How can you use a product roadmap to build stakeholder buy-in?

It is also important to recognize that all employees whatever level, are stakeholders in terms of committing their skills. As such whenever possible they should be communicated with regarding the vision for growth, to ensure maximum buy in and support for the project. Any Company is only as good as its workforce.

Always weigh your stakeholders by category. Does your investor come before your users? Or the other way round. It’s crucial to identify who’s the biggest player and contributor, you cannot satisfy all parties at once. Don’t lose your users just because one investor doesn’t like certain product features.

In my experience the stakeholder map is very diverse and needs to be approached with specific messaging, especially when you progress in your start up project. The beginning has to rally everyone around the excitement and implant the thought "Hey - this could actually work!" and to get the green light (or funding) to assemble your key team to deliver on the idea. Then it is really important to see who could be your advocates vs. your opponents and leverage the positive momentum while truly working on mitigating the concerns the opponents might have. This needs to get dealt with from the get go, not when you are starting to execute/scale.

Especially when it comes to start ups in a corporate environment, where leadership is mostly used to retrospective data and KPIs, creating a forward looking set of success indicators to allow for the adequate storytelling of future success likelyhood is key. I used the Hoshin Kanri method to derive clear targets and required resources for annual and breakthrough targets, with a direct link to the vision and mission statement to ensure that we can connect every activity back to the long term target - even if it didn't carry the same exact long term KPI yet.

Take your time to evaluate and select the best roadmap tool for your project; most have different views of the same data, giving you the flexibility to see your roadmap at a very High Level and dig into details when needed.

I found it useful to circle back with stakeholders one-by-one, to explain what has already been done, where support and help is needed and welcome and, not to forget, make them feel like they are part of the project (and the potential success). It also allowed to ask for resources that would normally be unavailable or at least not visible.

Building a distinct “draft” roadmap phase into the overall plan can help set expectations for stakeholders at all levels and invite better feedback during the initial roadmap share and update session. An additional benefit here is that this touchpoint is no longer a “you” presentation; it’s now an “us” work session. Give a preview of the draft roadmap along with your invitation to this session (even better: get company leadership to send the invite with draft) and make it clear that open and honest feedback is welcome, both during the session and for a limited time afterward.

Be humble when it’s time to share the roadmap. It can feel personal to have someone point out a flaw when you have worked hard to craft the “perfect” roadmap. But it’s personal to the SME, too, because they are picturing themselves working within the framework you are presenting. The initial presentation is often the first time that stakeholders see the full project plan from beginning to end, and that can spark a different way of thinking from when you may have interviewed them about their specific portion. You’ll want to welcome stakeholder insights when they review the project from this fresh perspective; make it clear you are open to critiques with your words and tone, your body language, and even the room setup.