Projecting your product's functional evolutions over a long period of time: now there's an idea that makes everyone happy (except perhaps the product teams 😂)!
On the face of it, there's nothing to write home about in terms of long-term product planning, except that :
- It is opposed to agile development
- It's a difficult exercise
- It is often reduced to a roadmap
Here's a topic that seemed perfectly appropriate as we enter a new year!
🎯 What's the point of long-term planning?
I see 3 main interests in this planning:
- Manage product investments more clearly
- Setting more ambitious goals
- Giving visibility to teams and users
The interest thus goes beyond the product team and clearly benefits the whole organization. The product team, for its part, gains in stature, ambition and makes stronger choices.
🔄 Is it possible to plan while remaining agile?
The problem is that a long-term commitment to product evolution is opposed to the iterative development logic that has proved its worth over the last 20 years. 😬
While it's a good idea to plan for the long term, you need to be particularly careful to keep your agility intact.
In my opinion, there are two imperfect solutions:
- Plan for the long term, warning of the uncertain nature of the plan
- Refuses to communicate a long-term plan to maintain the purity of its agile process
Note that in both cases, you can't do without acculturating your teams and customers to your development process.
While we agree that the value of long-term planning is strong, and that the cost of communication and acculturation is acceptable, achieving this long-term plan is no less difficult.
🌍 How to plan?
We've all experienced it when flying or on a map: zooming out has two immediate consequences:
- Making details disappear
- See further
This change in height and temporality will force the product team to make two essential adaptations:
- Synthesize by functional set : at this level of reflection, we can no longer resonate with the finesse of the backlog's functionalities, and we need to bring out functional sets. These sets will have the capacity to transform the product more profoundly than a disparate accumulation of functionalities.
- Steering by objective and impact : in this new timeframe, backlog functionalities become highly perishable. Planning an impact to be achieved will be much more robust, and the functional solution chosen will often be unpredictable.
These adaptations will provide greater clarity in product choices, with two immediate consequences:
- Link the product function's business objectives to concrete functional investments.
- Draw up a long-term product strategy.
📆 What's the difference between a roadmap and a product schedule?
These two planning tools cover a comparable time horizon and outline the main directions for future investment in the product.
There are, however, two essential differences in form and content:
- Basically, the roadmap is limited to investment in the product, whereas planning is intended to integrate all aspects of the product function: its organization, skills and processes.
- In terms of form, the roadmap is intended to be shared widely within the organization, and even beyond. The product schedule, on the other hand, is drawn up by the product team and discussed by the executive committee.
In a way, the roadmap can be seen as a sub-part of the product schedule.
In conclusion
Without a long-term plan, the risk is to have a less creative product team that will invest iteration after iteration in heterogeneous features with a good short-term return, but whose long-term impact will be weaker.
Long-term planning is therefore an indispensable tool for the product function, enabling it to link its business objectives to a concrete investment strategy in the product and in the product team.
I hope you found this last article of 2024 interesting. I take this opportunity to wish you a very happy 2025! 🤗🎉