This post was originally titled Finding a New Way with Your Product Roadmap, but that seemed a tad mundane when you’re trying to imply that the importance of Innovation and Transparency goes beyond Requirements Management.

A little mental-twister and we have a variant of you can’t get there from here because, according to software industry driver, Scott Sehlhorst, most teams have transparency in some, but not all parts of their product innovation process. The benefit to having more transparency can include improved internal stakeholder relationships, increased stakeholder self-perception of roles, and better understanding of customer’s problems so you focus less on a ‘list’ of features to implement. Benefits that can help reach your destination, so you can get “here” instead of “there”.

To learn more, join Scott Sehlhorst at the third of our five-part “How To” Transparency webinar series on Wednesday July 28, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Austin-based Scott Sehlhorst created the Tyner Blain management consultancy in 2005, following eight years in mechanical engineering and another eight in artificial intelligence software. His blog, tynerblain.com, is one of the most influential sources of thought leadership in the software development industry.

The series will continue with webinars featuring industry experts Tom Grant and Roy Wildeman of Forrester Research Inc. They will share their real-world anecdotes and best practices to help organizations learn how to define successful products, bring them to market faster, and align product development processes with corporate strategic goals.

You can register for the single webinar or for the whole series on our Product Innovation Management Channel. We look forward to your participation, hope you can attend.

Follow us on Twitter (@accept360) for the latest and greatest information on this Transparency Series.

Recapping the past week and introducing the next.

Recap
If you haven’t been following our blog, now is a good time to jump in! We’ve got an exciting series started on Creating the Optimal Product Strategy, five ingredients to transform your product innovation activities into a core business process. The first of five weekly Wednesday posts, The Innovation Framework is a informative read. Ingredient two will post next week, so stay tuned!

The Next
Next Week we are pleased to present a webinar featuring Brian Lawley, the President and founder of the 280 Group, a Product Management services firm, and President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association, the world’s largest Product Management Association.

Transparency: Best Practices in Product Requirements Management is the second in our 5-part Transparency Series featuring best practices to help product managers increase organizational agility and enable faster, confident decision-making. Brian will share real-world stories, best practices, and lessons learned on how critical total alignment of your product development processes can make the difference between achieving time-to-profit or market failure.

Mr. Lawley is the Author of the Book Expert Product Management: Advanced Techniques, Tips & Strategies for Product Management & Product Marketing and The Phenomenal Product Manager. We may even give a few copies of one of his books away to those that attend the webinar! Follow us on twitter for the latest details. Feel free to register for this webinar today!

The title is more a statement than a question.

Transparency is not just visibility, but a commitment to an open conversation.
It’s the ability for “outsiders” to see “in”.
It’s having useful information provided in a form that can be understood, used, and elaborated upon.
It is a willingness and ability to take and use outsider input to improve process and output.

It is the ability to see through a layer to the layer underneath.

Would you like to learn more about Transparency in the context of Product Management and Product Innovation Management?

Join us for a free webinar, Why Transparency Matters tomorrow June 30th at 10:00am PST / 1:00pm EST. You can register on our webinar page and see the full line-up for our Transparency webinar series.

UPDATE: Nils Davis, who is presenting at our webinar tomorrow, mentioned to me in passing  Radical Transparency on Wikipedia. I thought it was an interesting enough to add, perhaps you can ask him about it tomorrow at the Q&A portion of the session.

We’ve just announced our new Transparency webinar series – featuring industry experts including Tom Grant and Roy Wildeman of Forrester Research Inc.; Brian Lawley, the author of Expert Product Management; and renowned blogger Scott Selhorst!

Absolutely a fantastic line up – brought together in this series to help product managers increase organizational agility and enable faster, confident decision making through transparency, real time analytics, collaboration and communication across the entire product innovation lifecycle.

For more information, visit our webinar page. We hope you can join us for these exciting events.