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Creating Space for Ideas during Roadmapping

Roadmapping sessions can become quite heavy and the balance between bottoms up and top down is a constant juggle game. Here is an exercise that proved to be quite effective in the teams I have supported:

Goal: Add Moonshots to the Roadmap!
Image result for moonshot
"A moonshot, in a technology context, is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits." in https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/moonshot

Time investment: ~1h (depends on the size of the team, this is an estimate for a max 5 people)

  1. Frame what is going to happen! This is an opportunity to take riskier or crazy ideas into the roadmap of the team. As in any type of investment we take a portfolio of items that range from low to high risk, this is the time to explorer riskier items. You will be proposing ideas and the top rated will get into the roadmap. We will rate each idea with starts 1-5, ideas with >=4.0 will be discussed to be added to the roadmap. 2-3 Moonshots will be added to the roadmap.
  2.  Give post-it's to everyone. Timebox 15minutes to think about a moonshot idea, write ONE concise idea that states the hypothesis and potential impact on the post-it.
  3. Once everyone has written, pass the post-it to the person on your left (clockwise). The person will give stars to each idea. 10minutes
  4. Collect all the post-it's and average the ratings and write it the >= 4.0 on the whiteboard. 5min
  5. Read through each post-it with >=4.0 rating timeboxing a discussion of 5 min per each.
  6. Ask everyone to rank the ideas given that only 2-3 will be added to the roadmap. This can be done on the Whiteboard by adding 3-2-1 points. This way of voting allows for ambiguity, each person can put 3 points, 2points, 1 point on items, it can not be redistributed, example: We have Ideas: A,B,C,D,E,F, my favorite is B and then D and finally A, I mark 3 dots on B, 2 on D and 1 on A.
  7. Select the 2-3 top ideas, add to the roadmap and attribute ownership of scoping proof of concept  to the person that suggested it. The ownership should come with a timebox to do it (Typically 1/2 weeks depending on the item).



Tip: You can shortcut the exercise by having each person reading their idea and do an open rating by show of fingers. This should only be done if everyone feels comfortable with the openness of judgement.

Have Fun & Let me know if you used it and what were your results!
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