Hi Franziska,

You’re welcome and thank you for your feedback and suggestion. The format you suggest looks interesting, and I recommend that you formulate product goals in whichever way works best for the person in charge of the product, the stakeholders, and development team(s). Personally, I like to keep things as simple and easy to understand as possible.

Regarding assumptions and vanity metrics, bear in mind that the content of a product roadmap is based on a validated product strategy in my model. The product goals are therefore derived from or constrained by validated needs and business goals.

Hope this helps!

Many thanks for this great article, including your updated version of the GO Product Roadmap! With regard to the question of a compound product goal (with a user part and a business part): How do you feel about phrasing the Product Goal in a way that both clarifies and strengthens the aspect of connecting business value and user value? After all, we probably have an implicit but critical hypothesis/assumption about this connection. Using your example, a basic format could be something like this:

1. (Providing value by) helping users understand their eating habits (will lead to) ==> an initial user base (business value).
2. (Providing value by) helping users improve their eating habits (will lead to) ==> a growth in user base (business value).
3. (Providing value by) helping users get fitter (will lead to) ==> generation of revenue through in-app purchases (business value).

Not only would this be quite in line with the Scrum Guide 😉 asking us to “focus on one objective at a time”, and support the agile spirit of putting user value at the center. It may also reduce the risk of pursuing vanity metrics with regard to business value – and the waste that goes along with them. I also feel that a connective phrasing like this – especially of the third product goal – might give valuable food for thought about the “mechanics” (“engage” in getting fitter?) we assume behind the connection between providing user value and generating business value (in the end, no less than our business model?).

What do you think?

Best regards
Franziska

You’re welcome Christian and thank you for your feedback. I am glad that you found the article helpful!

You’re welcome Alejandro and thank you for your feedback. I am glad that you found the article helpful.

Thank you for your feedback Julio. It’s great to hear that you liked the article and podcast episode.

Thank you Chris for sharing your feedback and the approach you use to derive a product feature. I am glad that you found the article helpful!

Very nice article (and podcast). Thank YOU very much. This is very useful to me!
I particularly like, agree, and use the approach you mention about pairing our Backlogs (especially the Portfolio Backlog) to a corresponding Roadmap. This something I typically ask the Product Owners / Managers to do, by working on the Roadmap first, before even using our agile work item tracking tool to capture all this.
I especially liked the part about integrating the Product Goal into the Roadmap the way you propose. I have never done this (at least not explicitly) but I agree with you, and think capturing it this way is valuable.

I’m a fan of your work. Please keep up with these articles.
Julio.