There have been many times where I have sat in roadmap planning sessions. There are always a lot of ideas. A lot of big dreams. A sense of anything is possible. Everything has a strategic view.

But then we go back to reality when we get to the backlog. There is always so much there, so much to do. And it turns out we cannot do as much as we want. So, then we start from the backlog, from the bottom, and go up. But then the roadmap becomes something different. It becomes more of a technical focus and less of a strategic overview.

The Goal Oriented Roadmap (GORm) addresses this. GORm restores the balance. GORm allows us to take control and ownership of the success of our products. GORm allows us to define the goal and connect it with both the strategy and the backlog. GO moves the conversation past features, it shows features are means to an end, they are not the key item. GORm even shows the metrics to evaluate the goal. We use the GO Roadmap in our training and have applied in numerous comapnies..

GORm works well with the PIE chart (tool #14). Together they give a Product Manager good strategic control over the development operations and create success.