Today’s product manufacturing industry is comprised of companies that manufacture a wide range of products. Companies often employ product roadmap management software as an essential tool that is designed to manage multiple product lines effectively. Transparency, clarity, and communication are greatly improved by using visual roadmaps, leading to a more productive and streamlined product development process.
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Having a standard way of communicating product roadmaps and having a central place for all stakeholders to access them can make it easy for teams to stay aware or participate in providing feedback.
Product roadmap software in addition to the above can promote better collaboration. Collecting the data for the roadmap including the status of each product and their dependent components can be provided either automatically or by individuals across the organization but collected in one place. Using version control or integrations with other software such as project management systems enables active collaboration to keep the roadmaps up to date and in one place. More importantly by creating a place to collect data, the roadmap software can then visualize them in various forms to provide personalized or contextual perspectives of the same data.
Visual Roadmaps for Improved Clarity
A visual product roadmaps promotes a better understanding of the product goals, product processes, performance projections, statistics, and feature updates related to a particular product. This is ideal for sharing information across your product teams and with members who may be less tech-savvy.
Roadmap Access Across Product Teams
Your product teams will each have access to inputting, editing, and viewing data. A product manager can assign different levels of access to different departments depending on their needs. All updates are made in real-time ensuring that all information held in the roadmap is the most current and up-to-date.
Improved Communication Between Product Teams
Communication is improved when everyone has access to the same reports. Consistent and up-to-date information reduces any miscommunication mishaps and limits the problem of multiple teams working on the same task. Productivity during meetings is also enhanced as teams can apprise themselves of any new data and developments by checking the reports ahead of time.
Cut Through the Data to See What’s Essential
When it comes to sharing data with your product teams, one thing you will want to avoid is irrelevant information. Gocious product roadmapping software offers the advantage of providing an unlimited number of views and metrics to better understand your product line.
- A high-level view to better understand the product line
- A hyper-focused view to focus on a specific product
- Key performance indicators as a way to highlight performance outcomes and statistics
- Comparative and competitive analysis for quantitative insights
This data is relevant for the product manager to guide product development and make important product decisions. Key performance Indicators are useful as they provide quantitative data which can be used to make important product decisions and prioritize features.
Quantitative Data For Decision Making
When customer feedback suggests the addition of a new feature, tools such as the comparative analysis tool are useful to gain insights and quantitive data on how the proposed change affects costs and sales projections.
Tailor Your Information to Your Audience
When it comes to having meetings with different departments, tailoring information to suit a specific product team is a more effective use of time and promotes increased productivity. While the engineering or design department may need to focus on product features and other dependencies, the sales department will benefit from key performance indicators based on sales and projected revenues.
Collaborate More Closely on Product Ideas
While a product manager decides which products will fulfill the goals and vision of the company, he relies on the expertise of his product teams for product ideas and innovation. Providing a platform where everyone can access the same information promotes a valuable method of communication.
Cross-Collaboration for Better Products
Cross-collaboration between product teams is vital to promote new product ideas and create better products. For example, the customer success team provides invaluable customer feedback that can guide how a product should be further developed. By opening these lines of communication, the engineering and design teams can better resolve customer concerns and create higher-value products. Cross-collaboration between engineering and design departments will also ensure that a product's functionality will not affect the important aesthetics of the product.
Cross-Collaboration for Increased Productivity
Providing a visual roadmap to articulate the vision and goals of the company ensures that everyone is on the same page and understands the direction the company is working towards. Promoting easy communication and cross-collaboration has the added advantage of increasing productivity, improving relationships, and boosting the morale of team members.
Save Time with Less Redundancy
When your product teams have access to a clear, concise product roadmap, they can use their time more effectively to focus on their tasks. Product roadmap tools can be employed to promote transparency and receive clarity on a number of levels.
Understand the Product Goals
By understanding what the product aims to achieve for the company, your product teams can work on developing each aspect of the product in a unified manner.
Outcome Focused Roadmap
All products are developed to fulfill a specific need of the customer. By developing a roadmap that also focuses on the desired outcome for the consumer, your product teams are able to work more creatively to meet those goals and spark innovation.
Product Timelines
Communicating clear timelines that define the complete product development process keeps the process moving forward smoothly. This is particularly important in discrete product manufacturing where multiple components are used to create a single product. Any delay in the manufacture of a single component will adversely affect the entire product timeline which may prove costly in the long run. A well-defined product roadmap will also allow agile teams to pivot quickly when needed to accommodate any problems or unexpected delays.
Key Performance Indicators
Key performance indicators are useful to relay how a product is performing in the market. How does the performance compare to the expectations? Which products are performing well and which are not? Product Roadmap software is a useful tool to present these results and allows comparison between products. By analyzing these important metrics using quantitative data, a product manager can make quick and informed decisions about changes to the product line.
Develop a Stronger Team
The globalized nature of product manufacturing means that a single organization building several products has operations in multiple countries around the globe. In order to manage the complexity of tasks involved, a product manager must be able to effectively synchronize operations with all of his product teams.
Product Roadmap tools provide an invaluable means through which multiple teams can collaborate and communicate effectively regardless of their location. The ability to view the latest updates, and communicate information in real-time is ideal for teams working in remote locations.
The collaborative features of product roadmap management software also help to develop the relationships between product managers and their teams.
Product Roadmap Management Software
Your visual product roadmap is a vital feature of the product development process. By providing a single source of truth that all of your stakeholders can rely on, you promote transparency and clarity across the organization. Book your free demo today, to see how Gocious can help you meet your product goals more effectively.
