strategy.Justin Woods
You mentioned about WWDC and Apple, and I'm, you know, quite an Apple user myself, and I was looking ahead at some of the Mac rumour sites around, you know, when's the next iPad coming out? When are we gonna get foldable iPhones and things like that? And what was actually the segue into the roadmaps is that Apple, from a supply chain perspective, has to have a roadmap with its suppliers to say, "Hey, in 2027, 2028, we need a flexible display." Or, "In that time, we need a camera that's got this level of zoom." And you're quite right, you know? That can be conceived as a roadmap. That's a forward-looking manufacturing demand-based roadmap for the bill of materials. And it's so important. Grant, you are a very learned man. I'm curious whose advice on roadmapping you listen to?Grant Hunter
So, for me, Steve Johnson, my partner has been one of my long-term mentors. I learned a lot about roadmapping, I took pragmatic marketing. I actually had the ability to actually teach the roadmapping course. And so, Steve always is going to be one of those people who put, who helped me frame what I think and what I live. In today's age, I mean I love you guys, your podcast is a great way to do it because, and I love the fact that it's not, it's always bring other people in. You know, what we do with our Friday Product Conversations on LinkedIn is always bring a panel of people in because I've done, we've done 130 some of them, I have learned in every single one, right? New perspectives. I have much more understanding of BDC now than I ever did because I have conversations with that. So, I love how you guys bring this whole group of stuff into that. But I will also say that I'm a strategy first guy. So, it is the Roger Martins and Richard Rumelts almost in that, opposite of what you have to have leading into to get to it. That was really gotten us there. And the roadmap, again, it's an output, it's a device. And so, I love reading Janna Bastows, conversations on it as well. But you know, there, again, your stuff is probably where I get the most. Most of my read is strategy and business related stuff. We're a product roadmap, mostly what I get is from you guys. And then you already did book me, so was it like that?Justin Woods
I mean, I'm thrilled to hear, but we do feel that, you know, sometimes you can get stuck in the same echo chamber of the same experts and you pick up the same feelings and thoughts from them.Grant Hunter
Bruce McCarthy's book. I know there's multiple authors too-Justin Woods
Absolutely, it's around here somewhere.Grant Hunter
You know, tremendous, he's another person, it just popped in my head. But you know, it's a smaller group of people who I think, you know, are helping have the conversation. And I think, you know, as I said, I talk to Saeed on a regular basis, so... And obviously, I talk with Steve on a regular basis. So, there's people in my world that we have these conversations. I've just been, I just had a conversation with L.A Golden and some other people about this visual roadmap, and sharing some examples how we've done that. So I, you know, that might be something I'd be writing on in the near term just as we think about it. 'Cause I'm, it's much more on the strategic side of how do we do it. But I've, you know, place that I probably need to talk, think more about than it has. And thank you for giving me this platform to think out loud.Justin Woods
It's a pleasure. I mean this is why the channel's called "Talking Roadmaps," Grant. It's great to hear. And I'm glad that we've been, you know, a source of some useful knowledge and experiences as well, that's really pleasing. What road mapping resources do you recommend? And you've mentioned about Bruce McCarthy's book, which is personally one of my favourites on the roadmapping. Is there anything else that comes to mind when you think about road mapping resources?Grant Hunter
We've got some stuff that Steve has created on roadmapping that I think has been really good. It's in our fundamentals of managing products. I think we have some of available for free. If people are interested, reach out to me, I'll share what I can. Those are more video on demand type stuff, you know, it's part of our bigger course, and maybe it's something that Steve and I should probably do in the whole course as a public doesn't work a tonne, well, we tend to work with teams, right? We wanna help teams get alignment, clarity, not just in roadmaps, but in strategy and problem stories and everything they're doing. For us, the three most important things are alignment and clarity and strategy and playbook and then roles. And so, everything we do is normally working with a larger, you know, maybe over 50 million. Once you start scaling a product management team, you've got multiple product managers. As soon as you have multiple product managers, that's where role clarity, playbook clarity and strategy clarity become important because there's more people doing it.Justin Woods
Such a great point. I was just gonna say there that around roadmapping is that sometimes roadmapping is, or roadmaps, I should say, is not as important when your company is small and the communication and, you know, it's, the team sizes of a certain size where communication is very fluid and happens very frequently. Like you said, once you start to get to a larger size, that's typically when I find that I start to work with clients because they've lost that ability to communicate and collaborate clearly with each other. And so, they need some form of artefact to do that. So, that's a really good point that you mentioned there.Grant Hunter
And it's interesting, and I'm not sure when this is gonna be released. This week in our Product Conversations where Cliff Gilley is gonna be on with us, and we're talking about strategic planning for your product. And the reality is, roadmapping and strategic planning for your product go together. And the most of value is in the planning, not the plan. And so, roadmapping, building the roadmap is where the most value comes, that's where you gain clarity, with doing that. And so, you know, back to the original point, I think that there's some stuff we could probably make available, whether it's through, we do a webinar, we get some people accessing on demand stuff, just for, you know, specific to this, you know, we'll figure that one out.Justin Woods
Yeah, incredible. And in fact, Grant, I'll give you an opportunity in a few moments just to pitch again, to let our audience know what product growth leaders do and yourself and Steve and the team. But before we get there, I'd just love to think about, and this can be one of the harder questions that we ask, but if you had to distil your philosophy, and I'll give you a little hint here, it could be in one or two words even. But if you had to distil your philosophy of roadmapping into a couple of sentences, what would it be?Grant Hunter
Market, focused, plan for the future.Justin Woods
Yeah, I think that's good. And we could wrap around that with the clarity and the alignment, which of course is what you said there. But I think the market, and the focus is really important. Like we said, that's really the real impetus of a roadmap.Grant Hunter
Well, and wouldn't, it gets back to the roadmap is market focused vision for the future, plan for the future. The roadmapping is clarity and alignment, it's the doing of it.Justin Woods
Very cool. Yeah, I think that's a golden nugget right there, Grant. Well, look, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share with our audience how you can help them, how they can get in contact with you at Product Growth Leaders. So, let us know what it is that you guys do and how you can help.Grant Hunter
Steve and I are product growth leaders. Our focus is on helping product organisations attain, achieve product success on purpose, intentionally. In the way we do this, and I said it earlier, is, we've identified three keys, right? Clarity and alignment on strategy. Clarity and alignment on roles. And clarity and alignment on playbook. We think that those three things, and they're all interrelated as we do that. So, we tend to work with teams, product leaders in their teams, helping them gain clarity and alignment in their strategy. We've got basically two types of things we do, we call them learning programmes, which is sort of our version of your typical product we've been training, but while we build capabilities, we also focus on getting stuff done, it's all applied. So, every lesson, there is an assignment to apply it to your product, your market, whatever. So, even though you're building capabilities over the programme, you're also getting things done. And then we've got what we call intensive programmes. Intensive programmes where somebody's like, I've got a deadline, I've got a launch, I've got a strategy. Oh, we've got, whatever it may be, I need help with it. Something they might normally have hired a consultant for, but if they hire a consultant, does it, they don't build any capabilities, next time it's due, they have to do it again. So, for us, our intents are really about getting stuff done while building capabilities. So, much more facilitated, you know, in some situations it's a 12-week, 90 minutes a week, just often for new product range where people are going through a process and yearning and trying to build a business plan. It's been like that, we've done that way for product launch. But in some cases, we've done it as a three-day workshop. Let's just get in the room and use whiteboards and whatever. And it's, again, both the combination of building capabilities and getting stuff done, sort of where the special sauce comes. And that, and that's what we do. Obviously with Steve's background, we have our fundamentals of management products is a great entry level course, your product management to do that. We also have a course called Principles of Product Strategy, which is really getting through that, how do we build the lifecycle management of our, you know, build this strategic plan for our product? And then the intensive range from product launch to roles to playbooks, to a lot of different strategy ones, including roadmap.Justin Woods
Grant, that sounds fantastic. What we'll do is, we'll put some links down below. If you're listening on the podcast, then go to the talkingroadmaps.com website. Otherwise we'll put some stuff down in the show notes for those links. And maybe yours and Steve's LinkedIn profiles just so that people can find you and just reach out.Grant Hunter
Yeah, and the one thing I'll say, the last thing I'll say is, weekly, we do a thing called Product Conversations on LinkedIn. We put a question in on Monday, we put a poll in on Wednesday, and on Fridays we do a LinkedIn live. We did a session with Richard Mironov two weeks ago, which was just, we just did Rich. We mean when it's Sunday like that. But normally, we've got five or six people, and we try to bring new voices in. So, if you find Product Conversations, I'll get you to link for that. Pay attention to it, you know, as people answer that are new, I try to get on the panel that week just so we can bring new voices in, it's always rotating, so...Justin Woods
Fantastic, what a great resource, Grant. I think we'll definitely share that with our audience, and hopefully some of them, our listenership will already be taking part in that. If they're not, then we'll signpost them to you. 'Cause I think that sounds like a great opportunity and one that I should probably get involved with as well, Grant.Grant Hunter
We would love to do that. Let's do a Talking Roadmaps/Product Conversations crossover, maybe we can do one together.Justin Woods
That sounds absolutely incredible. Well, look, Grant, all it leaves me to say is, is a massive thank you for spending time with us. I know that you and Steve are really busy helping product teams to be more strategic and intentional with it. I think that's such a worthy mission. But thank you for taking time out to share your stories with our audience, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.Grant Hunter
Justin, the pleasure has been mine. As I said, I geek out about talking about product and roadmaps, and I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation. And I look forward to more in the future.
Justin Woods
Otherwise, Grant, all that leaves me to say is thank you so much, and I look forward to seeing you soon.Grant Hunter
Justin, thank you so much for the opportunity.
