Finally, A Useful Product Roadmap

Product Managers are happy to work with ambiguity. Market needs can change suddenly, technical issues can block a direction, and project funding can be shifted unexpectedly. Product Managers learn this early and learn to adjust quickly. But everyone else wants to know what new killer feature is coming and when. How can you give them this view of such an uncertain future?

This simple product road-map template helps align strategy with the tactics. And it is used to align developers, sales, customer success, marketing and customers so that they can better understand what is coming and why.

Why have a product roadmap?

“The product roadmap provides a shared vision of the product strategy and required key initiatives to achieve it so the company can rally behind them”

The product roadmap is the starting point for discussion about the product strategy, aligns the team behind the necessary initiatives to achieve it, and allows the company to continually reevaluate the strategy.

In a separate post we will discuss how to define the product strategy, but once defined it needs to be shared in order to gather all input and align the company. Without a product roadmap, stakeholders will all have different interpretations of what they think it is, which leads to misalignment and confusion.

Once defined, the roadmap gives a clear view of the initiatives that are coming so that all downstream teams can prepare for them and provide more insights that will help shape those initiatives so that they best meet market demand.

Regularly sharing it also allows the company to continually reevaluate whether the vision and strategies are still applicable or whether they need to change due to external demands.

The answer is not in the software!

“The roadmap is only useful if it is part of the Product Manager’s daily routine, is shared with the teams working to deliver it, and reviewed with the company”

Product Management software tries to guide Product Managers through a strategic planning process and then straight into an agile framework. This is fantastic at allowing the Product Manager to think strategically and pivot quickly from sprint to sprint. But the reality is, everyone else wants to know what is being done and when. So how do you do you achieve both flexible planning and making deliverable commitments, without creating more unnecessary work?

Start with your strategic pillars

“A roadmap starts with the key strategies. It is not a project plan”

Define the key strategies required to achieve your product vision. Keep them to within 3 (or 4) so you can filter out great ideas that aren’t going to help you achieve that product vision.

The strategic pillars should always be re-evaluated since your market evolves and your company priorities change. It is no use following the strategies that you defined yesterday if they will not get you to where you want to be tomorrow.

Now, Next, and Later

“Clients and the rest of the company simply want to know is what is coming out now, what you will work on next, and then what you are considering for later”

If you create a simple timeline that highlights what is being worked on now, shows what is coming next, and what is being considered later, you are able to both create a product roadmap that is flexible but gives insight to all other stakeholders.

Obviously, the further into the future you look, the less clear the timing. So the projects that you are working on NOW, for the next 3 months, should be quite predictable, at least to within a month. The work that you are planning NEXT is obviously less clear as you probably only have an Epic level understanding of the work. and the work you are planning LATER is very much a rough guess that will be refined as you wrap up the current work in progress.

Personally, I prefer to keep this roadmap in powerpoint or Google slides, because you want to share it with internal stakeholders and clients regularly. Both to share the insights, but by sharing it you can refine the strategies and initiatives further. And, of course, the more you share your insights the more committed you are to make them a reality

Wrap Up

A roadmap is essential for communicating the product strategy and giving stakeholders clearer insight into what they can expect to see launched into the market over time.