A great work environment will almost always include motivated and committed teams that are all working towards the same goals. So as your organisation and product grows how can you ensure continued success for your teams? A strong, tangible product roadmap.
In this session, Marrisse will talk through her experience on when product roadmaps work but also when they don't. She will touch on:
- how to ensure the alignment of product roadmap with the company values and north star from the start;
- the importance of defining your north star as the business grows and changes;
- including your product teams in the adapting your roadmaps; and
- what metrics she has used in the past to measure success of a product roadmap
1. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Aligning Teams Through Product
Roadmaps
Marrisse Asuncion
Senior Product Manager, Quipper Philippines Inc.
UXDX APAC
2. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
About Me
● Senior Product Manager at Quipper
○ Started my career as a content writer
○ Managed various edtech products
● I love…
○ Traveling & camping
○ Quick morning runs
○ Playing with our puppy
3. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Agenda | 01
02
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Product Roadmap and Company Vision
Deciding on a North Star
Building Your Roadmap & Adapting to Change
Setting Metrics to Measure Success
8. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Why Care About Vision & Strategy?
Give your team a clear mission
Get buy-in from stakeholders
Build a solid & robust roadmap
Choose the right metrics for success
10. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Why Is a North Star Important?
Serves as your key metric of success
Guides prioritization decisions
Guides your team and stakeholders
Helps with compelling storytelling
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Deciding on a North Star
What’s the one thing your users can do with your
product to help solve their problems?
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Some examples…
Company / Product North Star
Time spent by subscribers listening to
music
Monthly active users
Number of purchases per month
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How to Decide on a North Star
Understand your engagement game
Choose actionable input metrics
Understand your critical events and success funnel
Conduct workshops with your team & stakeholders
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Understanding Your Engagement Game
Attention Game Transaction Game Productivity Game
Definition
Maximize the time
users spend
in-product
Help customers
make a purchase
with confidence
Create an easy way
to complete tasks or
gain mastery over a
certain task
Industries
Social media sites
& products driving
revenue from ads
E-Commerce B2B software
Companies /
Products
16. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Choosing Your Input Metrics
A north star metric consists of 4 dimensions:
f(Star) = Breadth X Depth X Frequency X Efficiency
What is the reach of your product?
How much are users engaging with your product?
How efficient is your product
being delivered?
How often are your users engaging with the
product?
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Metrics I’ve Used
Game: Attention Game
North star metric: Average time spent on site
Breadth Depth Frequency Efficiency
Registration rate Time spent per
user per session
# of sessions per
user
Bounce rate
Number of site
visits
Number of
meaningful events
per session
Retention rate App crashes
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Understanding Critical Events & Success Funnels
● A critical event is an action that users take in your product that aligns
closely with your core value proposition
● It’s the action you want to drive your users toward and get them to
perform
● A good rule of thumb is to have one critical event per core product
offering, but products with several distinct user flows can have more
than one
19. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Some examples…
Company /
Product
User Segment Critical Event
Someone looking for
accommodations
Book lodging
Someone who needs
groceries
Schedule a delivery
Students
Complete a course or an
assessment
Teachers Assign activities to classes
Learners (self-paced)
Complete recommended content
or book Masterclass services
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Understanding Critical Events & Success Funnels
Register to the
site
Browse content
Complete
content
Visit pricing
page
Complete
purchase
● Success funnels help you understand
how users progress through steps
leading to your critical event
● A funnel analysis will help you
understand where users are dropping
off and identify potential areas for
improvement
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Conducting Workshops
● For the north star framework to be
successful, you have to get buy-in from
your team and your stakeholders
● The best way to do this is to conduct a
series of workshops
○ A RACI chart might help you
understand who needs to be
involved in the workshops
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● Technically, no. If your company & product strategy change, you may need
to adapt your north star metric to such changes.
● But remember that one quality of a good north star metric is that it should
remain relevant for years. It should not be short-term.
Is a North Star Permanent?
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Top-Down vs.Team-Driven Roadmaps
Top-down Roadmap Team-driven roadmap
CEO / Founder sets the agenda for
the roadmap
PM collaborates with stakeholders and
gets user feedback to corroborate
issues
CEO / Founder spells out the “how”
of the execution
PM ideates possible solutions with the
team
Common in startups where
founders are the first Product
Managers
PM crafts the roadmap and gets buy in
from stakeholders before locking it in
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Top-Down vs. Team-Driven Roadmaps: Which Is Better?
Top-down Roadmap Team-driven roadmap
Process of choosing priorities is not
“democratized”
The entire team collaborates in
building the roadmap, which naturally
leads to alignment
Product team becomes order
takers
Product team decides what brings the
most value given all the information
gathered
Starts with the assumption that
one person knows what’s best for
the product
Assumes that you bring more value to
the product by synthesizing ideas
from all sources
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Tips on Building a Roadmap
Make the most of whatever roadmapping approach you’re taking
Understand your user segments/personas
Conduct user research (lots of ‘em!)
Conduct regular design thinking sessions
Build everything in small increments - leave room for change
Beware of the “feature factory” trap
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Choosing the Right Metrics
Your metrics should reflect your product vision and goals
Conduct workshops with your teams
Metrics should be measurable and actionable
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Beware of Vanity Metrics
Vanity Metrics Actionable Metrics
Trial users Converting users
Page views Conversion rate
Email subscribers Email opt-in conversion rate
Total customers acquired Customer acquisition cost
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Tracking Your Progress
Build & maintain a dashboard with high visibility
Start conversations with a review of your metrics
Understand how new releases impact your input metrics
“Released” ≠ product success
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Key Takeaways
Having a clear product vision is the key
A North Star metric with supporting input metrics will help you build a
strong & actionable roadmap
Driving team alignment is at the heart of building a great roadmap
Great roadmaps take a lot of work - it’s more than just an Excel sheet or a
Gantt chart with release dates
Roadmaps shouldn’t be set in stone - always leave room for change
35. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Join Us!
● Data Scientists
● Product Designers
● Test Engineers
● Performance Test Engineers
● Head of Product Management
● Site Reliability Engineers
● Software Engineers
● Senior Software Engineers
37. #UXDXAPAC Aligning Teams Through Product Roadmaps
Resources
● Product Roadmaps vs. Gantt charts
● Why a Top-down Product Strategy Is the Best Way to Plan Your Roadmap
● What Is Your Product’s North Star?
● Vanity vs Actionable Metrics
● The Three Games of Engagement
● Your Critical Event & Product Usage Interval
● LUMA workplace
● Who Owns the Product Roadmap?
