From Vision to Execution: How to Build an Effective Product Roadmap

One of the most common challenges product leaders face is balancing long-term vision with short-term deliverables in a roadmap. Earlier this week, I was speaking with a fellow product management leader, and he asked me about my approach for developing a new roadmap. I tend to get this question a lot, so I decided to put down a few thoughts on building a roadmap for a mid-size software focused company.

Building an effective product roadmap is a critical skill for product leaders. It requires balancing strategic vision with customer needs, team capabilities, and market realities. Here's a structured approach to creating a roadmap that drives results.

Start with Vision and Data

A good roadmap starts with a solid Product Vision, which will provide a focal point for the team’s work over the next 24 - 36 months. Ideally, you also have some well defined corporate level KPIs. Let’s say that your Product Vision is to make life easier for customers through innovation in your space, and your KPIs are focused on improving renewal rates (which you believe will require new, innovative features), improving conversion of leads to opportunities for the sales team, and improving your margins related to software delivery.

Next, you should turn to the aggregated feedback that has been collected from the Voice of the Customer and other market research. This data can be collected by direct customer feedback sessions, sales team insights into win/loss analysis, larger market trends and competitor positioning, and internal data about product usage and user behaviors.?

Define Strategic Pillars

With this product vision, underlying corporate KPIs, and a solid set of insights from the Voice of the Customer, you can define key pillars which will guide your roadmap work. In order to help improve your renewal rates, your team believes that you need to be focused on delivering Innovative Features; in order to improve lead identification, you need to build some Automation into your website data collection and processing infrastructure; in order to improve your margins, you need to lower your Hosting Costs.?

At this higher level, focus on outcomes rather than feature outputs for each pillar. This will help open space for the R&D team to explore a wide range of ways to address each work area and not be locked into thinking of only the already defined features in the backlog. So for each Pillar, define a target goal (or set of goals). These can be the same or slightly different from the KPIs. For example:

• The goal of "Innovative Features," could be to target "30% increase in feature adoption"
• The goal of "Automation," could be to target "50% reduction in lead qualification time"
• The goal of "Lower Hosting Costs," could be to target "25% reduction in infrastructure spend per customer"

These three areas can now serve as your roadmap pillars upon which success will stand. These can be defined by product leadership, however, they often become more robust with the input and guidance from your product team, technical leadership and other executives.

Team Empowerment

The next step is to bring these pillars to the broader technology and product team to start aligning previously defined or new key epics and features with each of these pillars. I believe that you will get the best roadmap and the most buy-in from the R&D team (plus save inevitable cycles of iteration on the roadmap in the long term) by empowering them to create a first draft of the roadmap oriented around the key pillars. This not only leads to a finished roadmap faster, it helps build ownership and accountability within the team as well, leading to higher engagement and better long-term execution.?

Leadership Review Process

After the team has created a draft “plan” (i.e. forced-ranked projects together with some high-level scoping), there should be a broader review by the Technical and Product leadership to understand the proposed work and timelines. This review should ensure that the plan accounts for all key features and deliverables; though, it's not just focused on identifying gaps and weaknesses, it’s also useful to ensure alignment with the broader company strategy encompassing financial goals, market positioning, and the overall Product Vision.

Here are some specific things to evaluate through an executive lens at this stage:

Does the set of proposed projects give the firm the best chance of delivering on the KPIs?

If the answer is NO, then you need to push the team harder to identify alternative epics and features that may have a better chance of success

Is there some set of desired work that “does not fit” into any of the defined Pillars?

If the answer is YES, then you may need to redefine a pillar; you may need to add an alternative pillar; or you may need to cut this desired work from the roadmap as it is not aligned with your current goals (this is usually the toughest, but most productive outcome to gain team focus!)

Are any pillars or teams that suffer from “local maximization” with this plan??

Project teams / squads almost always feel pressure to “fill” the roadmap with projects that make sense for them to pick up next when looking at their narrow remit. However, these might not be as impactful as projects that fall further down the list of other teams/squads.

If you notice this creeping into your roadmap, you may need to redefine the scope of work for this group, or perhaps even re-organize your teams, so that you can prioritize more impactful projects for the business.

Conclusion

Building out a roadmap is an iterative process. The projects need to be reviewed for scope and timing and interconnectedness. Thereafter, you will likely require additional reviews with key stakeholders and executives to develop buy-in for the plan, and continue to refine the details with the team.?

And remember, a roadmap is just a snapshot in time - the moment it is published, it inevitably begins to change as your team learns more, you evolve your thinking and the market changes around you.

About the Author

Mike Kalmakis is a Product Management Executive with 10+ years of experience building AI-powered solutions that drive growth. Always intellectually curious, he has successfully led B2C and B2B product development at high tech companies across industries including Retail, Consumer Insights, Music and Hospitality with notable roles at True Fit, Brandwatch, Spotify and Travelclick. A Cornell Engineering graduate with an MBA from NYU, Mike is passionate about leveraging emerging technologies to solve complex problems and create delightful product experiences.

#ProductManagement #ProductStrategy #ProductRoadmap #ProductLeadership