The secret of how to do good product manager presentations is simple: Tell a good story.
The end.
You can go read something else now.
Just messin’ with ya, anyone can learn how to do good product manager presentations if you follow a bit of advice.
Tip 1: ABS - Always Be Story Telling
The purpose of every communication is to exert influence (to persuade, to inspire, to change attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and behavior)
- What was the inspiration for its direction (If you are crafty, you’ll work in giving credit to the person who does your annual performance appraisal).
- How does it contribute to the overall corporate vision.
- Was there any internal drama involving difficult decisions.
Tip 2: Make Sure The Data Fairy Pays A Visit
While the truth is your company probably doesn’t have a data fairy, you probably have a neckbeard or someone named “Jim”, “Sarah” or “Amar” who handles analytics and data for your company that you can reach out to to get some some meaningful metrics and analytics to back up your story, because remember…..
If you are having a pissing fight with members of the executive team around roadmap priorities need to focus your team on priorities in the roadmap, remember to back them up with data (and use the lack of data associated with the pet project of other executives to undermine those) as it is an objective measure on which you can make a decision.
Assuming you did more than putting a finger in the air when making decisions as to what earned a spot on the roadmap, be sure to include the same metrics in your story narrative.
Knowing how to do good product manager roadmap presentations also includes having the common sense to use metrics in order to connect the product roadmap with corporate strategy. If your organization manages to pay your salary, it is safe to assume there are some success metrics/KPIs they are using, so make sure to highlight them in your product roadmap presentation.
If it’s not clear how roadmap initiatives influence key metrics, you need to do one of two things:
- Find another line of work.
- Keep reading this article on how to do good product manager roadmap presentations and hope you figure it out.
Using data is the easiest way to sell your story, stop working so hard for a change and take the easy way out.
Tip 3: Figure Out Who You Are Talking To
The higher the average salary of the audience in any room, the less anyone really cares about the details of what you do. This means that if you want to connect with these people, the more you should talk in high level vision type language and the less you should mention details. Details and practicalities are things only those on the low end of the salary totem pole need to concern themselves with.
If you need a hand interpreting the above advice, you need to tailor your presentation to your audience. The higher on the salary scale your audience is, the more you should focus on high level themes, concepts and strategy. The more your audience subsists on a diet of Mountain Dew, Doritos and Soylent, the more you should dive into the details.
Tip 4: Themes, Themes and More Themes
If there is one theme you should take take away from this blog is that you should always talk in themes when discussing the product roadmap
Good product manager roadmap presentations group roadmap items into themes to highlight the bigger picture. Save the grocery list of product features and initiatives for your internal product management meetings.
Tip 5: Know How To Make A Slide Deck
In general, presentations have been so poorly done, that people like Jeff Bezo and Elon Musk banned powerpoint presentations as they allow for mental laziness when it comes to presenting your ideas.
Having said that you need to show a visual representation of your product roadmap as the audience needs to see how it fits with the over all product strategy.
Your goal is to build your slide deck with the intent of them being an aid to the conversation, not the focal point of the presentation, so keep these points in mind when crafting the deck
- Use a theme. Black on white doesn’t cut it anymore
- Use color to distinguish between different roadmap themes, objectives, and categories.
- Order the slides in such a way that it supports your story.
- Use different versions of the roadmap for different audiences. Remember there are numerous popular roadmap styles choose from, each with a specific communication objective.
- Don’t overwhelm audience with too many details.; it should only contain the most relevant information.
- Less than 5 slides.
- If you have a lot of details to cover, distribute a well structured memo that cover them.
