What tools do you use to create and update your product roadmap?

In my ever-evolving journey with roadmaps, I've found that your roadmap is most likely going to need a review, at least every quarter due to new insights from a previous launch or market shifts. While most tools can't compete with spreadsheets, Airtable has become my preferred choice. Its ability to create visual layouts using calendar and gallery views, coupled with it's table history feature, makes it an invaluable tool for managing these dynamic and constantly changing plans. ?????

Creating a product roadmap requires strategic vision, collaboration, and adaptability. I've found tools like Aha!, Trello, or Jira useful for visualizing timelines, dependencies, and progress. Prioritizing features often involves balancing user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility using frameworks like RICE or KANO. Communication is key: Regular updates to stakeholders ensure alignment and manage expectations. Metrics like adoption rate or NPS help measure progress. Remember, roadmaps aren't set in stone but evolve with market trends and user feedback.

Excel can work well for product roadmaps especially if you're already familiar, with the software. However as the roadmap becomes more complex and collaboration becomes more important it might be more efficient and effective to use roadmap tools. These tools can overcome the limitations of Excel by offering collaboration, security and visualization features. They provide a solution, for planning products and communicating with stakeholders.

My experience with roadmap software has been less than satisfactory, as I find them to be rather restrictive. They don't seem to offer the flexibility I require, often necessitating additional versions created via spreadsheets or PowerPoint. This leads to a duplication of efforts, thus making the process inefficient.

I found specialized roadmap software too limited, too strict. I preferred to adopt tools that I could use more flexibly to shape my roadmaps and get my ideas across clearly, in a way that suited my stakeholders and audience. Dedicated tools can be too restrictive, and if you already know what to do, limiting. If you are an aspiring or new product manager though, these tools will probably get you off to a good start.

ProductBoard has been great for a Roadmap tool. It creates a single source of truth which everyone can refer to, while being user friendly enough that everyone in the business can use. It's great to sort through roadmaps, prioritise features, comments on things and add notes. And great also to present the same information in different formats for different audiences.

Given our dispersed team and stakeholders, a cloud-based roadmap tool like Aha! or Trello would be ideal for real-time collaboration and visibility. Key features would include timeline views, dependency tracking, and easy sharing options. Regular updates and sync meetings will ensure alignment on deliverables and dependencies. Risks, challenges, and opportunities will be identified and addressed through ongoing communication, feedback, and agile adjustments. The goal is to create a living roadmap that guides us towards successful product launch.

The choice of tools for creating a roadmap depends on the specific goals of the roadmap. Google Sheets and Jira are both excellent tools for creating simple roadmaps, but they may not be sufficient for more complex roadmaps that require resource allocation and dependency tracking. In these cases, MS Project can be a good option. While MS Project is traditionally used for waterfall projects, it can also be used for agile projects with some modifications. MS Project's strengths include its ability to easily assign resources, track costs, and make changes. As a result, it can be a very effective tool for creating roadmaps that are both comprehensive and flexible.

Choosing the right visual software for product roadmaps depends on your needs. Look for user-friendly interfaces, real-time collaboration features, and integration with other tools. A good visual roadmap is clear, flexible, and shows dependencies. When designing, start with high-level goals, then break down into tasks. Regularly update and share your roadmap to keep everyone aligned. For instance, using Trello's visual boards, our team could easily track progress and prioritize tasks, ensuring successful product launches. Remember, a roadmap is a living document that evolves with your product.

For me, PowerPoint is the best tool for crafting roadmaps due to its visual capabilities and universal accessibility. Its array of design elements, such as shapes, lines, and color fills, enable us to represent complex ideas in an easy-to-understand, visual format. Timeframes, dependencies, milestones, or progress indicators can be illustrated efficiently. Additionally, with the ability to customize templates, we can create visually consistent and professional presentations.

I find PowerPoint a suitable option for straightforward product roadmaps if I need to create visually appealing presentations. I agree though that for more complex roadmaps, it's best to use dedicated roadmap tools as they offer the specialised features and functionalities. My personal favourite right now is ClickUp.

Using Figjam or Miro to build my strategic roadmaps was particularly useful. These whiteboard tools make it easy to create boards that can be used as workshop base, while also allowing you to create high-quality visuals that can be exported to other media (Powerpoints...). These tools are flexible enough to create your own templates of roadmaps, and for example, you can turn your roadmaps in outcome focus roadmap, placing both initiatives and targeted outcomes on the map.

While it's better to have some specific tool to manage software, PowerPoint/Keynote/Slides is a great option to summarise the roadmap and tell a story with it. This story can be distributed to different people in a format that everyone can access (PDF) and easily shared.

It’s simple. Figma + Google Spreadsheet. Why these two? For visual representation of P0, P1, P2, we can easily show it using Figma. When we want to show calculation of ROI or RICE scores for each product feature in the roadmap, use spreadsheet. E.g of ROI calculation. Feature 1: Return = 4/5 Effort aka Investment = 2/5 ROI = Return / Effort = 200% Feature 2: Return = 2/5 Effort = 4/5 ROI = 50% So clearly, Feature 1 has more ROI, needs to be prioritised.

Choosing the right tool for product roadmaps depends on product complexity, update frequency, detail level, and audience. Tools range from offline spreadsheets to online platforms like Aha! or Jira. Here's a guide: 1) Identify requirements - consider product details, team size, and stakeholder needs. 2) Evaluate options - look at features, integration with other tools, and user reviews. 3) Test - use free trials to explore usability and functionality. 4) Select - based on testing experience, choose the tool that best matches your requirements. This process ensures you select the most suitable tool.

To make a good Roadmap and pick the right tool, follow these steps: 1) Align the roadmap objectives with the company’s strategic vision. 2) Understand what matters most and adopt the right perspective: -Jira is great for setting deadlines and assigning tasks to participants, making the Roadmap visually clear and simple. -Google Sheets is a good option for more detailed planning and customization. -MS Project is ideal for careful planning within the Iron Triangle (time, scope, resources). The choice depends on the goals of the organization, project, or program. Choose what works best at the moment. It's always possible to experiment with new solutions, as many of them offer free trials. The key is to be flexible and adaptable.

The most important is to choose a tool that suits your way of work, and also suitable for your team and stakeholders. The important thing is not the tool, but its function. It must enable you to create and share comprehensive roadmaps that convey clear messages. To find the right tool, ask yourself the right questions about how your stakeholders and team work. If they already use tools, explore whether you can use them to create your roadmaps; you want to avoid friction at all costs.

What tool you use matters less than the framework you use to develop your roadmap. Whether it's following the Kano model, or some other approach, the most important step is to be able to show a compelling roadmap that doesn't leave stakeholders confused. Roadmaps are an opportunity to build excitement and energy. Once you know your content is strong, then whatever tool you use should be primarily for ease of use & maintainability. If it produces something beautiful, all the better - but don't put beauty or complexity ahead of an unmaintained roadmap, or a roadmap that makes no sense.

As a product leader, I've learned that the best tool or roadmap is only as good as the team using it. In one instance, our team was using a sophisticated roadmap tool, but the complexity overshadowed its benefits. We switched to a simpler, more intuitive platform which boosted productivity and morale. This experience taught me that user adoption is paramount to a tool's success. Also, remember that roadmaps are not set in stone. They should evolve with the product, customer needs, and market trends. The key is maintaining transparency and communication within the team, ensuring everyone understands the product vision and their role in achieving it.

It'd be narrow sighted to suggest that the tools used to build a product roadmap are *always* the same tools you use to convey that roadmap. For example, my roadmap is built using AHA but conveyed using slides and diagraming tools. In the same way that my hobby-construction projects are built based on lists of materials and scheduling, the vision is represented in a drawing. The most important thing to consider is "does your roadmap tell a story"...? If it's a rambling sequence of enhancements and features, you won't encapsulate the journey you are attempting to convey. If it's simply a few drawings to represent how things will look, you are missing crucial context. Tell a story. Use whatever tools can best craft that story.

One of the most important aspects of a product roadmap is visibility. All parties contributing from a leadership, product delivery, architecture, engineering, marketing, sales, distribution, etc. perspective need access to the roadmap. Otherwise, it loses value and there is misalignment across the organization with regards to not really understanding the product direction. These stakeholders should have real-time access to the roadmap so they can effectively plan and perform their job as well. Asking for access is an impediment that slows down business agility.

Diagrams tools + power point + excel. I usually use PPT to group all the results. Diagrams helps me to understand the communication between the systems involved on the project. PPT helps me to understand the details on each phase or system. Excel helps me to order the Product Backlog.