Thanks for your comments on our Pragmatic Roadmapping video. Roadmapping continues to be a big concern to product managers and to executives. More often than not, product roadmaps are a collection of feature commitments absent any strategy… which is why I focused on getting people to think about markets, initiatives, and financial impact.

Oh, and Bob C provided the voice-over on the promo, in case you didn’t know… explaining why he thinks the promo is so great. (And it IS great, Bob. Thanks.)

Touche! Thanks for the follow up and the comments.

Cheers!

~jon

When I have to describe it for the executive caste, I describe roadmapping like your headlights – they reveal progressively more of the land ahead as you move ahead, and you’ve got two settings for different needs – regular and “brights” – to reflect near term and long term goals. Thinking of “roadmapping” as a verb and not a noun (a distinction the seminar makes wonderfully) helps prodmgmt to set appropriate expectations.

It’s a fact of life that you modify your long-term expectations based on what you learn in the near- to medium-term. That’s where the truism lives.

As for the the promo code, I committed to passing it on to Jim. The problem is I slacked for 2+ weeks and didn’t get the overview out and decided today was the day to do it formally. I had tweeted it and put into the ProductAtlanta post, but I would consider that weak in respect to doing what I said I would do. Perhaps my piece was weak too.

But to go back to the trueism – most folks think they change for things out of their control or understanding, at least those that do the work. The reality is it is a process and if the roadmap is “always” changing then PM isn’t doing their job managing up or across the organization, minimally or doing the work required to understand the market and manage the business.

From my experience, one of the key things PM’s can provide to the business is a sanity check that helps accomplish things. Ultimately I write this blog not just for seasoned folks like you and I, but for the person that wants to be a PM, just became one or doesn’t understand what PM does. So not all topics are going to be insightful, some might be DUH! I hope ultimately this was less duh and a little insightful while helping out folks I like.

I was sold on pragmatic marketing in 2000 when I took my first course from Steve and I think everyone needs to put a formal process or framework in place for PM in their business, since I’m unaware of an MBA’s with concentrations in Product Management or any formal multi-course curriculum on product management in colleges which is sorely needed and these guys did it. Kudos to them and perhaps ZigZag, although I haven’t seen their work and their process is just a little high brow for me based on my limited understanding. But I am busted, I would like to save folks $100 if I could. Sharing I think is a good thing.

~jon