The Ockham Bugle - 8/4/22
This week: rambling on roadmaps; a couple of interesting bits on NFTs; and the best of what I’ve been watching and listening to this week.
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Product management: Rambling on Roadmaps
Oh my days! There’s a lot of hate for Roadmaps out there; and no shortage of people telling you how you’re doing it wrong; I mean like badly wrong and wasting your time creating one. At best it’s a massive distraction.
When people talk about bad roadmaps - what they’re really talking about are roadmaps that are attempts to keep as many stakeholders in the organisation happy by making commitments about time and date that are at best swags.
Bad roadmaps are the manifestation of an unempowered product team. And yes, I have done more than a few of them in my time.
But, the fact that bad roadmaps exist doesn’t make roadmapping inherently a bad process. We should aspire to do great roadmaps. Roadmaps that demonstrate we not only have a compelling product strategy; but also that we have a credible plan to bring it to life.
I like this quote from an old Mind the Product Podcast on Roadmapping.
“A really good roadmap is a story about the future – and why it’s going to be awesome for everyone involved.”
Great. But how do we get there?
Rule 1: A roadmap can only be as good as the process that went before it.
These days everyone wants to have ‘Outcome driven roadmaps’ and this from Product Roadmaps Relaunched, provides a perfectly usable template.
The question is though: Where do those outcomes come from?
I watched a 15 minute talk this week from Tim Herbig on Putting Outcomes into Practice which is well worth a watch: just to get your head round the logical steps from Product Vision; to Strategy to Outcomes and ultimately ouputs (which are the specific things you should show on a roadmap). It’s not actually about Roadmapping - and that’s the point. It’s about everything that has to happen before it.
There’s a lot packed into that including a bit of lagging and leading indicators . But it’s worth unpacking it and thinking how to capture the spirit of that process, even if you don’t follow the exact steps. Without that, or some adaptation of it that works in your world, you definitely are in bad roadmap land.
Rule 2: What you’re not doing is almost as important as what you are doing.
I always think if you’re presenting or sharing a roadmap you need to make some reference to what you’re not going to do.
Strategy is all about choices, often painful ones: and you need to show that a) you have made some choices and b) you have demonstrated good judgement in doing so.
On a slightly more political note: there’s always someone going to be looking at your roadmap who will be thinking ‘when are they going to do X’ (where ‘X’ is normally something they have been asking for for ages, and you have found you can’t do). You need to be transparent that this isn’t happening; and even if only implicitly let them at least understand your thinking/ rationale.
Rule 3: Change it when you need to, but not too often
Priorities shift. Things get delayed. New information changes the way you see stuff.
If a roadmap isn’t evolving on a quarterly basis, either you’re not listening to what’s happening; or the original plan was nowhere near ambitious enough.
That doesn’t mean you throw the whole thing up in the air every three months. If your outcomes were well though through - they should be persistent; but how you achieve them; and when that happens are always going to move.
I realise this knocks on the door of an issue that I have deliberately dodged here: where do dates come from?
Worthy of discussion another time: but IMHO a good roadmap has ambitious dates that might be missed despite best endeavours; whereas a bad roadmap has defensive dates driven by a fear of being late that is greater than the ambition to hit a given outcome. Like I said, for another time..
Enough from me on this..a couple of useful podcasts that go deep on roadmapping, from people used to doing this at scale
Build a Robust Product Roadmap to Achieve Short & Long Term Goals
By Ramanand Reddi, VP of Growth at Tinder, is here to teach you how to use your roadmap to reach each and every one of your goals and maintain sustainable growth for your product.
The Tactics of Effective Roadmapping
Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Arvind Dutta (Microsoft) to talk about roadmaps and prioritization.
A week in the world of NFTs
Really there’s too much NFT news around to give an overview of everything that’s happened in a week. The news that ‘X launches an NFT’ is now as much of a non-event as ‘Y launching / redesigning a website’ in 2002.
Still it’s interesting to see Visa getting involved and Samsung integrating NFTs into their TVs, and I guess Starbucks had to be there at some point; and why not Denis Rodman?
But, when I read that the UK government had asked the Royal Mint to create an NFT, I had to check it wasn’t dated April 1.
Still two things caught my eye..
The price of everything: from $400, to $400K to $450m and $4bn. But the value?
So I get the principle that you should be able to buy and sell digital art - in its various forms. And how that is potent for creators. But, the prices…the value.
$400: When I look around a marketplace like the NiftyGateway (mission: we will not rest until 1bn people are collecting NFTs), I don’t find most of the prices (say $400 for these) too horrific: comparable with other collectibles.
$400K: I have read and re-read this explanation of why a guy has spent $400K on a Bored Ape NFT, and I still don’t really get it. I think the honest answer is ‘because cool people are doing it right now; and because he can’.
$450m As long as there’s people thinking like that, though, I totally get the 95.5% gross margin in the Yugo Labs (the people behind Bored Ape) and their prediction of $450m net revenue this year. It’s all in the deck that helped them secure $450m funding from Andreesen Horowitz (giving them a valuation of around $4bn). Definitely worth skipping through that deck if you want to see the metaverse/ gaming ambition that powered that valuation.
From the Yugo labs pitch deck..
Personally, I don’t think I’ll be buying any NFTs soon. I’m too worried about them just disappearing..
IP mindbend: Nike vs Stock X
OK. So who is being unreasonable here? Stock X (part eBay; part stock market for streetware) has been offering Vault NFTs. Basically they represent a pair of actual trainers that sit in StockX’s vault; and the NFT can then be traded from one person to another without the trainers leaving the vault.
Stock X's Vault NFTs - stuff to get lawyers excited
In February, Nike kicked off about this, saying..
“Nike did not approve of or authorize StockX’s Nike-branded Vault NFTs…Those unsanctioned products are likely to confuse consumers, create a false association between those products and Nike, and dilute Nike’s famous trademarks.”
At the time, Stock X has said Nike’s claim “lacks merit and is based on a mischaracterization of the service StockX offers through our NFT experience.” This week they came back again and said in a filing.
Using NFTs in this manner is lawful and violates no legitimate right of any of the manufacturers of the underlying goods. Nike’s claims lack merit, disregard settled doctrines of trademark law (including those of first sale and nominative fair use), and show a fundamental misunderstanding of the various functions NFTs can serve.
I was going to say that this feels a lot like Napster vs Record Labels. Except it’s so much more nuanced than that: a bit more like some of the discussions about a Network PVR. I feel Stock X’s case more than Nike’s - but I’m no IP lawyer. This is a pretty good discussion of each side pros and cons. I’m not sure it’s quite a ‘make or break’ moment, but it’s definitely going to be interesting to see where this lands.
Next week: Ethereum vs BitCoin.
This week I've been watching..
Binge of the week: Was a mad sprint through season 2 of Top Boy which, got stronger and stronger with each episode. Loved that - although now it’s finished I’ve got nothing left to discuss with my teenagers. Will be interesting to see how Gangs of London 2 compares.
Totally entertaining watch of the week: Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. I know pretty much nothing about Basketball, but this is insanely watchable. If you’ve seen it, this LA Times sift of the truth from fiction/ drama is worth a read. I’m now wondering if someone somewhere is working on a similar drama about the Class of ‘92.
Semi-satisfying ending of the week: Graham Norton’s Holding. Full marks for characters and setting, the final twist lacked a bit of punch, but at least tied everything up neatly. You’re left hoping they all come back for a second season, and everything gets a whole lot darker.
Welcome back to: The Split on BBC, which is now in a third and final season offering more suited-and-booted family law melodrama. This (p)review sums it up well.
Just getting going on: Slow Horses. It’s great seeing the books (that I loved) being brought to life.
...and I've been listening to
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
I listened to Colson Whitehead’s latest book, Harlem Shuffle earlier in the year. Awesome. It had that rare knack of being both understated and profound at the same time; a mix of social history and classic crime. Totally recommended. So I’m now going back to The Nickel Boys - set in a remand centre in the Jim Crow south of the 60s. Both are very worthy of your time.
A Catfishing tale from hell, told with empathy. Quality podcast from the tail end of last year, by Tortoise Media (ie: it’s British and not from the BBC). Also on Spotify.
Laura Kuenssberg looks back at her 7 years as the BBC’s political editor which spanned from Brexit to Ukraine via COVID. I realised listenign to this that I can probably map periods of my life by the BBC Political editor of the time..which is a bit sad really.
...and I wrote..
Stuck? Ask what the awesome person would do..
If you’re stuck, or if you’re speaking to someone who is…I’ve found this helps…..
And, the most clicked link from last week's issue
How to Define Your Product Strategy | by Gibson Biddle ..
Includes links to pre-formatted, shared Google Slides so you can build your product strategy on your own.
gibsonbiddle.medium.com • Share
A weekly round up of Product Management goodies - all very grounded in the real world. Plus: updates what I've been watching and listening to. Every Friday, from deepest Surrey.
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