Product Roadmap Secrets

Whenever I sit down to write or update a roadmap, I remember a piece of advice I once given:

“Most companies spend a large proportion of their time building amazing solutions to problems that no one cares about. Don’t be like most companies”

This quote reminds me that no matter how exciting or novel a feature is, if it doesn’t solve a real problem or if it doesn’t align with the user’s needs and business objectives then it risks becoming a wasted effort. Below is my five step process for ensuring each new roadmap item strikes the right balance between innovation, satisfying user feedback, and achieving business goals.

My Roadmap Process

1. Start with Value: How does this feature or function add value to the user, and how do you quantify it?

   As technologists, it’s easy to get carried away with the coolness of a new technology. But if you lose sight of the why, we risk delivering features users won’t fully appreciate or adopt. Always ask yourself: How will customers benefit from this? How do they measure that benefit? You can often find clues by talking to real users and studying existing usage patterns.

   In situations where you don’t have direct customer feedback you can still:

   • Take an inventive leap to imagine what the world looks like once the feature is implemented.
   • Put yourself in the customer’s shoes to see how their workflow improves.

2. Validate Early and Often: How can you test the idea with minimal investment?

   Once you’ve decided an idea has enough potential value, the next step is validating your assumptions as quickly as possible.

   This doesn’t always mean building a prototype. Sometimes it could be:

   • Running a user survey or online poll.
   • Engaging with a community that closely matches your target audience.
   • Creating a low-fidelity prototype (even a paper sketch) to simulate user flows.
   
   

   Building is exciting, but it can also be a trap if you invest heavily in the wrong solution. Strive for the minimum viable test because perfection is often the enemy of progress.

3. Take a Holistic View: How does the new feature interact with what’s already built, and does it align to current business goals?

   A roadmap isn’t just a list of features; it’s the storyboard of how your product will evolve over time to meet business objectives.

   When deciding which items to prioritise, consider:

   • Integration: Will the new functionality work seamlessly with existing systems and workflows?
   • Completeness: Does each milestone deliver a slice of the product that feels whole to the end user?
   • Metrics: How will you track adoption and success? Building mechanisms to measure feature usage (e.g. analytics, customer feedback loops) keeps you grounded and provides real-world data to guide future decisions.

4. Don’t Forget Technical Health and Usability: Are you improving reliability, performance, and usability alongside new features?

   Sometimes the most important items on your roadmap are not new features, but rather improvements to what already exists, making the system more reliable, faster, or easier to use. It’s rare that something works perfectly first time, but if your data shows that you have traction then it’s worth the additional investment. While exciting innovations attract attention, technical debt can quietly undermine future progress. Balancing new with better ensures you are investing in both short-term wins and long-term stability.

5. Embrace Action and Learning:

   There are times when you won’t have any solid data to guide you. In such cases, don’t stand still, make an educated guess based on user personas, market insight, or your own instinct. Then test the idea quickly to see if it has traction. You may not always succeed, but you will always learn, and that learning accelerates your roadmap’s evolution. As long as you are iterating based on new information, you’re on the right track.

Bringing It All Together

Balancing innovation, user feedback, and business goals isn’t just about picking the next shiny feature. It’s about thoughtfully asking:

• Does it deliver clear, quantifiable value to customers?
• Can we validate assumptions quickly and inexpensively?
• Does it integrate well with existing systems and meet our business objectives?
• Are we investing in both new features and ongoing improvements?
• Do we move forward and learn when data isn’t available?

A roadmap built on these principles keeps your team focused on delivering meaningful, validated outcomes even when you’re pursuing something novel or disruptive. When in doubt, remember that you can always refine and re-prioritize as you gather more data.

Need Fractional CTO Support?

If you’d like expert guidance in crafting a roadmap that balances bold innovation with real-world feedback, I offer fractional CTO services at bytesizedcto. My goal is to help organisations of all sizes build tech and product strategies that align with their business goals and grow sustainably.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss your vision.

← Back to Blog Index