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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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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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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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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At BotOracle, we've certainly grappled with the challenge of balancing stakeholder demands for more features while staying true to our product roadmap. Early in our development, after showcasing our initial prototype, we received enthusiastic feedback from various stakeholders—each with their own ideas about what features should be prioritized next. We introduced a prioritization framework that assessed features based on factors like user impact, alignment with our strategic goals, and development resources required. This helped illustrate why certain features needed to come later in the pipeline. For the most critical requests, we explored interim solutions or workarounds that could address immediate needs without overhauling our roadmap.
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For any product roadmap, very important aspect not to miss is market demand. How your customers will perceive the features, and where competition is moving is very crucial to decide on the priorities for the product features. When stakeholders demand features, assess them on market demand and competition readiness and then clearly define and communicate with all stakeholders. There are several tools which helps in doing this.
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Money talks Priorize aquilo que move de fato ponteiros da empresa! O resto pode ficar pra depois ou é bullshit! Aquilo que não dá pra medir não tem porque fazer !
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Balancing Stakeholder Demands and Product Roadmap Integrity Balancing stakeholder demands with product roadmap integrity is key. Here's how: 1. Prioritize Features: Use frameworks like RICE to objectively assess value. 2. Effective Communication: Be transparent, manage expectations, and actively listen. 3. Data-Driven Decisions: Use user research and data analysis to inform decisions. 4. Agile Methodology: Use iterative development and flexibility. 5. Negotiation and Compromise: Find common ground and offer alternatives. By following these strategies, you can maintain product roadmap integrity while satisfying stakeholder needs.
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Prioritisation is not a science and it will never be. Every time you try to apply a quantitative approach it will always be affected by bias, gamed by stakeholders or blown out of the water by changing externals, so spending any time creating a "prioritisation model" is a waste Similarly with formal change control processes. No one is adding value to the product by completing endless forms. Out of the 3 bullets here, I only agree with transparent communication, regular and often with short feedback loops. The most valuable thing a product manager (and extended team) can do is asking "is the current work still the highest priority?" and "Is the next piece of work the next highest priority?" and validate the answers daily.
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