What is a Munro Map?
A Munro Map is a agile tool to help create meaningful, useful road maps.
Last updated
A Munro Map is a agile tool to help create meaningful, useful road maps.
Last updated
The book "Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams" by Banfield, Eriksson, and Walkingshaw has a section within it that reads:
What is not a road map...
It is not a release plan—leave out specific dates and timelines.
It is not a list of features and components, nor should it include job stories, user stories, or "jobs to be done"; these are too granular for a road map.
It is not a commitment. It is a living guide that reacts to new information.
• It is not one monolithic document. Given that we advocate for small, autonomous, cross-functional teams focused on specific areas of the product, each team should have a road map.
A successful road map is not a Gantt chart, and waterfall connections (dependencies) won't work for this level of planning.
There are many products out there whose sole job is creating a road map. However, almost all of them fail to be a road map. They have dates and timelines. They look like Gantt charts. They are waterfall tools trying to survive in an agile world.
Munro Maps considers a road map more like, well, a road map. If you are travelling from point A to point B, there are many options along the way, milestones to see, decisions to make, and data to capture (direction, speed, happiness of the travellers, etc.). Why should a product (or project or company) road map be any different?
Munro Maps uses the concept of mountains (see What is a Munro?) to create a sense of urgency and direction. We start at the bottom of the mountain at the base camp (or The "Now House") and want to reach our destination at the top - our goal.
As a team working on a product (or project or within a company), we want to succeed. We want to reach the goal (see What is Munro Bagging?). By creating a directed graph to represent the mountain, we can create nodes—representing initiatives—and vertices—representing dependency, relative time, and estimated length of the initiative or whatever suits your business or road map's purpose.
By using familiar agile techniques involving cards (see What is a Munro Card?) and walls—yes, physical things—we can create a Munro Map within a few hours.
From the research I have conducted and presented at a number of conferences and workshops, the outcomes are far beyond those of "traditional road mapping techniques." Participants are able to create a road map quickly and with great detail through collaboration and communication (Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools).
