Building powerful roadmaps

Building Powerful Roadmaps
Empowering product roadmaps through risk management
xodiacmaking every team thrive
© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.

Who am I?
• Gino Marckx
• Business Improvement Consultant, Coach,
Team Builder, Developer
• Co-founder of the Toronto Agile Software
Development Community
• Passionate about making every team thrive

What is a roadmap?

What’s in a name?
road·map [rōd-map] - noun
1. a map designed for motorists, showing the principal cities and towns of a state or area, the
chief roads, usually tourist attractions and places of historical interest, and the mileage
from one place to another.
2. any plan or guide to show how something is arranged or can be accomplished: your
roadmap to ﬁnancial independence.
© 2017, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.www.dictionary.com

This is a roadmap

In technology

© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.cabn Christopher Harrison - Corner Store
corner store
@yourconvenience.com

© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.cb Intel in Deutschland - Dell XPS 10 Tablet Computer with Dock | cb Wildon Hui - 20130808-161-of-365 | cdb geee darryl - Samsung SPH- M300 Red
Accessible

© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.cbn Fotero - Abanico de posibilidades
Convenient

© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.cb SvartaBaskern - 3-8
Easy to use

© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.cb Carol Pyles - Coupon Pile Stock Photo
Feature rich

© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.cab knehcsg
Recognizable

© 2018, Xodiac Inc. All rights reserved.cb www.twin-loc.fr - https://www.twin-loc.fr Jerusalem Israel - Delivery time - Photo Image Photography
But much more…

The roadmap
Product catalogue
Online purchase
Inventory management 
Point of sale system 
Delivery of ‘frozen’ products
Personalized offers Loyalty

The roadmap
Product catalogue
Online purchase
Late feedback 
Late return on investment 
Little ﬂexibility
Personalized offers Loyalty
CMS
eCommerce
Custom

Too often looks like this…
1
2
3
4 5

So really…
• (Techno)logical building blocks
• Schedule driven by technical dependencies
• Limited incremental value delivery with little opportunity for feedback
• Lack of pivoting options makes it hard to embrace business change

An alternative approach

Validating assumptions
© Alistair Cockburn - What engineering has in common with manufacturing and why it matters

A powerful roadmap
• A milestone delivers real progress towards the objective, either
through value delivery for the end user or through the mitigation of a
risk
• The description of a milestone informs the team about the goal of this
milestone in context of the larger solution
• Feedback from every milestone delivery informs the team about which
steps to take next

Process
Identify the problem
Build high level solution architecture
List risks
Sort according to risk exposure
Mitigate risks
Create new functionality
Assess risk reduction
Prioritize functionality
Map existing functionality (split if possible)

Identify the problem
• Elevator pitch
• Strip context from the problem description
@yourconvenience.com 
providing an online yet personal corner store experience

Build high level solution
User Administrator
Catalogue
Shopping 
cart
Orders
Accounting
Content 
management
Payment 
engine
Order 
management
Delivery 
service

List risks
• What if we cannot guarantee speedy delivery of ‘frozen goods’?
• What if someone from the other side of the country tries to buy stuff?
• What if we are out of the product people want?
• What if customers are not interested in the service?
• What if our POS system is too old to integrate?
• What if credit card transactions are too expensive for small purchases?
• …

Sort according to risk exposure
• Risk exposure = opportunity cost * probability
Risk Cost Probability
What if we cannot guarantee speedy delivery of ‘frozen goods’? + ++
What if someone from the other side of the country tries to buy
stuff?
++ -
What if we are out of the product people want? ++ +
What if customers are not interested in the service? ++ ++
What if our POS system is too old to integrate? - ++
What if credit card transactions are too expensive for small
purchases?
++ +

Mitigate risks
• Either reduce the probability of the risk occurring or reduce the cost
to deal with it
• Use planned functionality for risk mitigation
• Useful strategies to deal with unmitigated risks
• Lure - draw the risk out to force dealing with it
• Inform - ﬁnd out more information about the cost or probability
• Spy - record information that reduces the cost of dealing with it
• Avoid - ﬁnd an alternative solution

Mitigate risk
Planned 
functionality 
mitigates 
risk?
All 
functionality 
is required to 
mitigate?
Extract 
mitigating 
functionality
Add mitigating 
functionality
List risks
Assess risk 
reduction
Mitigation algorithm

Our mitigating functionality
• Build product catalogue and…
• Provide ‘shopping list’
• Offer ‘virtual wallet’ as payment
• Offer pay-at-delivery
• Show product availability in product catalogue
• Arrange pick-up in store
• Organize delivery to companies
• …

Assess risk reduction
• …
• What if customers are not
interested in the service?
• What if credit card transactions are
too expensive for small purchases?
• What if we are out of the product
people want?
• What if we cannot guarantee
speedy delivery of ‘frozen goods’?
• What if someone from the other
side of the country tries to buy
stuff?
• What if our POS system is too old to
integrate?

• …
Prioritize functionality

In a powerful roadmap, at every
milestone we deliver on an objective
instead of just a new batch of
functionality

Wrapping up

Benefits
• Real roadmap allows for prioritization instead of scheduling
• Customer can help with prioritization
• Delivery remains ﬂexible
• Real value at every milestone
• Biggest risks are addressed early in the project
• Get additional value from risk management process

Things to remember
• Roadmap ≠ schedule
• Business risks over (techno)logical risks
• Risk mitigation will generate your roadmap
• Seek fast feedback

Thank you!
https://leanpub.com/powerfulroadmaps/c/rsg
Download draft for free until March 31st, 2018
xodiacmaking every team thrive

Building powerful roadmaps

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