Roadmapping with the Incompatible Trinity
Everyone with Project Management experience will tell you that it's all about negotiating three key things:
- Quality
- Speed
- Price
Sometimes referred to as “the incompatible trinity” or “trilemma”.
It can be explained as: a quality product on a tight timeline will cost a bundle, a quality yet inexpensive product will take too long, and a quick and inexpensive product will be of poor quality.
Unfortunately, as the Project Management institute points out in the book, “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge”, there are also other, less obvious factors.
Let's consider a difficult scenario. As the Product Manager for a brand new product you need to work about the trilemma, but also face an additional two factors creating further complications:
- Right now, the product is in the planning stage; in order for it to move into development, the plans need to be "sold" to management. This means that right away you need a plan that will easily solve the trilemma - you need a high quality product which can be made quickly for very little money. You'll also need to explain clearly how you can make this happen. But since it’s a brand new product, the scope might not be definitive.
- Since it's a brand new product for your company, you face a lot of randomness and uncertainty. This project has a large potential risk factor to be dropped or just fail, not only making the project planning difficult but also making team motivation a challenge.
Project management at this level is a true art form. An easy to follow list of what to do, when and why would be great, but it simply isn't possible given all the variables you need to consider. Your roadmap needs to allow everyone involved in the project to navigate confidently and creatively through this uncertain ground.
What Should Your Project Roadmap Do?
You need everyone on your team thinking together from the very beginning. This level of complex thinking with so many variables can make communication very difficult, a detailed plan which makes the goals and areas for creativity obvious will be crucial. Make it clear to your team that this roadmap needs to accommodate many potential problems and concerns, but ultimately get from point A (no product) to point B (finished product). If you can do this properly, you will have created a framework for thinking that can help you solve the trilemma, and manage your additional two concerns.
What Are the Parts of a Good Roadmap?
- A starting point - This is your ecosystem; data, funding, lab time, team members, anything relevant that you have to work with.
- An ending point - This should be as much concrete information as is available to you at the time (and it may change as the project progresses). How much corporate wants it to cost, how quickly they want it, the quality they want and any other specific requests they've given in terms of purpose or appearance.
- Clear areas for structure or creativity - You may not know what problems will come up, or how you'll handle them, but even in the very early stages you'll be able to identify the areas where you'll have opportunities for creativity and stages that need to go a certain preset way. Mark clearly which areas will follow a standard set of rules, which don't, and why.
How Does a Project Manager Make This Work?
The key to making this type of roadmap work is Creativeship. A great project manager will need to have a "management framework" to keep everyone creative, on track and together. This management framework should include:
- Lots of points for the project to be flexible, why these points are flexible and as many technical details as possible.
- A clear process for the group brainstorming effort and a clear method for then challenging these ideas. Make it clear that challenging these ideas isn't to limit creativity. Explain it more as a filter for the entire team to think of everything from as many different perspectives as possible.
- Most importantly, a great project manager needs to encourage the group process of collective intelligence thinking and trust that the results will be worth the work.
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