1. A simple framework for
building product roadmaps.
by Gui Komel // San Francisco, 09/20/2011
blog.komel.net

2. 1. State the problem your product solves
In order to do this, answer the 3 questions
bellow:
• What is the market need?
• How does your product fills that need?
• What makes your product stand out?

3. 2. Using a doughnut graph, explain the WHOLE PRODUCT
• Shade all the areas your company is going to be responsible for delivery.
• Try to keep it as simple as possible
• Make sure everyone wins: partnerners, vendors and you.

4. 3. Who are your stakeholders?
• Make sure you understand who your stakeholders are.
• Understand what each of them expects.
• If applicable, break them into smaller groups.You want to understand:
• who are those groups / what do they want
• when you should engage each one of them

5. 4. Create the Business Model Canvas
• Get your team to do it with you
• Validate with CEO, C : whatever: O, and main stakeholders
• Read the book (there is an App as well, worth trying out)

6. 5. Create your Balanced scorecard
• This is a Strategy exercise
• The key is to be able to link the 4 layers into a feasible strategy
• Don’t forget that the elements should interconnect and support each
other
• After you’ve done, explode each element into: goals, initiatives and KPI’s

7. 6. Hypothesis roadmap
• Your product is a bunch of hypothesis that need to be validated
• First state the higher level ones (later you will need to break them up)
• Understand who your users are and who your customers are
• Match user and customer hypothesis
• See how that will happen as time goes by

8. 7. Engineering requirements
• Derive from the Business Model and Balanced Score Card your first
engineering requirements
• The “House of Quality” chart from the QFD process is perfect for that,
it allows you turn “What” in “Hows”
• I usually do it 2 levels deep, more would risk loosing the whole vision

9. 8. Prioritized Roadmap
• A good roadmap will you what to do, when to do it and how to measure
success
• Also, it gives you an “Epic” view (User Stories are addressed in another
stage)
• Divide your roadmap in: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and
(if it makes sense) Revenue. (check Startup Metrics for Pirates)

10. 9. Voila, You’re done!
• But it DOES NOT END here. Actually, it never ends.
• This is just a STARTING POINT.
• Now is the time to really start the process: understand your users and
customers and your market. It is time to confirm your plan and learn.
• The faster you fail, the faster you learn. But try not to fail.