Balancing stakeholder demands for more features, how can you uphold the product roadmap's integrity?
When stakeholders push for more features, it can threaten your product's vision and timeline. Balancing these demands while staying true to your roadmap is crucial. Here's how you can manage it effectively:
How do you balance stakeholder demands with your product roadmap? Share your insights.
Balancing stakeholder demands for more features, how can you uphold the product roadmap's integrity?
When stakeholders push for more features, it can threaten your product's vision and timeline. Balancing these demands while staying true to your roadmap is crucial. Here's how you can manage it effectively:
How do you balance stakeholder demands with your product roadmap? Share your insights.
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It can be tough when stakeholders keep asking for more features, but the key is to stay focused on the bigger picture. Start by explaining how the product roadmap connects to the overall goals. When everyone understands that, it’s easier to have a conversation about why certain requests might not fit right now. Then, use data to guide decisions: What’s the impact of this feature? How does it align with user needs? And if a feature doesn’t fit right now, be transparent about why, and maybe park it in a backlog for future consideration. It’s all about finding that balance between saying “Yes” where it counts and confidently saying “Not now” when it doesn’t align.
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This is one of the most common struggles of a product manager or team. To achieve this balancing act: 1. Clearly communicate the product vision & roadmap goals. 2. Prioritize features based on customer needs, business objectives, & technical feasibility. 3. Establish a transparent decision-making process for feature requests. 4. Offer alternatives, such as phased releases or compromises, to manage expectations. 5. Regularly review and adjust the roadmap to ensure alignment with changing business needs and customer demands. One of the most critical steps above is the transparency around how decisions are made, which can also include using a clear prioritization technique, e.g. RICE, as an input to the decision-making process.
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It is a constant struggle for a project manger and this is not only the stakeholders demands. Demands come from stakeholders, beta customers and from within as well as product mangers talks to different potential customers. Here is my view on handling this - clear product vision particularly the market segment, top customers, expected price/cost and volume - ROI chart ( again not only in financial terms but also on schedule, cost, waiting customers , expansion or reduction in number customers - define the minimum product and put everything else on tradeoffs - always communicate from vision
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Honest communication and consistent behavior will bring loyalty that will help mitigate the impact of any misstep. Setting clear business expectations and goals will eliminate daily conflict in the tug of war between stakeholder expectations and demands and what's actually achievable
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Right users (paid, active, and forthcoming) should be the biggest decision-makers when deciding on new features. Simply adding more features to charge more is a proven failed strategy. Worse, it can alienate existing users who may find the product more complex and slower due to all the bells and whistles. We are living in a software overload world, and overloading the product is likely to add to the cognitive burden of the user. Hence it's critical to separate must-have from good/wish-to-have.
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