Fixing roadmap misalignments with your CPO
Fostering alignment when your CPO asks for a change in the roadmap
What would you do if your CPO tells you that the priorities on your roadmap are not ok?
I’ve been there many times and I believe the way PMs align with the upper management is crucial to avoid these misalignments.
The way I’ve tackled this particular issues is:
Communicating with your immediate boss to make sure (s)he is aware of it. If not, it means you have a bigger issue.
Try to understand the rationale behind “the priorities in your roadmap are not ok”
When chatting with the CPO on a product sync, I came to know that he thought the use cases we were addressing with one particular feature were not as important as other ones.
As soon as I clarified the main use case, he understood and the wrong priorities became an anecdote - we ended up changing some things but it was for another reason.
This is the structure I’m going to use to document initiatives in the roadmap from now on:
What are the takeaways from this short but intense interaction?
Seek to understand what is the representation that can resonate with the upper management. Keep in mind that the VP of Product / CPO manage a broader scope compare to an IC. They might not necessary know every detail as you know about your roadmap.
Force to document everything in the tool you’re using. It’s your responsibility as a PM to refer back to the tool you use to communicate your roadmap. Avoid the temptation to create multiple visualisations of the same thing.
Document your decisions in a journal so you can close the loop after you made the decision of changing your roadmap. That’s a great asset to use in your post-mortem and retrospectives to keep sharpening your product intuition.