How to build an effective product roadmap
A product roadmap serves as a single source of truth to show how you can move from a vision to a launched product and beyond; therefore it is a key document for an organisation’s success.
Creating a product roadmap can be a turning point for a company – it’s when strategy, vision, research, and reality all collide, get sorted, and turn into something actionable.
Why you need a product roadmap?
A product roadmap is a living strategic document that outlines the goals, vision, and planned development of a product over time. Often this takes the form of a visual timeline that shows what will be done by when, and why it matters for the company.
It acts as a sole source of truth for stakeholders from throughout the company as far as what to expect with the product.
The accuracy and usability of the roadmap is essential to the product manager’s success in their job.
A roadmap should be just as easily accessed and understood by:
LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT: so they can feel sure that teams are prioritising initiatives and features that ladder up into the broader product strategy and its attending business goals
PRODUCT TEAMS: to help facilitate collaboration and understanding of priorities
MARKETING TEAMS: so they know what’s coming down the pipeline and can create campaigns accordingly
CUSTOMER SERVICE & SALES REPRESENTATIVES: so they can better guide conversations with external parties
USERS: so they can be kept up to date with the upcoming features and improvements
6 key steps to creating a Product Roadmap:
1. Define the vision
Every product roadmap begins with a clear vision. Establishing a strong vision sets the foundation for the roadmap and ensures all decisions and initiatives align with your overarching purpose:
What problem does your product/service solve?
What value does it provide to your customers?
Next, establish specific objectives that contribute to the realisation of your vision.
These objectives should be measurable, attainable and time-bound, and will act as guideposts throughout the roadmap creation process, helping you prioritise features and initiatives that directly support these objectives.
2. Gather ideas
To create a roadmap that resonates with your target audience, you must truly understand your customers' needs, pain points and preferences. Conduct user research, collect feedback, and analyse market trends to gain insights into customer behaviours and expectations.
If you’re building a roadmap post-launch, you may liaise with internal teams around specific objectives that will be important to hit.
If you’re dealing with lots of ideas, sort them into related themes, features, or initiatives to make them easier to manage.
3. Prioritise themes
With a clear vision and customer insights, the next step is to prioritise the features and initiatives that will fulfil the product strategy. Consider factors such as customer impact, market demand, technical feasibility, and business goals to determine the priority order.
One easy method, especially helpful for smaller companies, is to give simple scores from 1-3 to each theme’s feasibility and customer impact.
4. Create a visual roadmap
Once the prioritization is complete, translate your product roadmap into a visual representation choosing a format that suits your needs, timeline, or thematic visualization. Clearly communicate the major milestones, releases, or phases, and assign estimated timelines to each.
5. Present and align
When sharing the roadmap:
USE METRICS: keep everyone aligned on the broader goal by using data wherever possible, whether it’s retention figures or hour allotment based on previous projects.
KEEP THE AUDIENCE IN MIND: depending who you are presenting the roadmap to, use the metrics that is more relevant to your audience.
KEEP THE NARRATIVE IN MIND: reiterate the overall vision and tie this product roadmap to the higher-level vision.
BE OPEN: you want everyone from executive leadership to individual developers and marketers to raise questions and poke holes in the plan. This makes a roadmap more trustworthy for everyone involved.
6. Maintain the roadmap up to date
The final step of producing a good roadmap is maintaining it by setting up a weekly touch-up or a more formalised quarterly re-evaluation and rollout.
Whenever you’re reviewing the roadmap, ask yourself if you are on track to achieve our strategic objectives and vision; how have market dynamics or customer needs changed since the last review; are there any new market opportunities or emerging trends that you should consider for inclusion; are there any gaps in the roadmap that you need to fill.