Colleen Johnson - Death of the Product Roadmap

Summary

In this session of the Product Owner Summit, Vasco Duarte welcomes Colleen Johnson, an Enterprise Agile Coach and CEO of ProKanban.org, to discuss effective agile product planning. Colleen challenges the traditional product roadmap, arguing it can be counterproductive due to being speculative, deterministic, and prescriptive. She explains that roadmaps often rely on assumptions about customer needs, rigid timelines, and detailed pre-planning, which limit agility and responsiveness. Colleen highlights how this approach can misalign teams, waste effort, and stifle customer feedback, advocating for more adaptive, iterative planning methods that embrace change and improve the quality and effectiveness of product development.

Takeaways

• 😀 Roadmaps can hinder the quality and effectiveness of product planning, especially when they become too rigid and speculative.
• 😀 Roadmaps often make assumptions about customer needs without room for flexibility or responding to market changes.
• 😀 Product roadmaps are speculative, relying on the best guesses about what to deliver and when, without customer feedback or data-driven insights.
• 😀 A deterministic approach in roadmaps assumes that products will be delivered on specific dates, which can lead to unrealistic expectations and constant re-planning.
• 😀 Roadmaps can resemble project plans, often becoming overly detailed and out of date, similar to Gantt charts, which doesn't align with Agile principles.
• 😀 The process of estimating features upfront in roadmaps requires extensive planning that is frequently inaccurate, time-consuming, and unreliable.
• 😀 Prescriptive planning, where teams are forced to commit to delivery timelines without adequate customer feedback or iteration, can limit Agile practices.
• 😀 Early involvement of teams in detailed planning often leads to estimating work without the team's input, creating misalignment between planners and those doing the work.
• 😀 Some companies purposefully exclude teams from early planning and estimation, which leads to misinformed decisions about how much work can be done and by when.
• 😀 Agile principles advocate for continuous feedback and flexibility, but rigid roadmaps lock teams into predetermined outcomes without room for adjustments based on real-time information.
• 😀 The main problems with roadmaps boil down to being speculative, deterministic, and prescriptive, which directly contradicts the core values of Agile methodologies.

Q & A

Who are the main speakers in the Agile Product Owner Summit session?

The main speakers are Vasco Duarte, the host, and Colleen Johnson, an Enterprise Agile Coach, keynote speaker, author, and CEO of ProKanban.org.

What is the primary topic of Colleen Johnson's session?

The session focuses on proper Agile product planning and discusses the potential drawbacks of traditional product roadmaps.

Why does Colleen Johnson believe product roadmaps can be counterproductive?

She identifies three main problems with roadmaps: they are speculative, deterministic, and prescriptive, which makes them rigid and often incompatible with Agile principles.

What does Colleen mean by roadmaps being 'speculative'?

Roadmaps are speculative because they are based on assumptions about customer needs and market conditions, which may not be accurate, leaving little room to adapt to changes or feedback.

How are roadmaps 'deterministic,' according to Colleen?

Roadmaps are deterministic because they specify exact start and end dates for delivering features, similar to a Gantt chart, which is often unrealistic and frequently requires re-planning.

What is the 'prescriptive' problem of roadmaps discussed in the session?

Prescriptive roadmaps dictate exactly how teams should deliver value, including detailed user stories and feature estimates far in advance, limiting flexibility and team input.

How does deterministic planning impact Agile teams?

It consumes significant time for upfront planning, leads to inaccurate estimates, and pressures teams to meet predefined dates, reducing adaptability and responsiveness to feedback.

Why might companies avoid involving teams in early roadmap estimation?

Some companies deliberately exclude teams from early estimation to avoid the complexity of collaborative planning, but this leads to disconnects between planning assumptions and actual delivery capacity.

How does Colleen suggest relative feature-level sizing can be misused?

While relative feature-level sizing is intended to estimate work, if teams are removed from the conversation, it results in unrealistic expectations and plans that don't reflect the team's input or capability.

What is the overarching message about roadmaps in Agile product planning?

Colleen emphasizes that traditional roadmaps can hinder agility by being rigid, overly planned, and prescriptive. Agile planning should instead be flexible, responsive to feedback, and team-inclusive.

What other sessions are available in the Product Owner Summit mentioned in the transcript?

The summit also features sessions like Jaco Potterme discussing how to bring experimentation to large organizations, emphasizing continuous learning and adaptation in Agile practices.