Patrick Sauerwein | @virtual_patrick

At the end of last year I’ve made the great experience to built “yet another product roadmap” for our product line. This is nothing really new, except this was the first time overall for the whole product line while living agile. The sources where similar to past:

• Customer feedback
• Competitive
• Analyst
• Innovation
• External/ internal factors

The good thing, we created very fast a product backlog of things we wanted to build in the future. Once this list was created we’ve estimated the t-shirt sizes of each feature in the list.

Then we were going for something new: Business Value Poker! And that was really the fun part :D. You will get a set of cards from the Business Value points in the sequence: 100, 200, 300, 500, 800, 1200, 2000, 3000. Then you are going to estimate each category of the feature:

1. New Business: every feature that will potentially bring new customers or new markets, will also bring a fresh flow of money
2. Up Sell: every feature that will potentially bring money from existing customers and could be sold as add-on, upgrade or plug-in
3. Retainment: every feature that will avoid losing customers and will avoid the company losing money as well
4. Operational Efficiency: every feature that will allow the company to save money (costs) given a potential increase in any operation (installation, configuration, customisation…)

You will repeat the estimation process until a consensus is reached. I can’t wait playing the game with different stakeholders and customer to get their feedback :D.

If you are interested in this methodology, you can order a set of cards here: http://www.agile42.com/en/agile-coaching-company/agile-scrum-tools/business-value-game

Once you have the business value of each feature, you are able to build release containers or building blocks not only based the business value, but also covering long term initiatives and similar things that make sense. The business value itself really helps you organise the roadmap then.

I only can recommend the Business Value Poker game and give it a try.

Different experience or way to prioritise Let me know.