OUTCOME-BASED ROADMAPS: UNLEASH THE POWER OF A
SHARED VISION & PURPOSE
September 16, 2019

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Agenda
● Introductions
● Current challenges
● A Strategy Based On Outcomes
● Define Product Management
● Adapt the Legacy Roadmap
● Q&A

Kelsey Stevenson
Director of Product
Bitly
Jason Doherty
Solution Principal
Slalom
Thomas Vela
Consultant
Slalom
Introduction

Current Challenges

96%
Of all innovations fail to return their cost of capital
- Doblin Group

92%
Of startups failed within 3 years
- Genome Startup Report

How many people here feel like they are
stuck in a feature factory?

The Build Trap
When companies measure success by outputs rather than
OUTCOMES
- Melissa Perri

A STRATEGY BASED ON OUTCOMES
From outputs to outcomes

Ideas are easy.
Solving customer problems and achieving objectives is hard.

Managing Uncertainty
Limit of what we know today
From: The Art of Action
Big Hairy
Audacious Goal
Where
We Are
Today
Future Options
Known Options
Future Future Options!

Play the Odds
● Less than 1 in 7 product ideas see the light of day [Bain]
● 19 in 20 initial product experiments fail [Amazon]
● 60% of product decisions use the HiPPO method [ThoughtWorks]
Lessons Learned
● Don’t optimize for the case where we are right
● Discover what is valuable to customers
● Create feedback loops to validate ideas and assumptions

Maximize Learning
Good product people maximize learning velocity
● Discover the right products to build before writing code
● Valuable, usable, feasible, viable
● Iterate to Success
● Highly aligned leadership and teams

Netflix Strategy Circa 2007
Vision: “Becoming the best global entertainment distribution service, licensing entertainment
content from around the world, creating markets that are accessible to film makers, and helping
content creators around the world to find a global audience.”
Principles: “Delight customers in margin-enhancing and hard-to-copy ways”
Key Strategies Tactics Metrics
Personalized Ratings Wizard
Netflix Prize
Percentage of customers who rate > 50 titles at 6 weeks
RMSE
Instant Hub Expansion
Streaming
Percentage of disks delivered in one day.
Percentage of customers who watch > 15 min/mon
Margin-Enhancing Previously viewed
Advertising
Price & Plan testing
Gross Margin
LTV
Easy Simplify and kill
Progressive Disclosure
Percentage of customers with > 3 titles in queue on day one

“Strategy is a deployable decision making framework,
enabling action to achieve desired outcomes, constrained by
current capabilities, coherently aligned to the existing
context.”
- Steven Bengay, The Art of Action

Resources Activities Outputs Outcomes Impacts
Goals
From Outputs to Outcomes

Product Vision
Goal Goal
Outcome
Ideas
Solution
Feature
Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity
Outcome
Outcome Outcome
Business Impacts Principles/Values
Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas
Strategy
Discovery
Delivery
Solution Solution Solution
Ideas
Solution
Feature Feature Feature Feature
Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story
Product
Leadership
focuses
here.

A compelling vision of the future for our product
● Sets direction and defines where we are headed
● Explains why our product exists
● Timeless
Align leadership and teams
Create an impact on the lives of your customers, as well as
your organization.
Product Vision

Goals
Defines how you will achieve your vision.
Objectives that are specific, measured and time-bound
● Directly tied to the product vision
● Provides focus
● SMART, OKR, BHAG

Outcomes
Measurable changes in customer behavior.
● Directly tied to goals
● Achieving an outcome → achieving a goal

Combining Outcomes with OKRs
OKRs are Objectives and Key Results
● Goals are the objectives
● Outcomes are the key results
One objective can (and often should) have many key results.

Opportunities
Opportunities are the identified:
● customer problems or pains
● customer gains; or
● jobs to be done
that, if addressed, would result in the desired outcomes.
Focus on key opportunities to achieve outcomes.
Deep knowledge of the customer, the data and the market.

Create Alignment with Strategy
Product Vision
Goal Goal
Outcome
Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity
Outcome
Outcome Outcome

Ideas & Solutions
Ideas are how we solve problems. Ideation is a generative
exercise.
Be a scientist
● Create many options
● Validate assumptions & ideas before building solutions
● Most ideas probably won’t have the impact you expect - at
least in the first version
● Hypotheses, Design Sprints and Design Thinking

Validate your ideas and assumptions
Validate potential solutions with experimentation and data.
Solutions are a convergent exercise.
Define explicitly (write down):
● what customer problem you are solving
● when you will know you are successful
● why you are solving it
● how you will test your hypothesis.

Opportunity Solution Trees
Desired Outcome
See https://www.producttalk.org/2016/08/opportunity-solution-tree/

https://medium.com/ansarada-thinking/confessions-of-a-former-feature-factory-pm-74bd58496951

Features and Stories
Features deliver value to customers or solve customer
problems.
Features are outputs that must drive measurable outcomes.
● Release early and often to maximize learning velocity
● V1 rarely has the impact - iterate to success
● Build - Measure - Learn
● Keep going until you achieve the objective

Delivering the wrong feature faster still delivers
no value.

Product Vision
Goal Goal
Outcome
Opportunities are:
● Customer Problems
● Customer Pains
● Customer Gains
● Job to be Done
Get product teams to focus
on key opportunities.
Ideas
Solution
Feature
Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity
Outcome
Outcome Outcome
Business Impacts Principles/Values
Outcomes are measurable
changes in customer
behavior that will help you
achieve your goal. Focus
on 2-3 SMART outcomes
per goal.
Goals are the major
objectives we need to
achieve in order to reach
our product vision. Aim for
2-3 SMART goals at a time.
What is the vision for our
product in 5 years time?
Will that achieve our
business impacts? What
guiding principles, values
and guardrails do we want
teams to apply at all times?
What ideas do we want to
validate to solve the
opportunities? How can we
test these hypotheses cost
effectively/efficiently?
Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas
Strategy
Discovery
Delivery
Which ideas have we
validated as solutions to
customer problems that are
worth building?
Solution Solution Solution
Ideas
Solution
Feature Feature Feature Feature
Only build features to
production grade that have a
high likelihood of solving the
customer problem and
achieving our objectives.
Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story
Product
Leadership
focuses
here.
Use normal Scrum/SAFe for
delivery. Measure story
impact, learn, and then iterate
on them to create value.

Defining Product Management

Product Management
Business Impacts
Product Vision
Goals
Opportunity
Outcomes
Principles/Values
Strategy
Product
Leadership
Strategy
Ideas
Solutions
Features
Discovery
Product Discovery
Operational
Delivery
Stories
Measure Impacts
Product Delivery
Tactical

Executives
Delivery Teams
Builds trust and
accountability in
the team
Increases
motivation &
morale for
the team
Product Management

Cross-functional Product Teams
Product
Team
PM
UX
Dev
Dev
Dev
QE
Lead
Product Discovery Team
Delivery Team

ADAPT THE LEGACY ROADMAP

Instagram vs Reality

Roadmap vs Reality
https://www.aha.io/roadmapping/guide/product-roadmap

The Value of a Product Roadmap
● “Creating a product roadmap helps communicate direction and progress to internal teams and
external stakeholders. A product roadmap is a plan for how your product is going to meet a set of
business objectives”
Aha
● “The first purpose is because the management of the company wants to make sure that the teams
are working on the highest business value items first. The second purpose is because since they’re
trying to run a business, there are cases where they actually need to make date-based
commitments, and the roadmap is where they see and track those commitments.”
Svpg.com, Marty Cagan
● “A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that maps out the vision and direction of your
product offering over time. A product roadmap communicates the why and what behind what you’re
building.”
ProductPlan

The Value of a Roadmap

The Foundation of Communication
● A Tool for Strategy
○ Product Goals
○ Desired Outcomes
○ Plan for Discovery
● Now, Next, Future…
● A Tool for Status
○ Solutions
○ Features
○ Stories
● Sprints, Months,
Quarters...
Roadmap Release Plan

Product Vision
Goal Goal
Outcome
Ideas
Solution
Feature
Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity Opportunity
Outcome
Outcome Outcome
Business Impacts Principles/Values
Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas
Strategy
Discovery
Delivery
Solution Solution Solution
Ideas
Solution
Feature Feature Feature Feature
Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story
Product
Leadership
focuses
here.
Roadmap
Release
Plan

Example Roadmaps
It’s about the story you tell, not the tool.

Anatomy of an OBR
Goal
Double DAU
Goal
Go big in Europe
with 35% usage
Current (4Q2019) Next (1H 2020) Future
Expand deeper into EU
Enter Eastern European EU market by
1Q2020
Outcome Title
Customer behavior A changes from X%
to Y% by date Z.
EU Usage
Mobile worker DAU increased 30% in
EU by 28 Feb 2020
Vision: Be the #1 mobile workforce management application for hotel maintenance across the Americas and Europe.
2020 Goal: Be used daily by 4% of hotel maintenance crews in European target markets by July 30 2021.
Compliance Needs
Full GDPR compliance by 1Q2020
Increase Native Language Use
35% of all application usage is in
Portuguese, French or Spanish by end
2020
Integrations with A and B by 2022
Work in Your Language
Customers create a work order in their
native language within 5 min of app
download by 31 Dec 2019
Total Downloads
Daily app downloads up 80% by
1H2020
Daily Use
At least 80% of all app users manage at
least 5 work orders weekly.
Themes
Time horizons
Include your vision and Objectives

https://productcoalition.com/outcome-driven-product-roadmap-f705c49032b2

https://melissaperri.com/blog/2017/02/15/product-roadmaps

Recommended Reading

What can go wrong?
● No Product Strategy
● Top Down Outcome Setting
○ Outcomes and metrics are not negotiated
○ Outcomes unrealistic, nonspecific or not achievable
○ Misaligned leadership
○ Command and control (vs mission command)
● Team doesn’t yet know how to validate ideas
○ Start each day with data and measurement
○ Insufficient time to validate (guessing), or not time bound at all (spinning)
○ Features masquerading as outcomes
● Unintended consequences / conflicting OKRs
● Technology over customer value
● Value chain development

A roadmap is not a plan, a roadmap is a strategic
communication device.

Q&A

THANK YOU!

Kelsey Stevenson
Director of Product
Bitly
Thomas Vela
Consultant
Slalom
Jason Doherty
Solution Principal
Slalom
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