When it comes to online tech products Google is the undisputed world leader – almost everything it launches turns to gold, swiftly becoming the industry standard. From Search and Gmail to Chrome, Docs, Maps, Translate, Drive and Google Plus the massive successes have far outweighed the failures. It only makes sense then that any insight we can get into the processes used by Google Product Managers should be treated as a great reference for how to deliver high quality products.

For most Product Managers the roadmap is a classic double-edged sword. On the one hand it provides a valuable and welcome opportunity to focus your product vision and share it with colleagues, managers and customers. But all too often the process of creating, presenting and retaining a roadmap quickly evolves into an unavoidable headache.