Too Much Product Roadmap May Kill You — Here’s a Better Strategy

Don’t be a feature factory. Get empowered instead

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“I promise you that at least half of the ideas on your roadmap are not going to deliver what you hope. (By the way, the really good teams assume that at least three quarters of the ideas won’t perform like they hope.)” — Marty Cagan, Inspired (2nd Edition), p.19

Marty Cagan’s critique of traditional software product roadmaps is counterintuitive for many. In order to make sense of it, we need to understand Cagan’s philosophy of product management. Cagan’s approach addresses a big question facing the software industry: the feature factory problem.

Cagan highlights the differences between how tech’s most innovative companies operate vs. the operating model that leads many companies to become feature factories (churning out features without knowing if they work for customers). Let’s try to understand the essence of this difference and what is involved in making the change.

From Feature Factory to Empowered Product Team

“You can release all the features you want, but if it doesn’t solve the underlying business problem, you haven’t really solved…