Responsive Roadmapping: The Foundation
Driving Product Lines by responding to change, opportunities, and challenges
A coherent multi-product approach is more potent than the sum of single-product work. Stellar multi-product performance comes from a well-formed product line strategy. And such plans demand a deep understanding of product line systems and the interplay and flow of their parts.
A Product Line is a System
A product line’s strategy and roadmap show the system’s parts. Changing one part of the product line system can change the whole system. The challenge is to understand how the system’s components play off one another to affect the whole.
Managers use their product line knowledge to guide and focus creative, analytical, and strategic thinking. Their goal is to advance the whole product line system, not just one of its parts.
Responsive Roadmapping guides teams to deliver a flow of impactful results. It does this by enabling managers to plan work and to make decisions that cut across the system parts. And it does this over the near and long term.
The Product Line Flow is Continuous
The full product line flow matters more than a single activity. And to improve the flow, companies must create new opportunities, manage all system parts, and remove flow constraints.
Responsive Roadmapping continually seeks to improve a product line’s flow.
Change and Knowledge are Boundless: Assumptions Help Until They Don’t
A product line system is always in motion. Technologies, markets, and customers change continually. And behind the change, there’s an endless stream of knowledge and insights that can drive new opportunities and lay bare new challenges and constraints.
All humans form assumptions to deal with large amounts of information. It’s because assumptions provide a stable interpretation of the information. And with time, strongly held assumptions become part of a company’s culture.
But change causes all assumptions to die. The first sign of a flawed assumption happens when product line strategy and roadmap conflicts arise. One assumption or another no longer holds true.
Responsive Roadmapping helps teams deal with change and new knowledge. But importantly, it helps teams spot flawed assumptions. And by sorting out assumptions, Responsive Roadmapping drives improved product line results, faster.
Openness Plus Understanding Aligns Decisions and Amplifies Work
Responsive Roadmapping demands top managers to trust all product line contributors to do their best for the system. But they may not see the same interplay across the system’s parts. Building a common systems view demands openness, shared insights, and deep understanding.
Contributors who see and understand the product line system and its parts are better able to align decisions and work to deliver superior results.
Roadmaps as GPS Guidance
A product line roadmap is a GPS screen view that sits within a full product line system dashboard. The roadmap graphic is not the Responsive Roadmapping process. Instead, the graphic is a view, albeit a powerful view, that helps communicate the ‘what, when, and how’ of the product line system.
Read More about Responsive Roadmapping HERE
Recognize that all roadmaps must be unique to a product line and an organization. And, there is no standard or best view. Read and see more on product line roadmaps HERE.
