How do you create a compelling and realistic roadmap vision and story?

1 Understand your audience

Before you start creating your roadmap, you need to know who you are creating it for. Different audiences have different expectations, questions, and concerns about your product. For example, your executives may want to see how your roadmap supports the company's strategy and revenue targets, while your developers may want to see how your roadmap balances new features and technical debt. To create a compelling and realistic roadmap, you need to understand your audience's perspective, motivations, and feedback, and tailor your roadmap accordingly.

2 Define your vision and goals

Your roadmap vision and goals are the foundation of your roadmap story. They define what you want to achieve with your product, why it matters, and how you will measure success. Your vision should be inspiring, clear, and consistent with your product's value proposition and positioning. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Your vision and goals should also align with your company's mission, vision, and strategy, as well as your customers' problems and needs.

3 Prioritize your initiatives

Once you have defined your vision and goals, you need to prioritize the initiatives that will help you achieve them. Initiatives are high-level themes or outcomes that describe what you want to deliver to your customers, such as improving user retention, increasing conversion rates, or expanding to new markets. To prioritize your initiatives, you need to evaluate them based on their impact, effort, risk, and dependencies. You can use frameworks such as RICE (reach, impact, confidence, effort) or MoSCoW (must, should, could, won't) to help you rank and compare your initiatives.

4 Map out your timeline

After you have prioritized your initiatives, you need to map out your timeline for delivering them. Your timeline should show when you plan to start and finish each initiative, as well as any milestones or phases within them. Your timeline should also indicate the level of certainty or uncertainty around each initiative, using labels such as now, next, later, or TBD. Your timeline should be realistic, flexible, and adaptable, taking into account your team's capacity, dependencies, feedback, and changes in the market or customer needs.

5 Communicate your roadmap

The final step in creating a compelling and realistic roadmap is to communicate it effectively to your stakeholders. Your communication should not only present the roadmap itself, but also the vision and story behind it. You should explain how your roadmap aligns with your customers' needs, your business objectives, and your team's capabilities. You should also highlight the benefits and value of your roadmap, as well as the assumptions and risks involved. You should use clear, concise, and engaging language, visuals, and data to support your roadmap. You should also solicit feedback, answer questions, and update your roadmap regularly.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?