Janna Bastow and Lean Roadmapping

Product Roadmaps and Agility can go hand in hand

As someone who ‘grew’ up in a hardcore experimentation culture in Booking.com circa 2015, the idea that someone can speak certainly about how a product would look like in the future does not sit very easily with me. I take with some skepticism the grandiose statements often made by product leaders at the launch of new products.

The fact of the matter is even at relatively established companies such as the one I work at, most product initiatives inevitably fail. Also, if anything this year has made John Lennon’s quote ‘Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans’ particularly poignant.

That said while individual product initiatives and directions often change, in most cases the product vision and the general objectives, especially when they are outcome driven stay surprisingly robust.

Thats why I think this twitter thread sat very well with me. Janna Bastow while bemoaning the limitations of standard roadmaps and instead exhorts people to flesh out their vision, outcome driven objectives, time horizons and then come up with a lean roadmap which should serve as the prototype of the product strategy.

While thinking about this, I also began to wonder how easily this concept lends itself to technical strategy as well. But thats for another day.