Essay · 10 min read

Product Roadmaps

Marty Cagan · Silicon Valley Product Group (Marty Cagan) Free Advanced

Cagan argues your job is to deliver outcomes, not to maintain a prioritized list of everyone's requests. That is the backbone of anchoring a no to the outcome you are chasing rather than to who shouted loudest. Read it to stop treating your roadmap as a request queue.

  • Commit to problems and outcomes, not a fixed list of features
  • A request spreadsheet quietly pushes in things users do not actually need
  • Frame the roadmap around the outcome so a no has a reason behind it
Open on svpg.com ↗

It answers 4 questions

  1. How do I say no to feature requests without losing customers?
  2. Every user interview gives me a different feature request. How do I turn messy feedback into a real prioritisation decision?
  3. How do I set a roadmap when half my revenue comes from one big customer who keeps asking for custom features?
  4. Should I share a public roadmap with my early users, or does that just create pressure and expectations I cannot meet?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The original, primary source where the RICE framework was introduced, cite this, not the SEO reposts. The clearest way to... Intercom Blog Article · ~12 min read RICE: Simple Prioritization for Product Managers Sean McBride
  3. The full book behind the essay, for when you want the system and not just the idea. It gives you the language of outcomes over... Melissa Perri (O'Reilly) Book · 200 pages Escaping the Build Trap Melissa Perri
  4. Basecamp's battle-tested, opinionated system for shipping meaningful work in fixed cycles without endless backlogs, a primary... Basecamp / 37signals Book · free online book Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters Ryan Singer
  5. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  6. Once you launch, feedback arrives scattered across email, calls, Slack, and support tickets, and it quietly disappears. Canny... Canny Tool · Free plan, paid tiers from $19/mo Canny: Customer Feedback Management Canny
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