PMP Q #16 – Product Roadmap
Q16. Which of the following is NOT true about a Product Roadmap?
A. Display the strategy and direction of the product
B. Are progressively elaborated over time
C. Provide short-term and long-term visualization of the product.
D. Get baselined for tracking variances.
Let’s explore what a product roadmap is first.
A product roadmap shows a path to achieve your product vision. Product vision is the outcome that you seek. It shows why you bring the product to the market and what its success means to the customer and organisation. So product roadmap focuses on delivering value to customers and the organisation. For the product roadmap, discovering user needs is the most crucial part. You can add these user needs as themes or features. The product roadmap shows the priorities of these user needs in the strategic context (for the vision you seek) and aligns everyone around common goals and priorities. In other words, the product roadmap displays the strategy and direction of the needs. It helps to understand the user and market needs before building the product.
A product Roadmap is a living document. It is never baselined. Your user needs may change, and the market situation may change – so it must change to survive these situations. These changes give new, updated directions to the stakeholders.
You don’t usually get value by tracking variances against the product roadmap, as the product roadmap is not a project plan. However, a project plan predicts how the project will be completed within a specific time frame, and variance analysis can help determine how well the team meets that plan. So instead, a product Roadmap is a communication tool for the intent and direction to achieve product vision.
The idea here is that once the direction is laid out – the detail inside the direction will be refined, elaborated, and adjusted with time. The Product Road maps are expected to get elaborated, explained, and modified as you go along – The product Roadmap is progressively elaborated. The clarity in the path emerges as you go along as you start travelling on the path.
As a product roadmap shows a strategic context and direction – it reflects the long-term visualisation of the product. It also presents user needs that need to be implemented in the near future, reflecting the product’s short-term visualisation. The things coming in the near term need to be elaborated well. Things that are coming in the long term might be at a high level or an abstract level. So, it is true it gives us a short-term and long-term visualisation of the product direction.
So, of course – option D, “Get baselined for tracking variances.” is NOT true about a Product Roadmap. Hence option D is the correct answer.
