ActBlue Innovation, Technology & Agility

How do you make sure all teams are on the same page when creating a product roadmap? 

At the beginning of each planning cycle, we evaluate a list of product opportunities. These opportunities often span many teams and have many different solutions that fulfill those opportunities. Those opportunities are roughly prioritized by the product team using a number of factors, such as opportunity size, risk and engineering scope. Once established, those opportunities serve as the guiding strategy for our upcoming cycle. Keeping everyone on the same page about product roadmaps often involves conversations with fellow scrum teams and cross-functional partners to ensure our roadmap aligns with their plans.

How do you maintain this alignment throughout the development cycle?

Our team roadmaps live in a document available to everyone at ActBlue. It’s a living document, updated frequently during the development cycle as we get new information on feature requirements and engineering scope. Individuals are encouraged to check the roadmap at any time and reach out to individual scrum teams with questions. 

We couple this with quarterly share-outs with the entire organization where we highlight recent wins as well as high-impact features shipping in the next quarter so that everyone is aligned and energized about the quarter ahead. Ahead of those share-outs, product and engineering engage in a quarterly planning process where we evaluate our previous plans and make any changes based on learnings from the previous quarter, new information on feature design or scope or even a changing external landscape.

Do project needs change during the development process? When this happens, how do you reprioritize the product roadmap and keep teams aligned?

This happens often. In our industry, there are times when we need to react to current events and the needs of our campaigns and causes. 2024 has been a big year for this, given the presidential ticket shift. In the event of major external events, impacted product managers evaluate their team’s roadmaps and reorder features in response to those events. For example, this happens if we’re seeing an influx of traffic to our platform. To keep teams aligned, individual product managers create ad-hoc working groups across many departments where they discuss which features should be reprioritized and make trade-off decisions. Once agreed upon, the roadmap is updated, and the team gets to work on supporting any new initiatives.

What practices does your team employ to foster innovation, and how have these practices led to more creative, out-of-the-box thinking?

Any conversation about innovation has to begin with trust: software is delivered at the speed of trust. Without it, communication breaks down, collaboration diminishes and learning and adaptability languish. To foster innovation and build trust, my team has cultivated psychological safety. We employ practices like designed alliances in one-on-ones, working style and agreements sessions, continuous retrospectives, and daily collaborative check-ins. This foundation of trust enables open communication and collaboration, which in turn enables us to embrace practices that accelerate learning and innovation. 

One of our most powerful delivery practices is a “fixed time, variable scope” approach. By setting fixed timeboxes while keeping scope flexible, we create constraints that drive us toward creative simplicity. These constraints require healthy conflict to make necessary tradeoffs, which is only possible in a high-trust environment. We also host regular “Disco” sessions, during which we review user research and product discovery. This brings diverse perspectives to problem-solving; we believe that more minds bring better solutions and that a variety of lived experiences enriches our work.

How has a focus on innovation increased the quality of your team’s work?

Our approach has improved quality most by reshaping our team’s understanding of what to build. Our “fixed time, variable scope” methodology ensures prioritization. We focus first on the highest-value aspects of a desired outcome rather than try to deliver every aspect of a theoretically ideal feature. The result is a simpler, more focused solution that directly addresses user needs. 

Last year, we worked on a search user interface redesign. Initially, we prioritized improving performance issues, assuming this was the primary pain point. However, through early prototyping and user conversations, we discovered that limited search controls were the actual friction point. Because we were operating with “fixed time, variable scope,” we were able to reprioritize our milestones, making flexible search controls a “must-have” without extending our timeline. This responsiveness has transformed how we define and deliver quality. By shipping small increments and staying close to our users, we often uncover insights that contradict our initial assumptions — and we adapt accordingly. We’re not just building quickly; we’re building what matters.

How has a focus on innovation bolstered your team’s culture?

Our focus on team culture bolsters innovation, not the other way around. Designed alliances, working agreements and retrospectives create spaces where people feel safe to show up authentically. When psychological safety exists, people can bring their whole selves to work.

Our Disco sessions and cross-team collaborations aren’t just innovation mechanisms; they’re relationship-building opportunities. They align everyone around a shared understanding of core user needs. This clarifies the “why” behind decisions and channels everyone’s energy toward generating more impactful ideas. When diverse minds gather around a complex problem, the energy is palpable. There’s a natural camaraderie that forms through the shared struggle of problem-solving, especially when everyone feels their voice matters. 

Trust doesn’t just enable innovation — it enables joy at work. I’ve seen team members come alive when they feel heard, their ideas are built upon and they’re given autonomy within constraints. The practices that foster innovation and those that create a positive, safe culture aren’t separate initiatives. They’re deeply intertwined facets of the same foundation: human connection and trust.