Learn how to communicate, align, and collaborate with other departments for your product roadmap. Show the value, prioritize features, define roles, and use a tool.

Stakeholders from various functions often align with a roadmap when they understand its value and impact on users and the business. However, this may not always be sufficient to get them on board with the strategy. Based on my experience, one of the most effective strategies is to establish a shared goal and provide a detailed plan outlining how the product roadmap will benefit them, such as meeting KPI targets, reducing manual tasks, or optimizing existing processes. When stakeholders see a 'Win-Win' situation, they are more likely to approve the product roadmap.

How do you get buy-in from other departments for your product roadmap?

As a product manager, you know how important it is to have a clear and strategic product roadmap that aligns with your vision and goals. But how do you get other departments, such as engineering, sales, marketing, and customer support, to understand and support your roadmap? How do you avoid conflicts, delays, and confusion that can derail your product development and launch? Here are some tips to help you get buy-in from other departments for your product roadmap.

Key takeaways from this article

Collaborate from the start:

Involve other departments early in the roadmap planning process. This builds trust and ensures their feedback is integrated, fostering a sense of ownership and collaboration.### *Showcase mutual benefits:Highlight how the product roadmap aligns with company goals and benefits each department. Use data and stories to demonstrate value, making it clear how it supports their key performance indicators (KPIs).

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1 Communicate early and often

One of the key factors for getting buy-in from other departments is to communicate your product roadmap early and often. Don't wait until you have a finalized roadmap to share it with them. Instead, involve them in the planning process, solicit their feedback, and keep them updated on the progress and changes. This way, you can build trust, transparency, and collaboration among the stakeholders, and address any concerns or questions they might have along the way.

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Sumit Garg

Product @Microsoft Azure AI Search
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Communication is the most critical piece but more important is how you do it. It should not become "your" project. Talk about why and even how it is important for their goals and KPIs. Your stakeholders should feel invested because of the benefits the project can bring to them. Decisions are made before the key roadmap discussions meetings, and your stakeholders should not be surprised by something you are bringing to table during key discussions.

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Adriana Rotaru, MBA

Product Lead @SAP Signavio
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Communicate what's in it for them. Each stakeholder has their own targets, OKRs, and KPIs to achieve. How does this new product/ feature launch pay into their goals? Or if that's not possible (e.g. compliance departments), then make it clear how you considered their perspective in the new launch. This brings support not only buy-in.

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2 Show the value and impact

Another way to get buy-in from other departments is to show them the value and impact of your product roadmap. How does your roadmap align with the company's mission, vision, and objectives? How does it solve the customer's problems and needs? How does it benefit each department and their roles and responsibilities? Use data, evidence, and stories to demonstrate the value proposition and the expected outcomes of your roadmap. Highlight the benefits and opportunities, as well as the risks and challenges, and how you plan to mitigate them.

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Subrat Kumar Senapati

Product Manager @ Amex - Global Loyalty and Benefits (GLB) Platform | Former Banking and Payments Consultant | Oracle Banking Payments, Flexcube, Finacle | Certified Scrum Product Owner- CSPO® | SAFe Agile
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Stakeholders from various functions often align with a roadmap when they understand its value and impact on users and the business. However, this may not always be sufficient to get them on board with the strategy. Based on my experience, one of the most effective strategies is to establish a shared goal and provide a detailed plan outlining how the product roadmap will benefit them, such as meeting KPI targets, reducing manual tasks, or optimizing existing processes. When stakeholders see a 'Win-Win' situation, they are more likely to approve the product roadmap.

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3 Align on the priorities and scope

A common source of conflict and confusion among different departments is the mismatch of priorities and scope for the product roadmap. To avoid this, you need to align on the key features, goals, and milestones for your roadmap, and make sure everyone understands the scope and the trade-offs involved. Use a prioritization framework, such as the RICE score, to rank your features based on their reach, impact, confidence, and effort. Explain the rationale behind your decisions, and be open to feedback and suggestions. Also, define the scope of each feature, and what is in and out of scope, to avoid scope creep and unrealistic expectations.

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Adriana Rotaru, MBA

Product Lead @SAP Signavio
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Create a transparent feature request process, with a transparent feature valuation tool - ideally integrated in the roadmap tool. You can use harvestr or jira discovery for this. This way you ensure an open process where everyone can voice their opinion or request should they choose to.

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4 Establish clear roles and responsibilities

Another tip to get buy-in from other departments is to establish clear roles and responsibilities for each stakeholder involved in the product roadmap. Who is the owner, the decision-maker, the contributor, the reviewer, and the approver for each feature or milestone? What are their tasks, deliverables, dependencies, and deadlines? How will they communicate, collaborate, and report on their progress and issues? Use a RACI matrix, or a similar tool, to define and document the roles and responsibilities for your product roadmap, and communicate them clearly to everyone.

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Adriana Rotaru, MBA

Product Lead @SAP Signavio
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PM and direct line management are responsible and accountable for the failure, and the entire team is responsible and gets credit for the success. This is the way!

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5 Use a flexible and visual tool

Finally, to get buy-in from other departments, you need to use a flexible and visual tool to create and share your product roadmap. A good tool should allow you to easily update and adapt your roadmap as you learn and iterate, and to communicate your vision and strategy in a clear and engaging way. It should also enable you to collaborate with other stakeholders, gather feedback, and track progress and results. Some examples of tools you can use are Aha!, Productboard, Roadmunk, or Asana.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Adriana Rotaru, MBA

Product Lead @SAP Signavio
Report contribution
The "Amazon Press Release" is an early communication tool for any important launch. In a nutshell, this means that before you even start working on the concept, you imagine how things look on the day of the launch. What you write in that "press release" helps focus your concept, answers critical questions, creates a vision, and aligns the organization behind a story, which will become the official story of the product. It's an immensely powerful communication tool.

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How do you get buy-in from other departments for your product roadmap?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Communicate early and often

2 Show the value and impact

3 Align on the priorities and scope

4 Establish clear roles and responsibilities

5 Use a flexible and visual tool

6 Here’s what else to consider

Product Management

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How do you get buy-in from other departments for your product roadmap?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Communicate early and often

2 Show the value and impact

3 Align on the priorities and scope

4 Establish clear roles and responsibilities

5 Use a flexible and visual tool

6 Here’s what else to consider

Product Management

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