In this Topical Zoom episode of The Design Your Thinking Podcast, I speak with Roman Pichler who is a product management expert specialised in digital products, about Product Strategy and Roadmaps.

Who is Roman Pichler?

Roman Pichler is a product management expert specialised in digital products. He has 15 years experience in teaching product managers and product owners, and in helping companies improve their product management capabilities.

Roman is the author of the books Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age and Agile Product Management with Scrum, and he writes a popular blog for product professionals.

As the founder and director of Pichler Consulting, Roman looks after the company’s products and services. This keeps his product management practice fresh and allows him to experiment with new ideas. Roman is based in Wendover near London in the United Kingdom.

What will you learn about Product Strategy and Roadmaps?

1. Product Strategy
   • What were the drivers that made you write a book on Product strategy and specifically for the digital age?
   • What are the biggest mistakes in the area of Product strategy that you see Product managers, founders and startups make?
     • What do you see as a waste of time?
   • How does Innovation Strategy relate to Product strategy?
   • What are the right questions PMs should ask or seek to get answers to, to understand the Product strategy?
   • How can Product organizations best internalise their Product strategy to stand the test of personnel transitions and time?
2. Product Roadmap
   • Dependency between the Product strategy and Roadmap. Is this bidirectional?
   • What are the characteristics of a good, tangible Roadmap?
   • Sometimes Product strategy can be addressed by multiple variants of the actual product. Desktop and mobile is a practical case. How do roadmaps play a role here? Would they be multiple roadmaps? How can Product teams maintain integrity of these roadmaps as time goes by?

Useful Links

• Roman Pichler’s website and blog – romanpichler.com
• Article: Managing Your Innovation Portfolio by Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff
•  Books
  • Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age by Roman Pichler
  • Agile Product Management with Scrum by Roman Pichler
• Related Episodes
  • DYT 020 : Product Stakeholders and the Product Master Plan with Karthik
  • DYT 019 : Organizational Anthropology and Product Management with Rich Mironov