Product roadmaps work a lot better when people feel their ideas are on the map

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A product roadmap – even a good one – doesn’t work very well if the people whose work it applies to feel that their point of view has been ignored.  At least that was the case at Heatcraft Refrigeration Products, a well-established manufacturing company whose earlier attempts at product roadmapping excluded a number of key players.  Product Manager Tameka Brown (Linkedin Profile) talks about how the company is now taking a different approach.  

By Peter Longini

With four leading brands of commercial cooling equipment in its product line, Heatcraft Refrigeration Products, a Georgia-based maker of refrigeration units for supermarkets, restaurants, hospitals, warehouses, and data centers, has had a major presence in its markets for decades.  In fact, two of its brands trace their histories back to 1930s or earlier.  So long-term planning is nothing new there.

But while the technologies, operations, and administrative arrangements of its various brands were integrated years ago, collaboration and communication among its different functional areas was often lacking.  And even though the company had employed various product roadmapping techniques to help plan its way forward, the roadmaps’ buy-in within the organization had been limited.

“The marketing team created our roadmap last year,” Product Manager Tameka Brown recalled recently.  “The problem is that we didn’t have other functions involved when we were making decisions about what was happening in the industry, or the market.  We had a couple of very exclusive sessions where the marketing team defined or made decisions about where we should innovate and what the product roadmap should include.  Then we presented that to the organization.  It wasn’t really getting their input.  It was more: Okay, here’s what we are doing for the next five years.”

“People felt: ‘these guys have already decided what we’re going to do.  You haven’t included me in the decision-making process.’  So there was a lack of buy-in and acceptance because of the way that we were actually creating the roadmap.

The PSN Toolkit

Before being hired by Heatcraft Refrigeration Products last year, Brown had worked as an innovation capabilities leader at Kimberly-Clark, where she employed an alternative approach to roadmapping – one developed and taught by the Product Strategy Network.  That approach, which synthesizes effective product roadmapping practices from scores of other organizations, provides a highly collaborative process which can be readily adapted to different circumstances. 

“Because of the way this process is structured, it allowed for more collaboration,” she said.  “All the functional groups provide input, and then you make decisions together.  It’s not a situation where the marketing team’s going to go off to create a roadmap.  It’s more: Let’s get the sales folks in.  Everybody’s going to be part of the decision-making.  It allows for buy-in along the way.  You’re not trying to sell this to the people that should have been providing input from the outset.

Expanded Collaboration

“What we’re trying to do is add structure, add traceability by documenting our decision-making steps,” she said.  “Hopefully in that process, we’ll have more collaboration and more buy-in along the way, which will help drive more momentum with roadmaps at the end.”

“This process allows for more collaboration because of the way it is structured.  Everybody’s functional group provides input, and then you make decisions together.  It’s: Let’s get the sales folks in, let’s get everybody.  We’re going to document all these inputs.  And everybody’s going to be part of the decision-making.  That’s what the process brings.

“We’re still going to come up with a roadmap.  We came up with one last year.  It’s just the way we go about creating it and making decisions. That’s the only difference.” 

Stay Tuned

After less than a year on the job, Brown – whose responsibilities also include project management – isn’t completely sure of the pathway there.  “We haven’t done a roadmap using this process yet,” she acknowledged.  “I don’t know how smoothly it’s going to go.  I think there are going to be some bumps; there were some bumps in the training.  So there will probably be some bumps in the market needs and opportunities session.  Introducing change is always a challenge.”

However the goal of getting each of the company’s functions pointed in the same direction is critical.  “My goal is to get everyone aligned on the whole process in general, what’s important, what’s not important,” she said.  There are a lot of different perspectives on where the company’s going.”

At least for now, the process is on track.  “The five-year vision will be complete in May,” she reported.  “And we’re looking to complete the product layer by March, so we’ll understand what innovations we can potentially bring to the market and then complete the technology investment and the action plan by May.  We’ve broken out the process into those four increments to define what the business direction will be.”

She’s also optimistic about the outcome.  “I think the process makes it simple to implement in any organization.  I’ve used it.  I implemented it in a healthcare organization in a very large corporation.  Or it can be used here in a refrigeration company.  It’s interesting that you can apply same process whether you’re in a large organization or a small organization,” Brown said. 

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Peter Longini is the Managing Editor
for Inside Product Strategy™.

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