Announcing Roadmap Publishing Controls

Today LaunchNotes’ roadmapping capabilities are getting a big level up: Introducing roadmap publishing controls!

These new controls are a direct response to the valuable feedback we've received from product leaders across a number of Enterprises using LaunchNotes. Each was looking for a more intuitive, automated approach to controlling the visibility of roadmap items and determining who can access them.

You asked. We delivered!

Empower your product team to orchestrate your roadmap with publishing controls

Different stakeholders possess varying degrees of involvement in and/or ownership of a team’s product roadmap. As such, we've introduced roadmap publishing controls that give product and product ops leaders the ability to designate which stakeholders can see and engage with specific areas of each roadmap.

Published vs unpublished roadmap items

Live today is a new capability for admins to selectively publish or unpublish (or “hide”) entire stages of your product roadmap. So, if parts of your roadmap are critically important to share with teams across your org, but other stages aren’t necessary or appropriate for a broader audience yet, now you can specify who sees which parts of your roadmap in a few clicks. Relatedly, this new ability to unpublish entire stages of a roadmap finally gives product leaders the flexibility to map each roadmap to a specific team’s unique process and development cycle.

And even as roadmap items transition through the different stages of your product development process, you can rest assured that all unpublished content will remain “unpublished” from the timeline view displayed on roadmap stages that are published. This safeguard ensures the confidentiality of sensitive product development information.

Next up: Enterprise-grade publishing permissions

Today’s release unblocks an array of additional features and functionality we plan to roll out for superior roadmap management, the first of which is publishing permissions. The biggest benefit of these new permissions is a layer of controls to ensure tight product and brand consistency.

With publishing permissions only admins will have the ability to publish content, ensuring:

1. Only admins can transition roadmap items from an unpublished to a published state

2. Only admins can hit the final send on any release announcement

Notably, contributors will retain the capability to create, edit, and collaborate on draft and unpublished content. 

This evolved access hierarchy streamlines both the product development and GTM launch processes, fostering a more secure and efficient environment for product change communication.

Product change communication for the modern enterprise

This release marks the second of three laser-focused on helping modern enterprises streamline their product change process at scale. To recap:

1. Streamlined announcement workflow: The recent streamlining of our announcement workflow into a one-page process has already transformed the act of sharing product updates by simplifying and accelerating your publishing workflow.
   

2. Roadmap publishing controls: With today's release, we're enabling the ability to control the visibility of roadmap items through published and unpublished states, empowering product and product ops teams to determine who sees what, and precisely when they should see it. 
   

3. Publishing permissions: On deck is the introduction of publishing permissions–additional controls that will ensure every announcement and roadmap update is only published by the approved product comms leader on your team.  

While each of these releases provides immense value on its own, it’s the confluence of all three that unlocks product teams everywhere to take their product communication strategy to new heights. With a streamlined announcement workflow, greater control over roadmap stages, and our innovative approach to publishing roadmap items and announcements, your product team will no longer be mindlessly updating dozens of stakeholders on the status of roadmap items each week. Instead, they’ll be empowered and enabled to drive a product development process and GTM release experience that aligns their entire org and delights customers!

Feedback, feedback, feedback

As evident with today’s announcement, your feedback plays a pivotal role in shaping the direction of the LaunchNotes platform. 

With that in mind, do these features align with your roadmap management requirements? Are there specific scenarios where you envision these enhancements making a significant impact? What else do we need to ship to help your companies manage these processes at scale?

Share your ideas and suggestions by leaving feedback on this announcement!