Why You Should Plan Your Project Like A Memorable Vacation
As a Product Manager I spend much of my time thinking about roadmaps. Many people think of a roadmap as a very structured plan detailing the schedule, status, and percent complete. It is also used to highlight dependencies between each task and often contains due dates for every step along the way. This level of structure is fine when “life” doesn’t happen. Life is full of unplanned surprises, and the same is true with your projects.
Imagine you plan a family vacation. Being a structured roadmap person, your plan looks like this:
You tell your family that you will arrive at Atlantis in the Bahamas at 12:00 p.m. on Friday, have time to grab a quick lunch at 12:15 p.m. and walk over to your scheduled unique underwater adventure with an Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin at 1:00 p.m. Life happens en route to the Bahamas and your flight gets delayed by 5 hours. You miss your adventure, your kids are crushed, and you sit back and reflect on your parent-of-the-year award.
Most have experienced this first hand in one way or another and have learned that flexibility is the key to successful plans. Being a more flexible roadmap person, your vacation plan is created as a forecast and it looks like this:
You tell your family that you will arrive at Atlantis in the Bahamas sometime on Friday, explore the resort, and decide once you get there what you will do for the rest of the day and start to explore adventures for the rest of the week. After a swim, casual meal, and a Mai Tai, you schedule the dolphin adventure for Sunday afternoon.
Unless your middle name is disappointment, most choose the second more flexible approach. Why? Because with travel, we have accepted that things are out of our control and plan to be flexible. In turn, we expect airlines, hotels, and resorts to offer the same flexibility when we need to change our plans.
In the end, you still get to your destination…or a better one
In the end, you get to your destination, make compromises along the way, and most of the time end up with a better, more memorable vacation. Why can't we implement this same flexibility in project planning?
Most roadmaps assume you know what is going to happen in 6 months. Highly structured plans promote commitment to an original goal and assume little room for stepping outside of the plan. While it is great to set expectations, you must have the flexibility to react to changes along the way. These changes can lead to innovating a better product. In his book “Making it Right,” Rian van der Merwe discusses how a flexible roadmap is not an excuse to be indecisive and non-committal:
“A flexible roadmap is the only way to remain proactive when important changes happen in the company or the external landscape, while also keeping your eye on the product’s vision and goals.”
“Roadmaps like these give teams and managers realistic goals to work towards. It’s a common vision, a sense of direction that’s more than just fluffy language — it’s concrete evidence that we’re headed somewhere good, and we know how to get there.”
When will you get there?
The roadmap highlights the most important initiatives with no dates. Mike Cohn recommends excluding dates from all project roadmaps (Front Row Agile). Instead, save the dates for the release schedule. This allows you to push initiatives to the next release date without changing priority or compromising on quality just to hit an arbitrary date.
The roadmap provides a sense of direction and planning for flexibility allows opportunities to innovate and improve. Remember, in the end you will get to your destination — sometimes with a better, more memorable outcome.
Are we there yet?
~Joy Eling, Product Manager