Building Product Roadmaps

Planning is essential for success. It is the difference between successful businesses and unsuccessful ones. To increase the odds of success, you have to create a business plan when starting a business. Similarly, you will have to build a product roadmap when developing a new product to increase the chances of the product being a hit. These strategic tools give you a sense of direction and purpose.

A roadmap is a tool developed by the PM team mapping out the product’s vision and direction over time. It is a strategic tool and it also lays out the plan for executing the strategy. The road-map will show how the product aligns with the stakeholders, how it will grow, and even how the budget will be acquired for the product development. While a product roadmap should be developed before you start developing the product, you can also build it for an existing product.

The Purpose of a Product Roadmap

Before starting the process of creating a product roadmap, roadmapping, it is important to understand the goals of the tool first. That will help you create a compelling product roadmap. The goals of a product roadmap include.

1. Laying out the product vision and strategy.

2. Developing a guide to the strategy execution.

3. Align the internal stakeholders who include sales, support, partners, management, operations, engineering, and product management.

4. Communicate to the external stakeholders like customers and the community.

5. Enabling discussing options.

6. Facilitate scenario planning.

How to Build a Product Roadmap

When building a product roadmap, make sure that you understand the key business goals and align the document with them. To determine which features align to your business goals and hence need to be included in the roadmap, you need to do the following.

1. Define the vision and strategy

Establishing the product’s vision will determine the product’s outlook and help define the market too. Understand your target buyers, their needs and how to appeal to them. A robust strategy and vision will help the team understand what exactly they are building.

2. Define the goals and benefits

Developing a goal-oriented product roadmap will help you deal with a dynamic market and competing technologies and products. A goal-oriented roadmap does not mean features will not be included. It just means that they have to be in line with the goals. Determine why you are creating the product and do not forget to include the metrics that will determine whether the roadmap’s goals have been met.

3. Prioritize the features

Customer needs and requests will be many. It would be unfeasible to address all the requests or needs within the time horizon you will have set. Ensure that you prioritize starting with the ones that are closest to your goals. Rank the possible features against the goals of your roadmap.

4. Make it Measurable

Effective roadmaps are measurable. You need to be accountable to yourself. Include metrics that will measure the success of your roadmap. Without any specific, yet realistic targets, it will be almost impossible to tell how effective the roadmap was.

5. Regular reviews and adjustments

The business environment is never static. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your roadmap will ensure your product is still relevant when it is launched. For a dynamic market, evaluate the road map every month. Do not, however, go for three months without a review regardless of the market dynamism.