Piaggio Fast Forward Innovation, Technology & Agility

How do you make sure all teams are on the same page when creating a product roadmap? 

The most important thing is to get buy-in from team members, managers and leaders. No change should be done in the dark, but rather only after teams have had the opportunity to report progress and discuss any changes they need made to deliverables or dates. 

As much as we all hate meetings, I find the best way to make sure everyone is on the same page is to discuss the features in real time. Slack messages and emails can often be misread or forgotten in the busyness of the day. A good product manager can keep meetings short, on topic and productive so as to not waste people’s time and patience. The result is better understanding and a more accurate roadmap, which everyone will appreciate ultimately.

How do you maintain this alignment throughout the development cycle?

We review the roadmap every other week at our cross-functional meetings. If anything has changed, it’s called out visually on the roadmap, and we discuss the reason behind the change. We version the file by dates and keep all of them in a shared folder so everyone can reference them when needed.

Do project needs change during the development process? When this happens, how do you reprioritize the product roadmap and keep teams aligned?

Changes will always occur. No plan is perfect, and the real world has a way of messing things up just when you think everything is going right. It’s important to have a good attitude and acceptance about this. If you view it as a failure or try to ignore it out of a sense of embarrassment, you will only make the situation worse. When you understand and anticipate changes, you will be ready to address them as soon as they come up and prevent further delays. When faced with prioritization questions, I like to go back to the product vision or the customer use case; it helps to keep the intention at the front of my focus. If something doesn't directly serve the vision of the product or the customers’ needs, then it can wait. If it’s a nice-to-have feature or a duplicate user flow, then it can be simplified and removed. Don’t do this in a vacuum. Get your team together so they can help you make the right decisions and be included in these roadmap changes.