Why are Feature Driven Roadmaps not ideal for product teams?
Product Yogi | Featureless Roadmap Series
Roadmap helps you frame the product strategy and communicate the story you want to tell to your stakeholders (internal or external) and there is no story with features. A roadmap crammed with ground-level details loses sight of the big-picture strategy.
What are Feature Driven Roadmaps?
Feature-driven roadmaps, despite their popularity, are strategic plans that prioritize and outline the development of specific product features over time. However, their rigid and myopic nature can lead to a neglect of overall product strategy and user experience, prioritize short-term gains over long-term goals, hinder adaptability to changing market dynamics, and discourage innovation and experimentation. As a result, feature-driven roadmaps may not be the most effective tool for product development and may hinder a company's ability to deliver value to customers and remain competitive in the long run.
As a product manager, it's important to understand the limitations of feature-driven roadmaps. While roadmaps can help communicate a product's story, relying solely on features can obscure the big-picture strategy and hinder innovation.
If as product team you use a feature-driven roadmap for your product strategy you face the risk of your product rapidly shifting from “solving customer problems” to becoming a feature-factory.
Here's why feature-driven roadmaps may not be the best tool for product teams:
Neglecting the Problem: Roadmaps packed with features may prioritize building things without considering if they truly solve customer problems or understanding the root causes. It's essential to ask "why" a problem exists before committing to a feature-heavy roadmap.
Becoming a Feature Factory: Technology and customer needs are constantly evolving, making it challenging to lock in a fixed strategy. Feature-driven roadmaps can lead to a rapid shift from solving customer problems to simply churning out features. This approach limits learning, value creation, and innovation.
Output vs. Outcome Focus: Feature-heavy roadmaps tend to emphasize output rather than the desired outcomes. Focusing solely on delivering features can hinder creativity, prevent exploring alternative solutions, and turn product managers into mere order-takers.
Competitive Pressure: Relying on features can tempt product teams to prioritize keeping up with competitors rather than addressing customers' true needs. This approach falls short of delivering a product that effectively solves customer problems.
Feature-based roadmaps may be suitable under the following circumstances only:
Your product is just getting started. The Founders or Head of Product or Product Manager comes up with what to do; then, you immediately begin to create a list of features.
Requirements are firm and necessitate a product development schedule.
Feature releases are time-bounded.