What is a Product Roadmap?

?Product roadmaps are strategic documents that help companies plan their next moves. They involve several internal and external stakeholders and inform what teams do to help drive innovation. The type of roadmap a product uses (agile, waterfall, goal, etc.) depends on timelines and project complexity.

A clear development plan helps ensure a successful launch, whether a company plans to offer physical or digital products. This development plan is called a product roadmap. In addition to sharing the ideal process for building a product, companies must use this plan to communicate their vision for how the rollout should go. This communication benefits stakeholders at every level, from hands-on team members to potential investors.

Every product manager worth their weight in gold understands this, which is why these professionals outfit product plans with high-level goals, concrete milestones, timelines and other elements crucial to the success of a product launch.

The best way to lay all this information out for anyone to reference is to build a robust product roadmap.

What is a Product Roadmap?

Product roadmaps are high-level overviews that map out the overall vision for a project over a given period. These planning materials often include visual summaries and elements to help explain the processes an organization or team will follow throughout development. A practical product roadmap accomplishes several key goals, including:

• Describing the vision and strategy.
• Guiding strategy execution.
• Aligning internal stakeholders.
• Facilitating discussions and contingencies for various scenarios.
• Communicating high-level plans with external stakeholders, such as customers or investors.

Why is a Product Roadmap Important?

Product roadmaps show what a team is working on and why a team is building a product. An effective roadmap links back to the organization’s overall product strategy.

Product roadmaps make it easier for teams to manage and align expectations. They provide good short- and long-term guidance about a project, too. These overviews are essential for stakeholders, but each group sees different benefits:

• Organizational leaders receive updates on work status. A product roadmap can translate development tasks in project management tools into non-technical terms.
• Product owners and managers use roadmaps to unify their teams. They can effectively communicate priorities with adjacent members of the organization.
• Developers benefit from roadmaps because they offer a “big picture” product overview. This facilitates focus and helps avoid “scope creep.”

Ultimately, product roadmaps are powerful communication channels. They facilitate collaboration and alignment across teams while generating excitement for a product.?

Product Roadmap Templates & Types

Product roadmaps come in numerous formats. Ultimately, the type of roadmap a project manager chooses depends heavily on the product they shepherd. The most common types of roadmaps are:?

• Goal.
• Features.
• Waterfall.?
• Agile.?
• Now-Next-Later.
• Strategy.
• Release.

Dive into each type of product roadmap for specific information about how they are used, and why a project manager would consider each type when building out their strategy.?

Goal Roadmap

Goal roadmaps focus exclusively on objectives. Project managers create them to visualize strategies to achieve results. They can focus on overall goals or achievements at each stage of production. One of the pros of a goal-focused roadmap is that it requires teams to set objectives for the release versus thinking about product features.

Features Roadmap

A feature roadmap focuses almost exclusively on how the team works to build new product benefits and features. These roadmaps help communicate feature development progress within the team and external stakeholders. The priorities for this roadmap are key releases and ensuring alignment on resource allocation for each development cycle.?

Waterfall Roadmap

Waterfall product management refers to a sequential model for new products or features. This method tends to be utilized in hardware development. Introduced in 1970, the waterfall method of product roadmaps relies on a logical progression of steps and phases. These steps include:

• Requirements analysis: The project manager captures customer requirements or project constraints and builds a release plan.
• Design: This phase details any requirements necessary for implementation, generally in a design specification document.
• Implementation: Developers write source code around the requirements. Testing occurs in small batches before units become integrated into the larger product.
• Testing: The new product undergoes rigorous testing to meet predetermined requirements. Testers document bugs and issues for repair.
• Deployment: The team deploys the system/product into a production environment and makes it available for consumers.
• Maintenance: Developers and other team members focus on keeping things running. They fix any defects consumers report and enhance and update the product.

Waterfall roadmaps make the most sense when product development requirements are precise and stakeholders do not expect them to change. Waterfall roadmaps also work well when project deliverables are subject to tight deadlines and a stable release schedule. For these reasons, most waterfall roadmaps take a long-term view. They operate on an annual cycle with fixed dates and budgets.?

Agile Roadmap

An agile product roadmap differs from a waterfall one because agile development tends to be more flexible than waterfall development. Agile development follows many of the same steps as waterfall development, but with one key difference: The ultimate goal is not the main focus.?

This means that, because agile developers focus on shorter release cycles, there is less focus on a finalized output. Most agile development occurs in short-term sprints focusing on a few critical priorities simultaneously.

Agile roadmaps are responsive documents that primarily focus on short-term gains. They work best when used in conjunction with collaboration tools to automatically notify all team members if the plan changes.?

Now-Next-Later Roadmap?

Now-next-later frameworks focus less on future deliverables and more on prioritizing the immediate needs of development teams and company stakeholders. These roadmaps offer flexibility in production and often evolve significantly over time

Now-next-later frameworks focus on answering three questions:

• Now: “What is currently being worked on by our team?”
• Next: “What do we need to do next?”
• Later: “What is in the backlog that is not urgent yet still worth visualizing?”

Now-next-later roadmaps require a flexible approach and focus on aspects of development other than the ultimate goal or the minute details of a project. This makes them great for communicating with large audiences and sharing plans without a deadline commitment.?

On the flip side, these roadmaps do not serve executives who need details. Now-next-later frameworks also do not work well when communicating within product organizations, which often need more details.

Strategy Roadmap

A strategy roadmap outlines a long-term vision for an organization’s strategy. This type of plan helps guide decision-making for objectives and initiatives. A solid strategy roadmap also measures progress to help ensure that development stays on track throughout production.

Strategy roadmaps ask questions like, “Where are we going?” and “When should we get there?” They rely on key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress.?

Release Roadmap

Release roadmaps highlight new improvements, features or bug fixes a company expects to launch in upcoming cycles. These roadmaps span three to six months but can function as shorter sprints. Release roadmaps are often used in tandem with other roadmaps or take the place of former plans post-production.?

Key Elements of a Product Roadmap

What makes an effective product roadmap? Various elements may be interwoven in product roadmaps to help make them successful. Which elements, and how much detail is associated with each, will depend on the product team needs. That said, by and large, most product roadmaps feature the following elements:

How to Build a Product Roadmap

Building a product roadmap takes time and focus. Without one, a project may either not take off properly (if at all) or fail. Spending the energy in the forefront of production to build an effective plan will often save significant headaches down the line.

Identify Product Strategy & Goals

First, establish the product goals. Strategize on initiatives that the effort will support. After defining those, it is time to decide which features and releases align with the strategy. Visualize it on a timeline.

Review and Organize Ideas

Then, begin filling out the plan. Ideas are great, but too many may make it hard to start a project because teams may be unclear on the task priorities. Good product managers develop roadmaps by organizing strong ideas into the official plan. Ideas that do not further the ultimate goal are dismissed or put on a list to be addressed later. To streamline this process, consider scoring goals based on how they reflect the overall strategy.

Choose the Best Format

The roadmap an organization or team builds primarily depends on the development cycle. Some roadmaps need a year to make sense, while others can work as shorter sprint-level cycles. Consider the product and the business building it to find the roadmap structure that will work best.

Determine Features and Priorities

What are the essential features to build right now? Which ones can wait? What do stakeholders require?

Asking these questions can help determine the priorities for the project. These can always be adjusted, but knowing what comes first can help define the project’s scope.

Set a Clear Timeline

Roadmaps are not the same as a timeline, but they need a general idea of deadlines to be functional. These markers keep the work moving forward.?

Categorize Tasks

Knowing who handles what tasks is just as important as knowing what needs doing in the first place. Categorizing tasks by function and placing them into the hands of appropriate parties eliminates confusion. Divide the work and ensure everyone has access by sharing a global roadmap across departments.?

Communicate with the Team

Product roadmaps are only reliable when everyone involved communicates clearly. Keep everyone up to speed with a regular cadence of communication. This can be status meetings, message chains in the existing project management software, or even phone calls with stakeholders.

Measure and Review the Success of Initiatives?

Track progress and pay attention to those KPIs established early in the process. Is the team hitting its milestones? Are releases seeing the results the company expected? Focusing on measurable results allows us to change direction and adjust the roadmap (or build a new one entirely) if needed.

Tips for Creating the Best Product Roadmap

Product roadmaps are living documents, so priorities and execution will inevitably shift. Some of the best practices for creating them include the following tips:

• Only provide as much detail as necessary.
• Focus on short-term tactics and long-term goals (as well as how they relate to one another).
• Review them regularly. Make changes as necessary.?
• Stay involved with all stakeholders to ensure product alignment.

Final Thoughts

Product roadmaps help determine the success of a project launch. However, creating an effective plan involves continued practice. The best way to improve roadmaps is to foster active collaboration and ensure buy-in from everyone on the team.?

Top Takeaways

• Product roadmaps help organizations guide and plan product releases.
• They foster collaboration among all stakeholders by keeping them informed and on target.
• A good product roadmap is flexible and adjusts as necessary.
• Building a product roadmap includes careful planning for goals, milestones, measurable elements and the involvement of multiple teams.

(Reporting by NPD)