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Agile Roadmapping

with Scott Gilbert, President at Enthiosys and Jeff Brantley, Director of Product Management at Borland

Roadmapping is a critical planning process, and becomes even more strategic as teams move to Agile. Roadmaps bridge the gap between "our next release" and three year corporate vision so that product teams can address the fuzzy twelve-to-twenty month gap.

Scott will present the essential elements of a market-driven roadmap -- including segments, market events and rhythms, technical architectures, and release timing and Jeff will talk about how Borland has applied these techniques to their own internal planning.

Watch "Agile Roadmapping"




About the Presenter

Scott GilbertScott joined Enthiosys in 2006 after nine years in large, multinational organizations, technology startups and his own consulting firm. He is an expert in Agile software product management, business planning, project management and business development.

He has worked in a variety of high-tech sectors including enterprise software, aerospace and defense, satellite communications and interactive media. Before coming to Enthiosys, for three years Scott was an independent consultant to Technology Ventures Corp. On behalf of TVC, he provided consulting services to early-stage technology startups, developed and delivered a highly successful entrepreneurial training program, and managed the firm’s California board of advisors. He helped his clients raise more than $11 million in venture and angel capital.

Before becoming an independent consultant, Scott was a co-founder and director of marketing at Inferscape, a software company specializing in predictive analytics. He was in charge of developing the firm’s strategy, establishing partnerships, securing beta customers, conducting market research and working with engineering to define and prioritize the initial product requirements.

Prior to Inferscape, he was a consultant with BearingPoint’s High Technology Strategy Practice and Digital Media Incubator. He advised clients on how to commercialize technology, develop new markets, and create effective business plans. His clients ranged from Fortune 500 companies to startups, and government agencies from NASA and the Department of Defense to the Department of Energy.

For three years, he was a volunteer and board member of the Northern California chapter of the Product Development and Management Association. Scott holds BBA degrees in marketing management and international management from the University of New Mexico, received his ScrumMaster certification in 2006, and Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Practitioner certifications in 2008.
Contact Scott at sgilbert@enthiosys.com



Jeff BrantleyJeff Brantley has worked in technology sales, marketing, and training for almost 20 years with the past 12 years in Product Management for enterprise software companies... Jeff is currently with Borland Software as Sr. Director of Product Management where he now has responsibility for the Borland OpenALM Framework, a services-oriented framework for enabling the process of software development. In this role Jeff also acts as an internal consultant for Borland, helping all the product teams collaboratively build and manage their product roadmaps, and he is responsible for driving the coordination of these into the overall Borland "Portfolio Roadmap of Roadmaps".

Contact Jeff at Jeff.Brantley@borland.com

Time Horizons

Posted by Chris Davis at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
What time horizons are ueful for the planning?

response from Jeff & Scott

Posted by Scott at 2008-11-25 03:06 AM
Usually we say that a roadmap should cover 18-24 months, for typical Enterprise Software companies. We further suggest that the time dimension be at the monthly granularity for the first 6 months then quarters after that. However your specific product, market, channel, product lifecycle, and release cadence should also influence your perspective on time.

roadmap information density vs. readability/consumability

Posted by Craig Calder at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
This would be a lot of information to display. I generally struggle with roadmap information density vs. readability/consumability. Your format is good to ensure all information is available, but would be tough to consume in a general presentation. Comments?

Answer from Scott & Jeff

Posted by Scott at 2008-11-25 03:06 AM
Please keep in mind that this activity is not as much about the presentation of the information to execs as much as it is about a planning process. However, as you noted there can be a fair amount of information captured, so the trick is to strike the right level of detail in each of these areas. The goal is to be able to tell a compelling and comprehensive story as well as to capture enough detail to guide decision making. Additionally, you want enough detail to communicate with other members of the organization such as adjacent R&D teams or PMs who need to understand dependencies or timings across the products. So, again this is first and foremost an interactive team collaboration technique for building a strategic roadmap... what actually get's communicated outward is often a high-level distillation of that information.

Sales

Posted by Jeff Prellwitz at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
Should Sales be involved in the Road Map creation process?

Reply from Scott & Jeff

Posted by Scott at 2008-11-25 03:06 AM
It is helpful, but not required to include them in the creation of the initial first draft. However, once you have a good first draft on paper, you should invite in one or two key sales reps, sales managers and or sales engineers (only one or two representative members) for a real "feet on the street" perspective. These need to be people you trust and who have a strategic view of the product and not just a view of their own handful of customers or prospects.

Question

Posted by Kristin Oberhaus at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
I am a bit confused. This looks more like a product map, but not a roadmap. If it is a roadmap, how would you sell this to executives who expect a traditional roadmap? Also, how does this tie to Agile, it appears more focused on RUP?

Question

Posted by Tim Kent at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
How accurate would you describe your roadmapping? ie: how close was 2008 actual vs 2008 roadmap planning?

Scott & Jeff Reply

Posted by Scott at 2008-11-25 03:06 AM
If we understand your question, "accuracy" is not the objective at least not in the sense that you are talking about. In the context of strategic roadmapping, we would celebrate the idea that we researched something and decided to change course (thus change the roadmap) for the right reasons. In other words, we do not take the roadmaps that were created 6 months ago and compare them to the "current" ones and evaluate the amount of "change". We recognize that there will be changes and new unforeseen events (internal and external) that impact the roadmap. For example during release planning information will be generated by the team that will likely impact exact which features will make the current release vs. the next release.

What is does provide, though is a slice of organizational memory which can be beneficial... particularly for large organizations. With the history of forward-looking roadmaps developed quarterly, you can see the rationale behind the decisions that were made. Although it is not complete information, it is enough to understand the choices that were made at that time. One of the problems we’ve all had as a PM is the lack of organizational memory... simply because people move on. This technique allows you to take the roadmap as a snapshots of what we thought the world looked like back then... and the reasons why we steered the development of the product towards this market or that market, etc.

Roadmapping in a Global Environment

Posted by Nancy Livingston Malecki at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
How is this best done in a virtual global environment. Using web conference tools?

Various Roadmaps

Posted by Kelly Wiza at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
As an organization, how do you then coordinate and prioritize the various product roadmaps?

Measuring

Posted by Sreekanth Tadiptari at 2008-11-14 06:52 PM
How do I measure ROI for TDD? How do I measure the value of something like setting up a continuous integration environment?