With all of the Product Management roles I've held, it's been tough to get the Product Roadmap process just right. Employees and clients want to see the roadmap, and once a quarter might not be enough; some people don't know what to expect with a feature that's listed on the roadmap; others don't understand what goals each of the features or themes align with. I've tried several ways to do this in the past with no luck - and then recently, my boss and I came up with something great The Product Brief!
A Product Brief is a stable, widely shared, "one-page" document describing the goals and benefits of a feature as well as the scope of a project.
The Product Brief is broken into 6 sections. (How to write a product brief:)
- Release Notes Summary: Describe the project as if writing release notes or a short press release. What are the key features? Why are they exciting? What is the benefit? (Like at amazon.com; here's a suggestion)
- User Problem Statement(s): What problems are we trying to solve? Be sure to define which users these problems effect as precisely as possible.
- Project Rationale: Why should this project be a priority? How does it drive revenue, cost reductions or customer-happiness? What research have we done? How wide-spread is the problem?
- Project Scope and Scale: What's in and what's out?
- Measuring Success: How do we measure success? How will we know when we are successful?
- Dependencies: Do customers need to upgrade? Are other features dependent on this one?What do we need from partners? What do we need outside of engineering?
- Key Links: Links to requirements documentation, wireframes/mock-ups, research, etc.
What do you use to community each of the features on your roadmap? Do you give your current customer a detailed view of what's coming? Do you think the Product Brief could be helpful in your organization?
References:
- http://www.deviant9studios.com/blog/?p=474
- http://productdesignmanagement.com/how-to-write-a-product-brief/
- http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/03/7-basics-to-create-a-good-design-brief/
- http://justcreative.com/2008/09/26/how-to-write-an-effective-design-brief/
- https://designschool.canva.com/blog/effective-design-brief/