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Design leadership · Expert · Lesson 87 of 99 · 9 min video, then about 2 hours of practice
Influencing the product roadmap you do not own
After this you can get design-originated work onto a roadmap by framing it in terms of strategy, evidence and cost, and plan design capacity against it.
Why it matters
Roadmaps are owned by product leadership, but the best ones are shaped by designers who show up with evidence: research that reveals an unaddressed need, an outcome review showing a feature underperforms, a service blueprint showing the real bottleneck. Influence comes from timing (before planning, not during), from framing in the roadmap's own terms (strategic goals, risk, effort), and from making the PM look good for adopting it. Focus also on the reverse: planning design work so it is ahead of delivery. Trap: arguing for design work as 'UX debt' with no business case attached. It rarely survives prioritisation.
How to use this resource
A practising designer on how product roadmaps are made and how designers plan and influence them. From 2021; roadmapping has not changed in substance.