Reimagining TrustQuay’s Roadmapping Process & Communication Strategy
Workshop at a Glance
Workshop Focus
TrustQuay turned to Talking Roadmaps for help on improving their roadmapping processes and optimising communication with key audiences.
Challenges
TrustQuay’s product team regularly improves their roadmaps each quarter. However, Simon Witkiss, Global Head of Product and Marketing, believed they could benefit from a structured, focused approach to rethinking their roadmapping processes and exploring their communication strategies.
Solutions
Talking Roadmaps used a series of techniques designed to help the Product team look at their roadmapping processes from a different perspective. This involved large and small group collaboration exercises, creative expression and exploration, and observing problems at both a macro- and a micro-level.
Results
TrustQuay’s Product team learned a variety of techniques they will use going forward to build better roadmaps and connect with key audiences.
Product teams often spend a great deal of time fine-tuning the content of their roadmaps. However, it can be equally helpful to take a step back and consider the process of roadmapping itself—optimising the steps that lead to creating an effective roadmap, and adopting the right communication strategy to reach key audiences.
Simon Witkiss, Global Head of Product and Marketing at TrustQuay, turned to Justin Woods and Phil Hornby of Talking Roadmaps to help his team rethink and reimagine their roadmapping process. He also wanted some guidance to help his team improve how they communicate their roadmaps, to make sure they were meeting their audience’s needs.
“We learned some great tools and techniques that we’re actively using to improve the outcomes of our roadmaps. How we roadmap, and how we evidence the work we’re doing, is changing.”
The first day of the 2-day workshop centred around the process of roadmapping, with the understanding that better processes create better roadmaps, and better roadmaps lead to superior products. The second day of the workshop focused on identifying the right audiences for each roadmap and effectively communicating each roadmap’s essential information. Simon also asked Phil and Justin to include two bespoke sessions, one covering ‘Prioritisation’ and the other addressing ‘User Voice’. Both days included strategic breaks, roughly every hour, to conserve energy like the precious resource it is.
Talking Roadmaps employed a variety of techniques to help TrustQuay’s Product team view their processes and communication strategies in a different light. They tapped into different parts of their brains to empathise with end users and stakeholders, identify issues with their current roadmapping processes, generate solutions, and improve communications.
Through creative expression, metaphor, and cross-functional collaboration, TrustQuay improved both its roadmapping processes and its approach to communicating roadmaps to key audiences.
Day 1: Improving the roadmapping process
Creative problem-solving often involves taking a step back and exploring familiar concepts in novel ways, rather than exclusively relying on a systematic approach. From scientific breakthroughs to great works of art, innovation often arises from exploration and play, which is where Talking Roadmaps’ 3,000-piece LEGO set enters the picture.
“Having that dedicated time and a full day’s workshop, where everyone’s voice gets heard and everyone loosens up so they can discuss what they’re passionate about—I don’t think that happens in an hour’s space.”
Beginning with an icebreaker, Justin and Phil had each participant build an avatar representing themselves and their role at TrustQuay. They encouraged participants to “trust their hands” and see what bubbled forth from their unconscious—a theme that would repeat itself throughout the two-day workshop. Next, it was time to map out their existing process.
Identifying the current roadmapping process
Phil and Justin split the team into two cross-functional groups, asking each to outline their current roadmapping process using story mapping. They then merged the two groups together to identify commonalities and hash out any differences. The resulting version identified seven major stages in their roadmapping process.
Highlighting problems
The team then used a ‘heatmapping’ system, where each member placed sticky-dots next to what they considered ideal areas for improvement. They then used a tool called the ‘Decider Vote’, where the most senior person in the room used their super vote to determine where to focus their efforts. The heatmap gives the decider a clear understanding of the sentiment before choosing the path ahead. They settled on three areas, and they once again pulled out the legos to begin exploring.
Tapping into the power of metaphor
“There is safety in metaphor,” says Phil Hornby of Talking Roadmaps. “Working with LEGO sets and other techniques like Bikablo, the drawing technique we used, activates a part of the brain that allows product people to explore, empathise, and generate solutions that are harder to achieve with brainstorming and ordinary problem-solving. It also provides some psychological safety because participants can describe the model itself, rather than call out specific people.”
With this in mind, Phil and Justin had each group model and describe their assigned problem with LEGO, and a few bits of Duplo too. They created representations of the issues including the people involved, the challenges, the blockers, and how they all inter-relate—using things like tigers to represent frustrated customers. The stories that arose were spectacular!
Generating improvements and creating an action plan
In the second half of the day, Justin and Phil used a range of techniques to help the team generate solutions.
1-2-4-All
This approach to problem-solving, which comes from a set of techniques called “Liberating Structures,” begins by asking each team member to consider solutions individually. Next, they team up with a partner to discuss their thoughts. Then, each pair joins another pair to further explore and refine potential solutions. Finally, the entire group discusses each issue collectively, creating a post-it note for each problem and solution.
The 1-2-4-All technique gives more introverted members a chance to ponder solutions before tapping into the power of discussion and collaboration.
Heatmapping
The team then engaged in another round of heatmapping to identify possible solutions before re-ordering the post-it notes and placing those with the most votes on top.
Impact vs. Effort analysis
Next, the team created a four-quadrant matrix to identify the solutions with the largest impact and the least effort.
“It’s a lot easier to collaborate when you come together and focus on a singular topic. It also lets you do a deep dive and gather everyone’s input and opinions.”
Based on everything they discovered during the final phase of the workshop, the TrustQuay product team formulated an action plan designed to optimise their approach to roadmapping. They then created an action plan, using the “Who/What/When” structure. Instead of dates they also opted for a “Now/Next/Later” timing approach. Even the action plan felt like a modern roadmap!
Day 2: Identifying key audiences and ensuring proper communication
The second day of the workshop involved identifying three key audiences and exploring how to communicate with them effectively.
In keeping with the premise that great ideas arise through activating different parts of the brain, Phil and Justin began with an energiser that taught the teams a simple but effective drawing technique from Bikablo. They quickly learned to use simple shapes to produce creative drawings—something they had never done before. Many were surprised by what they drew, believing they had no natural artistic talent.
Using similar techniques from the previous day, the team moved back and forth between creative expression and analysis, and between small-group discussions and whole-group collaboration throughout the day. They also completed a ‘Roadmap Audience Canvas’ used to capture user personas for each roadmap audience.
The second day of the workshop involved:
● Identifying potential audiences to focus on, and using decider votes to pinpoint three key audiences to explore
● Deep diving into each audience’s needs by breaking into three groups, with each group exploring their assigned audience’s needs, inputs, and outputs
● Identifying key elements of the input and output, including frequency (e.g., quarterly, ad hoc), format (e.g., survey, emails), and feedback (e.g., individual responses to customers, large-scale email campaigns)
● Discovering gaps between their current outputs (actual) and their customers’ desired outputs (desired)
“My favourite part of it was the drawing. I discovered I had an unknown talent! The interactive parts of the workshop were really good.”
● Creating visuals for each audience, getting team members the chance to engage different parts of their brains, spark new insights, and have a memorable image of who they are
● Identifying unserved customer needs by first mapping all users’ needs on the roadmap document, then identifying those needs that were currently being met. Anything left was an unserved need. Next, everyone was asked to review all three audience profiles and offer input
● Exploring the customer journey arc by identifying the ‘why’, ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘how’ of each audience’s needs and challenges
● Idea generation session where everyone generated 10 ideas in 10 minutes—a technique that inspires the rapid production of ideas while reducing the tendency to overthink and pushing beyond the first obvious or easy idea
At the end of the session, the full group used heatmapping to identify which changes they felt had the most promise or wanted to enact, and Simon opted for a ‘do or ‘don’t’ vote when determining which changes to enact. This proved useful since there was one change he categorically did not want the team to enact.
A foundation for future discovery
TrustQuay’s 2-day workshop with Talking Roadmaps allowed the Product team to rethink their processes, hone their roadmapping skills, and explore new ways to communicate with key audiences.
“Justin and Phil did a great job of getting everyone speaking. They used a variety of tools and techniques to help us look at things in a new light, and their approach kept people actively engaged.”
The goal of any roadmapping workshop is to provide teams with new tools and novel frameworks which they can employ and adapt to their needs. By focusing on specific processes and three key audiences over two full days, they set the stage for future improvements. The workshop gave TrustQuay the tools for analysing additional roadmapping processes and exploring a wider set of audience needs in the quarters and years to come.
About TrustQuay
TrustQuay is a global leader in the FinTech software space, providing trust, corporate services, and fund administration systems. An industry pioneer, they deliver cloud-based solutions in a sector that still largely relies on on-site installations. As is the case with many innovators, strategic roadmapping has proven critical to their success.
