Why You Should Stop Using Product Roadmaps and Try GIST Planning

Classic product planning – Strategy –> Roadmaps –> Project plans, is hard work and yields far less value than we think. The plans quickly lose sync with reality, projects run long, and outcomes are often disappointing. Worse, this type of waterfall planning limits our ability to innovate and to stay agile, and it does not factor the high level of uncertainty tech companies face.

In this talk I will present an alternative planning and execution system (first shared in a popular blog post of the same name: https://bit.ly/2nOFQuM) that I started using while working at Google and further adapted and implemented in numerous companies. The system is called GIST after its main components: Goals, Ideas, Steps, and Tasks. Together the four parts create a lightweight framework for planning and execution resulting in plans that are built for change, create lower management overhead, improve team velocity and autonomy, and ultimately deliver better products and value.