How to Make Your Roadmap Agile With the Right Tools

Manufacturing is a complex, time-consuming operation involving many people, systems, and tools to keep operations running smoothly. The right software can help keep those operations running smoothly. Product roadmaps that maximize efficiency while keeping customer needs and market trends top-of-mind give a competitive advantage against the competition, but what about ongoing management of those roadmaps? Manufacturers that invest in the right systems will be better equipped to build agility into their product management strategy.  

More simply put, leveraging the right tools for your product management roadmap is key if you are looking to implement a manufacturing methodology that aims to increase productivity, keep up with market demands, refine your production process, and master a customer-focused product design–all within a highly competitive environment. 

Create Transparency Across the Organization

In the age of creating a knowledge culture with innovative information technology, data sharing, workflows, and resources have never been more accessible. Managing product development requires strategic communications across every department that touches the product as it is built from conception to launch, which is why effectively managing product roadmaps is key to seamless operations. 

How does the right tool make a difference? Roadmapping your entire product portfolio on one easy-to-use dashboard lets everyone access the same data. It also allows all stakeholders to see product goals and milestones in one place and respond quickly from department to department with the most accurate information on-hand and in real time. 

With product roadmap management software such as Gocious, everyone from product engineers and designers to executives can know where a product line sits and where there is room for improvement or adjustments along the way. 

Align Your Roadmap to Your Product Goals

When all stakeholders know the primary goals of a new product, they can make better decisions faster. This results in a more agile approach to your product’s strategic manufacturing plan. Using a central dashboard to map out milestones for each product makes it easy to make informed product decisions. For example, teams can more easily determine how to design a product, market the product, and track customized KPIs to inform the decision-making process for products that follow. 

Know What the Customer Truly Values

An agile product roadmap management system creates an opportunity for people to work closely with Customer Success Teams, who conduct research into what customers need and want and provide feedback to the company. Access to this feedback gives product engineers and team members across all other departments an understanding of how to align product features to what customers deem to be valuable in a product.

For example, many customers demand a waste-free product, often turned off by products that contain several pieces or functionalities that they deem unnecessary and are not willing to pay more money for. This type of waste is a problem that can be solved by prioritizing lean manufacturing within your product roadmap. Ensuring that each product in development for launch minimizes waste while maximizing value for the customer. 

Use Product Roadmap Management Software

Using software built for roadmap management means you can more easily oversee, analyze, and manage your roadmaps in one central location. Tools, such as Gocious, can help you streamline communications, decrease lead time with clear product goals, and master your manufacturing process. How is this done? By using product roadmap management features, such as: 

• A Product Portfolio Roadmap to plan and track each product line accurately.
• Competitive Analysis that you can leverage through a shared library of competitor products. 
• A Product Line Dashboard where you can use an intuitive user experience to create and apply new features to your product lines within minutes. 
• Analytics and Visualization tools that illustrate how product features progress from one product to another and how their specifications compare within the market. 
• A Product Score that uses a 10-point weighted score to manage complexity and keep the guesswork out of the product development process.  
• A Shared Feature Library for features that can be reused and modelled for multiple product lines quickly and efficiently. 
• Collaboration across marketing, engineering, and product teams within one software to create a more agile product development process.  
• Import spreadsheets into Gocious and Export software report in PDF and Excel formats right from your product roadmap management dashboard.  

Know How Your Products Compare to Each Other

Gocious’s Product Score compares and ranks products based on features and performance, so engineering and product teams know where to make adjustments within different product lines. You can use this tool to set targets for each product to meet, both internally and externally, which reduces guesswork and gives quantitative insight into whether such targets are met or not. 

Know How Your Product Lines are Performing in Their Markets

A sure way to maintain an agile product roadmap is by regularly reviewing your Product Line Dashboard. This is where you can see all your products in each product line, along with the key metrics of their performance, in one place. 

As a manufacturer, you need to know which features are common, unique, standard, or optional for each product to create the best user experience across the board. This dashboard allows you to compare product lines and their features quickly and efficiently so you can determine which ones are most successful and why. 

Pinpoint Overlapping and Compatible Product Features

Make decisions quickly and accurately when substituting parts and keeping or changing specific features by taking advantage of Gocious’s Shared Feature Library. This valuable resource shows all the products using the same components or elements to allow for convenient planning and adjustments across product lines. 

Having all of your product features in one place gives everyone on your team an opportunity to input their data into one easily accessible location so everyone can make decisions and facilitate adjustments quickly for a smooth manufacturing model. 

Monitor and Analyze Your Entire Portfolio 

Take a high-level look at all the products in your portfolio on the Product Portfolio Overview, which is a handy dashboard that highlights essential details of each product line. In this view, you can see trends, gaps, and opportunities to improve products faster and clearer along the supply chain with easy-to-understand visuals rather than through a pile of scrambled spreadsheet data. 

Supporting Agile Manufacturing With Powerful PRM Software

Gocious is redefining the manufacturing process by giving companies access to an all-encompassing, powerful product roadmap management software. The features within Gocious support agile manufacturing and product development excellence.

Discover how Gocious can help you minimize waste, maximize productivity, and make the most of cross-team collaboration for your next new product. If you are ready to take your manufacturing to the next level, book a demo with our team.