In the hyper-competitive, rapidly evolving market of today, there is no room for vague and abstract plans of how to deliver a product. The product roadmap is a great tool where teams can illustrate their product plan and stakeholder sign-off, leading to common goals with everyone working together.
What exactly is a product roadmap and why is it so important for product management, though?
Table of Contents
This detailed article covers what a product roadmap is, why they are important, and how to create one.
Product Roadmap
A product roadmap is a graphic overview of a product’s goal, path, and progression and how the product will mature over time. It is the product team’s strategic plan, what we want to do, and how we can get there.
Importance of a Product Roadmap
Building a good product roadmap is not a manual; it’s an essential who-knows-what tool.
- Alignment on Strategy: Aligning all teams and stakeholders to work on the right things helps product managers prioritize when to do what.
- Preference Setting: Managers can prioritize tasks according to their level of urgency.
- Communication: Communicates the product goals and strategy to beneficiaries (executives, dev teams) and customers.
- Ownership: Establish your expectations and measure them against the set goals.
- Inclusive: It offers product architects a stick and allows them to be more adaptive as the market or user needs shift.
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Major Elements of a Product Roadmap
1. Product Vision/Goals
The long-term aspiration for the product—what do you want it to achieve in the market? Goals are concrete, measurable targets that feed into this vision (e.g. customer retention increase or entering a new market)
2. Strategic Themes
Themes represent the high-level categories that bring together associated projects or functionalities. A theme could be something like “enhancing user experience” or “enlarging integrational abilities.”
3. Initiatives and Features
Initiatives are high-level topics where work should contribute to the product objective, whereas a feature is something more granular like or solves an aspect of these initiatives.
4. Initiatives and Features
Initiatives are high-level topics where work should contribute to the product objective, whereas a feature is something more granular like or solves an aspect of these initiatives.
5. Schedules and Timelines
Roadmaps tend not to commit too tightly to dates but almost always outline some window of time for when deliverables and milestones are supposed to occur. However, it could be exact dates, quarters, or longer time frames.
By tracking onboarding metrics, customer retention stats, or increases in turnover, a roadmap can be successful.
7. Stakeholders and Ownership
Who is responsible for each initiative needs to be decided so that accountability is clear.
Different Kinds of Product Roadmaps
Product roadmaps should never be cookie-cutter! Your audience and purpose will drive roadmap content. Here are the different kinds of roadmaps:
- Strategic Roadmap: Emphasizes strategic objectives and focus areas, as executive stakeholders need to have an overview.
- Function-Oriented Roadmap: Includes highlight of features and their to-dos keeping the development teams in the loop
- Tech Strategy Plan: Identifies the secondary technology stack and tools/systems that feed product development.
- Rollout Strategy: What specifications will be part of a given release (features, bug fixes/improvements, etc.)
- Portfolio Roadmap: Includes more than just one product or a suite of products, showcasing all products and features in the context of the company’s strategy.
Developing a Product Roadmap
Developing a product roadmap must be a teamwork and not a single man’s task. Here are some steps for developing a product roadmap:
- Develop a Product Vision and Mission: Brainstorm into what product you want to build, and why. Tie this vision into where the company is going macroscopically.
- Study the Market: Accumulate ideas from customer feedback, market data, and product competition to point you in the right direction for your roadmap.
- Find The Strategic Themes: Brands should group strategic initiatives based on their product goals.
- Feature and Initiatives Prioritization: Apply models such as MoSCoW (Must-Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have) or RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort) to help you rank the most relevant ones on top.
- Set Deadlines: Define rational timeframes for all initiatives and remember that adaptability is more important.
- Engage with Stakeholders: Get inputs from intradepartmental teams to make sure the roadmap is holistic & practical.
- Leverage Proper Tools: Rely on Jira, Trello, and more to develop and distribute your roadmap.
- Communicate: Meet with stakeholders, create a feedback loop, and iterate based on what you know (or don’t know) to shape the roadmap in a dynamic manner as priorities change.
Your Approach Towards Product Roadmapping
If you want your roadmap to be effective then follow these best practices for the roadmap:
- Simplify the Process: Do not add too much to your roadmap. Keep your goals and priorities at the highest level.
- Stay Open-Minded: Your roadmap at this stage is living, it should adjust as life changes.
- Coordinate with Organizational Objectives: Confirm that the roadmap is in sync with the larger strategic objectives of the business.
- Stakeholder engagement: Keep stakeholders involved so that you can always be aligned and ensure commitment.
- Stay in Touch: Update regularly so that everyone is up-to-speed and engaged.
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Obstacles/Hurdles in Product Roadmapping
There’s a ton of difficulty that comes with building a product roadmap and carving up ownership over it. Common roadblocks are:
- Bad Trade-Offs: Different stakeholders might have different asks and balancing the desire for what to build can be tricky.
- Unreasonable Demands: Too much pressure to set deadlines early can lead to unrealistic expectations going out into the wild.
- No Defined Objectives / Vague Initiatives: Goals that are either unclear or initiatives poorly defined can lead to stalled forward progress.
- Adapting to the Changing Market: The market can and does change quickly, which means that the roadmap may need to be changed often.
Overcoming these hurdles will necessitate the development of clear dialogue, bold leadership, and layers of agility.
Product Roadmaps in the World of Agile Development
Roadmaps in agile are more malleable as the priorities can change faster than a fixed plan can capture, albeit in an evolving direction. Agile road maps tend to be initiatives-based each with some short-term goals that cycle on feedback, and changing circumstances. Principles to follow with agile roadmaps:
- Duct Tape Planning: When you update the roadmap iteratively with acquired knowledge.
- Customer-Centric Process: Roadmap decisions are guided by feedback from customers.
- Collaboration: Building collaborative relations with interdepartmental teams.
Conclusion
A product roadmap is one of the most important tools that every product team needs in their arsenal which will provide clarity, alignment, and vision, across the lifecycle of the product. A roadmap enables everyone to work towards the end goal by having a vision, initiatives prioritized and collaboration defined.
Whether you are starting something new or just improving an existing product, a roadmap can be a game changer in whether or not that thing has a future. Think of it as a living document that you will shape with your product, and you will be ready to deal with some product development challenges providing value for your customers.
Product roadmap is not just a plan in a world of creativity and flexibility, it is a dream-cast to make your success into reality. Enroll in Intellipaat’s Product Management course and get a master’s in the product management domain.