What is the GIST Framework? A roadmap?
A roadmap is a high-level strategic document that defines a goal or desired outcome and includes the major steps or milestones needed to reach it.
If you want to know a little more about roadmaps, the following article is a good start:
The construction of a good roadmap requires a lot of effort. One of the biggest disadvantages of this form of planning, is that they get out of sync very easily, the longer they are, the higher the probability to get out of sync.
The product roadmaps allow for the most important goals to be developed, which also means that we need to prioritize and kill many potentially good ideas up front. In big organizations, the winning ideas come from management. In small companies getting your idea to win became a huge deal, hence pitching, salesmanship and hype are now mandatory product management skills.
The alternative to this form of work is the GIST Framework, which stands for:
Goals
Ideas
Step-projects
Tasks
Each of the points has different planning and may use various tools to track, together they constitute the core planning.
As you can see from the above image, planning using the GIST Framework is multi-tiered and iterative:
Goals are typically defined for one or more years, but they can be adjusted every quarter.
Ideas are constantly collected and prioritized. Never stop looking for new ideas.
Step projects are defined at the beginning of the quarter. The team picks the goals and ideas it wishes to pursue and defines step-projects accordingly.
Tasks are planned in 1–2 week iterations per the teams’ preferred dev method, for example, Scrum sprint planning, and adjusted daily.
GIST is not a radical new idea, is a collection of methods that are often used separately. It attempts to address all layers of the planning stack and creates a living plan that is built for change.
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