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Strategize your Product Roadmap for Success

January 17th, 2009 | Product Management

Ready Fire AimHave you written a strategic plan? What type of information have you included in your strategic plan?

I find most roadmaps, which are in a sense a strategic plan, tend to be very development focused. By that I mean it is generally a list of features (with some jazz) plotted out in a time period of 3 to 5 years. This is great but is the delivery of features going guide you to achieve success?

A strategy would be incomplete without mention of the activities that are required for your product to even exist. Value chain analysis, a concept described by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance describes the primary and support activities of a firm or in this case your product.

The value chain categorizes the generic value-adding activities of an organization. The “primary activities” include: inbound logistics, operations (production), outbound logistics, marketing and sales (demand), and services (maintenance). The “support activities” include: administrative infrastructure management, human resource management, information technology and procurement. The costs and value drivers are identified for each value activity.
- Value chain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_chain)

The goals of value chain analysis are to maximize value creation and minimize costs. Sounds very product management like doesn’t it?

As you build your next roadmap ask yourself these 5 questions:

  1. Have I considered what the needs of the organization are to build product?
  2. Have I considered the processes of the team to build product?
  3. Have I considered the operations and distribution needs and processes?
  4. Have I identified the buyer problems and equipped the sales and marketing teams to address those with value?
  5. Have I considered what changes are required for the professional services (including support, training, etc.) to achieve success?

Remember, the only way to answer these questions is to understand (and document) what success is.

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