Tempo logotype
7 min read

Successful product management roadmapping in a recession

Product management roadmapping in a recession can uncover opportunities to help you weather the storm and set up long-term success.
From Team '23

Tempo Team

The global economy is in constant flux. Sometimes, it’s firing on all cylinders, allowing businesses to invest profits and take risks. But what happens when the market contracts and organizations face an economic downturn? 

Although recessions are a fact of life, they don’t necessarily spell doom for your ambitious initiatives. A downturn in the economy provides an opportunity for businesses to prioritize internal improvements, reconnect with their customer base, and innovate.

Conducting product management roadmapping in a recession lets companies look beyond the cut costs and layoffs they may use to survive in the short term. Roadmapping leads to improved internal processes and product strategies that help organizations outperform their competitors in the near term while building strength for their future comeback. 

Many companies have pivoted during a recession to rebound spectacularly. Here’s how to use strategic roadmaps to help your organization do the same. 

Prioritize what to build next

Product managers are a critical voice, helping to determine how a company adapts during an economic downturn by establishing a solid roadmap for innovation and digital acceleration. The roadmap becomes a guiding light, helping the team keep sight of big-picture goals while fostering adaptation to market circumstances. It helps the company launch profitable yet affordable new products without imposing on reduced resources and revenue. 

Prioritize and understand customer needs

Examine products currently in the development pipeline and consider which ones best serve customer needs moving forward. A customer-centric strategy during economic uncertainty helps you stand out, especially if your competitors’ response is to curtail innovation. 

Renew your customer outreach initiatives and reiterate your commitment to innovation by:

  • Adopting new marketing initiatives like online or in-app surveys to gauge audience sentiment and evolve the customer experience

  • Conducting internal, cross-functional surveys of customer service, sales, and other teams to source feedback from multiple client perspectives

  • Attending trade shows or other networking events to encourage off-the-cuff customer conversations and uncover insights into needs, challenges, and experiences that can inform product development decisions

Review your processes

With the influx of customer and stakeholder feedback, there’s a lot of input to consider. The organization needs feedback and idea management systems to prioritize and quickly act on high-value ideas.

The “reach, impact, confidence, effort” (RICE) technique is a standard prioritization methodology. RICE highlights four factors that determine developmental priority.

1. Reach

Estimate the number of people a product’s development and launch affect within a given period, such as customers per quarter or transactions per month. Wherever possible, use actual numbers from product metrics to ensure your estimates are accurate.

Example: Of the 200 customers on average who enter the product’s sales funnel each month, 35% opt to buy. The reach of this item is 

200 customers ✕ 0.35 purchase rate ✕ 3 months = 210 customers per quarter

2. Impact

Every product’s release focuses on moving the needle on organizational goals, such as increased adoption, improved bottom line, or maximized enjoyment. That’s its impact.   

Impact is difficult to quantify, so most organizations opt for a multiple-choice scale to avoid relying on gut feelings: 

  • 3 for “massive impact”

  • 2 for “high”

  • 1 for “medium”

  • 0.5 for “low”

  • 0.25 for “minimal”

Once the impact is determined, it’s multiplied by the Reach score to scale it up or down. 

Example: A new product’s reach is 210, with a high impact on customers. Therefore, the cumulative score thus far is:

Reach ✕ Impact =

210 customers per quarter ✕ 2 (high impact) = 420

3. Confidence

Rating the organization’s confidence in a product’s success mitigates enthusiasm for ill-defined ideas. It’s an essential part of the equation, especially if you believe an outcome could produce a significant impact but lack the data to back it up. 

Define confidence as a scaled percentage similar to the one used for impact:

  • 100% for “high confidence”

  • 80% for “medium”

  • 50% for “low”

If your confidence in an initiative’s success is lower than 50%, it’s a warning sign you should look elsewhere.

Example: The development and marketing team believes the new product has a medium chance of success. The score becomes:

Reach ✕ Impact ✕ Confidence =

210 customers per month ✕ 2 (high impact) ✕ 0.80 confidence = 336

4. Effort

Finally, consider the time product development requires from all team members, including design, engineering, and marketing. Then, forecast effort as the number of person-months (work one team member completes in a month) needed to bring the product to market.

With so many unknowns, you may need to review previous projects to increase the accuracy of your rough estimate. Try to provide your estimate in whole numbers or use 0.5 if you expect to take a fraction of a month.

Finally, divide the total of your previous calculations by this number.

Example: Product management estimates that launching the initiative will require four person-months. Calculate the final RICE score as follows:

(Reach ✕ Impact ✕ Confidence) ÷ Effort =

(210 customers per month ✕ 2 (high impact) ✕ 0.80 confidence) ÷ 4 = 84

The final RICE score is 84. Run each project in your product portfolio through the RICE calculation and compare the scores. During a downturn, consider prioritizing the highest-scoring projects. 

Review your product management tools

During a recession, company leadership expects everyone to do more with less, increasing the pressure to deliver quality products and meet quarterly goals. Product management must eliminate repetitive tasks and other inefficiencies to optimize processes and performance. An inefficient tech stack could impede the development team’s efforts to reach those targets.

When vetting current or new technology solutions, zero in on two crucial questions:

1. Where are the communication gaps?

Review your collaboration tools. Do you have a centralized platform that tracks ad hoc decisions, or do they go undocumented? Excel or Google Sheets may seem convenient, but you’ll struggle to parse details or communicate strategy across multiple teams.

Instead, find ways to communicate visually as much as possible. A simplified and accessible communication platform with color coordination and a streamlined interface helps teams identify and understand their role while connecting work to the company’s overarching goals.

2. Can you eliminate busywork?

Improve productivity by consolidating the tech stack, removing redundancies, and eliminating repetitive tasks. Seek integrated technology that creates seamlessly coordinated platforms and reduces the need for extra meetings or check-ins by keeping everyone on the same page.

Jira is a great example. Jira supports multiple apps, leveraging the same data and eliminating errors or inconsistencies between groups by connecting their dedicated tools.

Create a product management roadmap

Delays are costly. They sap finances, erode confidence, decrease ROI, and disappoint stakeholders. Worst of all, they often lead to missed opportunities in an already contracted marketplace. So, once the organization has consulted its customer base, prioritized projects, and optimized its product management tools, it’s time to craft a product roadmap to support the timely delivery of innovations. 

A roadmap charts milestones while building visibility around the desired goal, keeping the development team focused on producing deliverables. Roadmapping also breaks down silos, creating alignment between departments and ensuring everyone nails their targets. Essentially, it results in better outcomes.

Building a roadmap keeps team and organizational goals front and center, driving prosperity despite the recession. With a strategic plan in place, the organization boosts accountability and helps teams hit short-term milestones along the path to long-term success.

Build your roadmap with Tempo

When the development team collaborates to establish a product roadmap, they help keep the organization’s eye on the ball, no matter the economic climate. That’s why Tempo has created Strategic Roadmaps, an intuitive application that integrates with your existing Jira platform. 

Strategic Roadmaps ticks all the boxes for your organization to thrive in a recession. The app creates boardroom-ready product roadmaps incorporating client feedback, prioritizes initiatives, and builds alignment across departments while ensuring the development team meets its goals on time.

With Tempo in your corner, you don’t have to fear market cycles. You’ll have everything you need to embrace any challenge.

Explore More Content

AI-enabled capacity visualization

Capacity Insights - Open Beta

Deliver visibility into how your team's time and efforts align with business objectives and project ROI - without the manual effort

Learn more

Unified time and team management

Integration: Timesheets and Structure

Combining Tempo Timesheets and Structure PPM provides a unified view of time tracking and project progress, enabling more accurate reporting and effective portfolio management. Simplify workflows, enhance collaboration, and ensure projects stay on time and within budget.

Learn more

Jira Project Cost Tracking

Financial Manager

Project financial management for Jira & Timesheets. Monitor project costs, expenses, revenue, billing & budgets. Track Capex/Opex

Go to marketplace

Project and program management for Jira

Structure PPM

Visualize all your Jira data & manage portfolios of projects in real-time.

Learn more

Jira Time Tracking

Timesheets by Tempo

#1 Jira Time Tracking & AI Apps: Log Tempo Timesheets for Planning, Project Management & Billing. Plugin Office365, Google & Slack

Go to marketplace

Jira ITSM Solutions with Tempo

ITSM

Build and scale a custom ITSM solution at your own pace with Tempo's modular suite of integrated tools. Enhance Jira's capabilities and take control of your entire IT portfolio.

Learn more

Agile at Scale Software

Agile at Scale

Adapt to changing business needs, rapidly adjust plans, and reallocate investment.

Learn more

Take control of your projects

Integration: Portfolio Manager and Jira

Portfolio Manager integrates seamlessly with Jira to give you predictive scheduling, real-time scenario modeling, and advanced resource management – ensuring you stay on track, no matter what challenges arise.

Learn more

Centralize real-time plans in one view

Integration: Structure and Gantt Charts

Gain a more complete project management solution, simplifying project reporting, improving collaboration, and ensuring projects stay on time and within budget.

Learn more

Strategic Portfolio Management

Strategic Portfolio Management

Modern modular PPM solutions that scale with your business. Align your teams with the integrated platform that bridges the gap between strategy and execution.

Learn more

Custom charts and dashboards for Jira

Custom Charts for Jira

See how work is progressing and where blockers are with the most flexible reporting app in Jira.

Learn more

No-Code Power BI Jira Integration

Power BI Connector for Jira

Effortlessly bridge Jira with your preferred BI tool, unlocking unparalleled insights and enhancing decision-making

Learn more

Real-time collaboration and capacity planning in Jira

Capacity Planner

A powerful team resource management tool designed to optimize capacity planning and project management in Jira

Learn more

Unified time and team management

Integration: Timesheets and Capacity Planner

Seamlessly manage project timelines and resources while accurately tracking time spent on tasks. This integration enhances visibility, improves planning accuracy, and supports data-driven decision-making for better overall project outcomes.

Learn more

Jira Portfolio Management PPM

Structure by Tempo

Jira Project Portfolio Management (PPM): Visualize data and manage projects within spreadsheet-like tables — in less than a minute

Go to marketplace

Align your organization with proactive portfolio management

Portfolio Manager (LiquidPlanner)

Predictive scheduling and the ability to forecast project timelines and spot risks so you can meet deadlines with confidence.

Learn more

Jira Team & Resource Management

Capacity Planner

#1 Jira Resource Management App: Optimize team allocation, skillset utilization, capacity planning & project management

Go to marketplace

Time Tracking Software for Jira

Timesheets

Tempo’s intuitive automation and Jira-native design make it the most trusted time tracking tool for enterprise organization.

Learn more

Monitor financial health at every level

Financial Manager for Timesheets

Monitor projects and portfolios to get simple, clear, and real-time views of your costs, budgets, and profits that can be shared throughout your entire organization.

Learn more