With this book I want to make life easier for Product Owners and Product Managers by bringing to them guides and practical advice based on modern Lean Product Management techniques.

Based on our own experience we know Lean Startup can be of great help to modern Product Management, however many Product Managers struggle to figure out how to put in practice in their context such powerful principles and techniques.

The purpose of product discovery is to outlearn your competition.

With this book I want to help you getting started with product discovery at your organization.

Most people get excited when they first hear about our Product Discovery framework and are eager to try it. But the framework is the least important thing, what really matters is the mentality of the people around the product team.

Experience tells us that most companies struggle to put into practice these powerful principles and techniques in their context.

That’s the reason we developed the FAST method for effectively introducing Product Discovery in organizations.

This book is meant for companies developing software-based products or using software as an enabler of their product or service: market-facing B2B or B2C digital products and services, software products for internal use or embedded software.

In preparation for our upcoming book on Product Strategy we have decided to launch this book to explain what strategy is and why is so important right now.

Strategy crafting in most organizations nowadays is still a wishful thinking process. We believe that strategy formulation can be significantly improved.

To this extent we wrote this book with the purpose of showing you what a bad strategy looks like, provide you with our decalogue of a good strategy and some useful tools and real-world examples.

The goal of good strategy is to fundamentally reinvent the existing competitive space or invent an entirely new competitive space in ways that delight customers and discourage competitors. Sustainable and profitable growth is the product of anticipation. In turn, in order to be able to anticipate you must learn to see.

The future does not belong to those who own a crystal ball, but to those who are willing to challenge the boundaries, assumptions and constraints of their industries and markets.

The goal is not to predict the future and make a plan to achieve it, but to imagine a future made possible by changes in technology, lifestyle, work style, regulation, global geopolitics and so on and iteratively and incrementally build capabilities and exploit opportunities as future unfolds.

This book and the next that will follow start with a fundamental premise based on our observation of the business world in last 20 years: we reached the limits of operational effectiveness. Business agility is no longer a strategic advantage, if it ever was. Getting a product to market faster, improving quality and responding to market changes quickly is not enough.

Pursuing incremental advantages while competitors are fundamentally reinventing the business landscape is not very wise.

On the other hand, doing the wrong thing very fast and nimble will send your business over the cliff.

This book is not about survival or resilience, instead we want you to think about growth and getting ahead.

Many companies have already done much of the hard work of catching up on cost, quality, speed, and flexibility. Now they are turning their attention to growth.

This book is about strategy. The intelligent adaptation over an extended period of time in the face of discouraging uncertainty. The domain of entrepreneurs not planners.

The book begins with the seven capital sins of strategy, where we explain the main mistakes many companies make when defining their strategies.

From there we jump into the second chapter, where we describe the decalogue of a good strategy. We explore every point of the decalogue with great detail and provide examples so you can grasp the concepts and put them into practice in your context.

Afterwards we provide you with a catalog of the main strategic design tools for the modern company, and we finish the guide with a strategy assessment that you can use to evaluate your company’s strategic capabilities.

As a product professional you will agree with me that product roadmaps can easily become a nightmare and they are the source of many of your headaches at work.

Perhaps you think you are using roadmaps wrongly or they are just a waste of time and a continuous source of arguments. But bear with me, Product Roadmaps serve a purpose.

Product roadmaps are central to product management work. But every week I hear how product managers still struggle with planning, creating, and communicating a compelling roadmap.

The Product Roadmap sits in the interface between product strategy and execution. It provides visibility, alignment, focus, and it is a communication tool. However, you cannot achieve the benefits of product roadmapping unless you do certain things properly.

This book is based on my experience working with Product Roadmaps in different organizations and it will provide you with a practical approach to introduce (or improve) product roadmapping into your product organization.

After working with many product teams, I learned that there is no single best way to roadmap. Because there are so many different types of products, companies and product managers, every roadmap is different.

As a product professional you must be clear about the purpose of product roadmaps: To clearly articulate where you’re headed, and to show your strategy to your stakeholders in a compelling way.

In this book we’ll talk about product roadmaps from two perspectives:

• The process of discovering, designing, and building the roadmap
• The continuous process of managing, updating, and evolving the roadmap.

You’ll learn:

• Product roadmap fundamentals
• Roadmap as a strategic tool
• How to design your roadmap
• How to manage your roadmap
• How to introduce and sell product roadmaps in your organization
• How to get started with product roadmapping, or relaunch your product roadmap
• How to improve product roadmapping with roadmap metrics

Why this Book?

The product roadmap is a very effective and necessary strategic tool, but in many cases its implementation is poor and causes friction and frustration.

The roadmap allows us to connect the product strategy and objectives with delivery in an agile and light way.

Its correct implementation goes far beyond a simple timeline with features. For that reason, I have written this practical book based on experience.

Here you can find everything you need to improve the product roadmap in your organization or to start from scratch.

This book is meant for companies developing software-based products or using software as an enabler of their product or service: market-facing B2B or B2C digital products and services, software products for internal use or embedded software.

Structure of the Book

The book is structured in five sections of three chapters each.

The first section is the most theoretical. But even though it is an eminently practical book, I think it is essential to start by exploring the product mindset and understanding the key role the roadmap plays and how it fits into the strategic fabric of the product organization.

In the second section we explore the fundamentals of the product roadmap from its fit into the strategic gear, the basic principles, and the benefits it brings to the modern product organization.

The third block is devoted to the actual artifact design, with a special emphasis on themes (or initiatives) and the most common design mistakes.

The fourth block is dedicated to roadmap management, including metrics to assess the effectiveness and performance of the roadmap. An aspect that in my opinion is given very little attention and is as important as a good design.

To finish, I offer you a method to effectively introduce the practice of product roadmapping in your organization, including an assessment to evaluate the current situation.

Enjoy!