Creating Killer Product Roadmaps by Ratnesh Sharma at SVPMA Monthly Event June 2001

1. Product Roadmaps: lessons from the
trenches
Ratnesh Sharma
Director, Products
Covigo, Inc.
June 2001

2. Agenda
• Speaker Background
• Use and Importance of Roadmaps
• How to create effective Roadmaps
• Lessons learnt
• Q&A

3. Speaker PM Background
• Enterprise software focused
• Sun: Solaris 7
• Sun: Sun Clusters 2.2 and 3.0, Solaris Enterprise
Server 1.0
• Sun: NetDynamics 5
• iPlanet: NAS 4.0, iAS 6.0
• Covigo: Mobile Applications Server: Multiple Releases

4. Importance of Roadmaps
• Establish leadership and vision
• Useful to allocate resources
• Motivational tool for inter company
stakeholders
• Plan for executing corporate strategies and
direction
• Tool to get everyone on same page

5. Large Corporations
• Customer Retention and increase barriers to
switching
• Effective competitive signaling and positioning
mechanism
• Input and Audience: customers
• Lower Relative importance (smaller
scale/departmental level)
• Evolutionary
• Product packaging an effective component
• Market timing affected by external factors
• Longer time frames
• Rigid procedure oriented process.

6. Early Stage Company (in Early Market)
• Important aid in establishing company direction,
revenues etc.
• Effective Differentiation tool
• Audience: VC’s, Future Customers, Analysts
• Input: Internal focus (initially)
• Revolutionary
• Shorter time frames (six months)
• Market timing is critical
• Flexible process- easily adaptable to changing
technologies, market and business conditions
• Importance of executing on roadmap

7. The Roadmap Process
• Well defined strategy and business plan is key
input.
• Feedback from Markets, competition, technology
trends, analysts, sales, global trends
• Detailed competitive analysis.
• High level product roadmap and MRD. Established
release dates and themes
• Buy-in from engineering, marketing, sales
• Feedback from Analysts
• Sign off

8. Roadmap Process
• Big Company
• Bottom up process. Many steps before decision
maker approval
• Multiple committees and teams
• Longer
• Adherence to ‘Big Rules’
• Input from existing customers and sales
• BMFO (Building a Market Focused Organization)
process

9. Roadmap Process
• Startup in Early Market
• Initial roadmap based on strategy and business plan
• Two month MRD cycle (based on predefined target
markets). Visits to customers, subject experts, partners
etc. Research results in updated business plan
• Detailed competitive analysis.
• High level product roadmap. Feedback from analysts.
• One approach: known requirements, catching up,
leapfrogging the competition (revolutionary)
• Consensus reached in one meeting: CTO, Eng, Products,
Sales, Marketing
• Flexibility. Constantly evolve to support changing
company strategy. Initially inward focused.

10. Lessons Learnt
• Exposing roadmap information: risks vs
rewards
• Importance of keeping engineering and
sales in sync on a continuous basis
• Leveraging analysts for input
• Much tighter relationship with sales:
product features, product numbering,
release cycles etc.
• Hiring: A great team makes all the
difference
• Products as an effective differentiator