Building better product roadmaps

Janna Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product and founder of ProdPad, and inventor of the Now, Next, Later roadmapping framework, discusses building product communities, public speaking, and why roadmaps should be treated as prototypes of strategy rather than fixed plans. The conversation also covers ditching Gantt-style timelines, separating soft and hard launches, changing culture at large companies, and making the leap from PM to founder.

01Key learnings

• Treat a roadmap as a prototype for your strategy: its value lies in the roadmapping process of sharing and testing assumptions, not in the artifact itself.
• Replace timeline-based roadmaps with Now, Next, Later buckets so that not every item implies a due date, since uncertainty grows the further out you plan.
• Reserve firm dates for truly fixed constraints such as regulatory deadlines or seasonal rushes, and plan extra buffer and soft launches for those.
• Separate soft launches from hard launches so marketing and sales can work on a functional beta and testimonials while engineering keeps building the next thing.
• Ask for investment and hold teams accountable for experiments run and metrics moved, the way sales teams are judged on pipeline rather than exact deal dates.
• Build psychological safety and regular retrospectives so teams can question what is and isn't working, which naturally leads to better discovery and iteration.
• Change culture in large companies gradually by finding an advocate and a small pocket of the organization to pilot the new way of working, then let it spread.
• When speaking publicly, script your narrative before building slides, rehearse by recording yourself, and speak to a few friendly faces in the audience.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.