Building better roadmaps | Janna Bastow (Mind the Product, ProdPad)

Janna Bastow is a former product manager, and currently the CEO and co-founder of ProdPad. She also co-founded Mind the Product, a community for PMs, which has grown to 300,000 members across the world. In today’s podcast, Janna discusses the limitations of timeline-based Gantt charts and her “Now/Next/Later” framework. She also shares stories about hosting conferences and gives some great tips on how to improve your presentation skills and cope with performance anxiety.
Find the full transcript here: www.lennyspodcast.com/buildin...
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Where to find Janna Bastow:
• Twitter: / simplybastow
• LinkedIn: / jannabastow
• The ProdPad newsletter: www.prodpad.com/newsletter/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: / lennysan
• LinkedIn: / lennyrachitsky
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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:
• Formsort: formsort.com/lenny
• Coda: coda.io/lenny
• Amplitude: amplitude.com/
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Referenced:
• Mind the Product: www.mindtheproduct.com/
• The Trouble with Traditional Roadmaps: www.prodpad.com/resources/gui...
• ProdPad’s Sandbox: www.prodpad.com/sandbox/
• Geoffrey Moore’s product vision template: www.prodpad.com/blog/product-...
• The Art of Profitability: www.amazon.com/Art-Profitabil...
• The Sandman on Netflix: www.netflix.com/title/81150303
• Startups for the Rest of Us podcast: www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
• Christina Wodtke on Twitter: / cwodtke
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Janna’s background
(05:28) How the community evolved at Mind the Product
(08:22) The tricky logistics of putting together a conference
(10:48) Are conferences profitable?
(13:00) How Janna developed her storytelling and presentation skills
(16:44) How to fight performance anxiety
(19:25) Mistakes are humanizing-how to power through and deliver your presentation
(22:11) The limitations of traditional timeline roadmaps
(25:00) Janna’s Now/Next/Later framework
(28:08) How to work without the structure of dated timelines, and why soft launches are important
(32:57) What great product teams are doing well
(35:05) The importance of retrospectives
(36:45) How to shift the culture at larger companies
(39:43) How ProdPad creates better product management practices
(42:04) How to learn the Now/Next/Later framework
(46:59) Geoffrey Moore’s product vision template
(48:36) Lessons for PMs interested in becoming founders
(50:48) Lightning round
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Production and marketing by penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].

[@JannaBastow]

Thanks for having me Lenny!

[@thomasmartin5403]

Awesome content as usual Lenny, thanks a lot to Janna to join as well. Your work as already made mine way better.

[@fatcabbagew]

Great stuff - love the parallel between sales and product experimentation. Keen insight on soft vs hard launch, decoupling product from marketing. Thanks Lenny and Janna!

[@zl7289]

31:26 started talking about the roadmap

[@MUXI_]

Great episode.

[@shanty2020]

retrospective 100% helps team grow.

[@jaroslavurban8806]

Great talk. The vision part got me confused thou, G. Moores elevator's pitch is a positioning exercise, whereas vision is a direction. Would love to see some examples on how it works in practice.

[@sachinshajan8066]

It's truly should be a prototype