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💡 Did you know that companies that follow a structured product discovery process are 40% more likely to deliver the most impactful products to the right users? — according to a survey by the Product Development and Management Association.
Let’s take Airbnb for instance. Their rise to prominence underscores the significance of a discovery-led approach in product development.
Facing initial challenges in understanding diverse user needs, Airbnb pivoted towards a more strategic product roadmap driven by customer-centric insights. A pivotal moment came with the introduction of "Experiences," in their app — a result of their intensive product discovery efforts and market trend analysis back in 2016, while they were already in the process of implementing their product roadmap. As a result of this real-time pivot based on extensive user research, it not only expanded Airbnb's user base but also fostered a sense of community and trust globally.
With such compelling evidence, it's clear that a discovery-led product roadmap is crucial for prioritizing features and initiatives that resonate with your users' needs and pain points. Because, building a roadmap is one thing but building an insight-driven product roadmap is what changes the game for a product-led organization.
As Marty Cagan rightly puts it in his book, INSPIRED —
There are two essential high‐level activities in all product teams. We need to first discover the product to be built, and we need to deliver that product to market.”
There’s a common challenge faced by many organizations — a roadmap planning exercise that consumes significant time and resources but fails to deliver tangible value throughout the quarter or in some cases, the entire year. This kind of scenario is often encountered in traditional, rigid planning approaches that lack adaptability and real-time feedback integration.
On the other hand, a product discovery-led product roadmap emphasizes continuous learning, customer-centricity and iteration based on real-time insights.
In fact, it can transform the planning landscape with —
1. Define clear objectives and key results (OKRs). Every product decision should align with the overall company or business objectives in mind. You should define a strategic product roadmap with well-established objectives and key results, so that the company’s resources are allocated to the most impactful and priority objectives.
Let’s use these examples for reference:
2. Prioritize impact and effort for your build. Create an impact vs effort chart with four quadrants that helps you visualize it. These could be based on certain scores and weightage that you assign to each feature. Not all features or improvements will have the same impact or require the same effort. Using frameworks like these can help prioritize initiatives effectively.
High Impact, Low Effort: Quick wins that should be prioritized.
High Impact, High Effort: Strategic initiatives that require significant resources but offer substantial benefits.
Low Impact, Low Effort: Minor improvements or maintenance tasks.
Low Impact, High Effort: These should generally be deprioritized or reevaluated.
3. Set actionable timelines in your roadmap with with well-defined milestones. Setting actionable timelines in your product roadmap involves defining specific timeframes for completing key tasks and achieving milestones. These milestones serve as checkpoints to track progress, assess project health, and make necessary adjustments to stay on track.
The first step is to set the milestones the planned developments. A very basic example could be —
As a second step, product managers should leverage specific roadmap templates that help you achieve these-
Sometimes, we do set timelines that are impossible to achieve. It’s always advisable to set timelines that have a buffer, in case of deployment delays - but not a huge buffer that’d make you go sidetrack.
Imagine two scenarios when it comes to feature-planning —
In the first scenario, the feature frenzy leaves you exhausted, overwhelmed, and frankly, unable to build the amazing products your customers deserve. The second scenario, however, is an ideal situation.
With objective-oriented views in product roadmaps, the goal is to enable product managers to create and track product objectives from your feature backlog and guide your product decisions effectively.
Define each stage of the hierarchy clearly. For instance -
Here, you are defining your major objectives, breaking them into ideas and further down, into actionable features. It’s a great way to track progress efficiently and adapt to changing needs.
It’s always advisable to keep stakeholders informed about your product development plans. They could be your cross-functional teams, advisors, customers, etc. But, more importantly, it’s also more crucial to encourage stakeholder participation at each stage of your feature-planning. There are multiple reasons why you should do this —
Ultimately, stakeholder collaboration leads to more customer-first product outcomes, as product teams leverage diverse perspectives and insights from stakeholders, at multiple phases of rolling out product roadmaps.
Moving forward in discovery-led product roadmaps, teams should focus on continuous discovery and validation.
This involves ongoing research, testing assumptions, and iterating based on feedback to ensure that the product roadmap remains customer-centric and aligned with evolving market dynamics.
Given that product development in itself is an intricate process, product managers should embrace these best practices, to effectively navigate the intricate terrain and make well-informed decisions that propel both immediate and long-term success.
Having said that, now it’s time to launch and effectively close the loop with your customers. Head over to stage 4 of product discovery.
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