Fabian Vandenreydt

Garbage in, garbage out. No magic tool will ever make a bad idea or a bad process or a poor team, great. So soend enough time to discuss how the product roadmap implement the product vision for your key stakeholders one step at a time, visualize the benefits for each customer segment, iterate…. And avoid one niche tool for each sub-process… too many tools kill efficiency… focus on the right data model first

Sometimes the problem you want to solve is inertia, ie, an existing way a client has been solving a problem for a long time… they might not feel the urgency of solving it. Or some people might benefit from the status quo (in most case, middle management). To surface the problem and propose a solution, you might have to go one or two levels up in the hierarchy, and position it strategically (eg, productivity gains, more agility). Addressing the direct users might not be sufficient for incumbent processes

Test scripts and scenarios matter. For complex, business specific, niche B2B apps, it can be overwhelming for the software engineering teamro perfom quality unit tests without either a decent understanding of the underlying business at hand and without smart test scripts/scenarios. The role of the product management team is key here as they are best placed to write these. The better the unit tests within each sprint, the easier and faster the QA and acxeptance testing will be …

Tracking delivery milestones/quality vs tracking realized/unrealized benefits are two different things. Tools abound for the former; defining and monitoring KPIs for the latter is more difficult: you have to link customer stories/features to a benefit the customer is happy to pay for (and reinforczs your USP)….that’s where the subtle role difference is between a product mannager and a product owner, if you ask me

A product vision should always originate in a market space or customer secment you want to serve better than incumbents or competitors. Market and customer roadmaps (as well as regulatory mandatory changed, especially for B2B) should drive your product roadmaps. Any visual tool that makes these linkages visible for your internal and external stakeholders is a good one. Avoid complicated product vision. Make your promise clear and time-bound. So not over engineer product roadmaps… they will need to be flexible enougg to adapt to market and customer conditions

For regulated companies, geo-political and regulatory obligations will weigh heavily on where your workforce physically is. Overseers/regulators might not want critical staff to be based in geo-politically sensitive countries, and might ask you to address this asap. So, when considering near- or off-shoring, as a regulated company, your strategic workforce plan should integrate these considerations to address/mitigate this risk