Common Mistakes Product Managers Make in Their Roadmaps

Product management is challenging, that's for sure. You've got a big job—keeping products on track, making presentations, updating data, maintaining company goals and product strategies, and so on. It can quickly become difficult to stay organized. The right tools can help make the job easier. The best product roadmaps help minimize errors and streamline product development. We want you to optimize your product roadmap to create as much success as possible. Here are some common mistakes product managers make in their roadmaps so you know what to avoid.

Not Aligning the Roadmap to the Company Goals

Your company goals are what should lead your product decisions. You need to be able to communicate those goals to your teams and keep them at the forefront of every product decision. Your roadmap is your tool to communicate the direction of that product alongside other products in the brand or market. 

We believe your roadmap is essential to keep you on track and accountable. When it serves as a shared source of truth for your teams and clearly maps out the milestones and dependencies all stakeholders need to know, you can make informed choices and be more agile.

Not Sharing the Product Strategy With Teams

Communication is important in product development. When you work with multiple teams in different locations, having a communication system is essential for decision-making and coordination. When communication gets out of order, things can become disorganized very quickly. 

Your product strategy shouldn't be a secret; it should be shared with your development teams. Everyone needs to know the strategy to reach the product goals. You can do this by keeping your core product strategy in a centralized, easily accessible location. The right tools, software, and a commitment to transparency can make it easier to collaborate between teams, no matter their location. 

Not Taking Advantage of Cross-Functional Collaborations

A product manager who doesn't value teamwork is a product manager who misses out on valuable input from other team members. The best breakthroughs in product development happen with expert feedback and collaborations. There is much value in the minds of others. Everyone thinks differently, and when product managers listen to other voices, they might find that the exact idea they've been looking for comes from someone they didn't expect. 

Cross-collaborations can be encouraged through the right tools. Scheduling meetings, granting access to tools, and ensuring there is one central source of truth can all help keep your teams connected and informed. Utilizing the cloud can increase transparency and enable sharing of all documents, data, and reports. Clear organization also makes it easy to find materials.

Assuming Everyone Has Access to the Same Information

When managing a precise and detail-oriented process like product development, keeping all information up to date is essential. Building on cross-collaborations, it's also important to ensure everyone has access to the same information. Information often gets lost when managers assume everyone has what they need without checking in to verify.

Missing important memos for a single team can set everyone back and create a mess for the product manager to untangle. With all the moving pieces in your company, it's essential to establish communication systems that avoid silos and keep everyone updated. 

The best way to prevent information silos is to keep one shared source of truth for data. Using software for product management can help make this easier to manage by offering communication channels and secure cloud services. 

Spending Too Much Time on Presentation Prep

Your finance team will require a different presentation than your sales and marketing team, yet too many product managers struggle with time-consuming presentation preparation. The most common obstacle is organizing and presenting information in ways the meeting audience will understand. 

There are presentation tools and product roadmapping software that can help make presentation organization simpler by organizing your data in various layouts. Clear visuals and customized data make it easier present information to various groups, especially in meetings featuring more than one team representative. Plus, when you create one source of truth for product planning, analysis, and performance, all product teams can come to meetings and presentations with the goals of the company and product lines already in mind.

Not Using the Right Tools

Product managers often use a variety of tools that don't integrate with each other or have limited features for managing large portfolios on varying timelines. As a product manager, you deserve to use the tools that make your job easier rather than harder. Trying to manage information sharing with your teams, tracking version control, and comparing product lines doesn't need to cause a headache when you have software designed just for you and all your responsibilities. Just as a craftsman needs the right tools to create their best work, using product roadmap management tools can help you work better, faster, and with less stress.

When selecting the right product management tools, it's important to select one that is easy to get started with, has reliable customer support, and can integrate with other platforms your company is already using. The purpose of a product roadmap tool is to connect your stakeholders, make automatically updated data accessible anywhere your company operates, and clearly display the roadmap for each product, no matter how complex the product or lengthy the timeline is. The leading manufacturing companies in the United States are turning to product roadmap management software as their solution. 

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Book your free demo to see how Gocious PRM Software can work for your company. Here at Gocious our mission is to provide product managers with software that helps them create great products. Book a live demo to see the benefits of our software.