How to Create a Product Roadmap

So, the stakeholders in your company want to move in a new direction, and you had a eureka moment. You’ve come up with a new idea, but where do you go from there? How do you convert your inspiration into a finished product? Where do you begin? The answer is obvious: with a product roadmap!

I think of a product roadmap as a pirate’s treasure map through a treacherous sea. You don’t know what you’re going to meet on the road, but you have a rough idea of where to get started. Product roadmaps make the product development process from ideation to your first iteration less uncertain. In essence, it helps you give your product a focus.

In this article, we’ll examine how to create a product roadmap that spans the development process. We’ll also discuss every step of the product journey, from crafting a product vision to managing timelines, setting strategic goals, and selecting your flagship features. Let’s sail and conquer the world, one innovative product at a time! 

What is a Product Roadmap?

A product is often a visual tool for communicating your product vision. It helps you put your product plans in motion and keep track of your product goals and potential key features. When you do it right, you get a timeline of all the work you’ll need to do to make your product idea a reality. 

Product owners and managers use roadmaps to get their teammates on board with their vision of the product.Yiu can use it as a reference document for the stakeholders and agile team on prioritizing tasks. When new members join the team, they can refer back to understand the product goals and get on the same page as past members. 

How to Create a Product Roadmap from Scratch

If this is your first time, creating a product roadmap can be stressful, but it becomes easier when you have the right product strategy in place. 

STEP 1: Identify Your Product Vision

Before you start listing the must-have features in your product, you need to identify the reason you’re making it and how it aligns with your company’s overall vision and strategy. 

Ask yourself, ” What problem are we trying to solve?” and ” What values do we want to deliver to our target customers?”  Once you answer these questions, you’ll be able to make decisions that align with your company goals, product vision, and strategy.

STEP 2: Gather and Prioritize Ideas

When you’ve identified your product vision, bring together your product team to gather and prioritize your ideas based on what is necessary and what is not. This process can help you clarify which features, improvements, and initiatives should be of greater concern.

Your final decision as a team should be based on the results of your user research, feedback and competitor analysis from sales, and other evidence-based metrics that are available to you. If there are ideas that have a greater impact on your business and satisfy your customer needs above others, you should move them to the top of the list.

STEP 3: Make Your Ideas into Features, Requirements, and Dependencies

Once you’ve arrived at the ideas you want to prioritize for your new product, build on them until you have concrete features with clear functionalities and a set of requirements to create them. 

STEP 4: Organize Your Tasks and Timelines

Figure out which features might need to be developed before others and rearrange your priorities in that order. Separate those rearranged features into a timeline and consider the efforts you’ll need to achieve each of them.

Your timelines don’t have to be accurate because they’re meant to be flexible anyway. You can regularly update them to align with your product launches and subsequent product releases.

To create an agile roadmap, you should use timeframes like quarters or releases rather than specific dates to allow flexibility.

STEP 5: Communicate and Refine

Let the stakeholders and members of your agile team review your draft roadmap for feedback. A roadmap is just a plan; nothing is set in stone yet. So, be willing to make adjustments based on observations, but don’t abandon your core goals.

Remember that communication is important whether you’re working on one or multiple products. You can use your roadmap to let the stakeholders know your product goals.

Tips and Best Practices to Build a Successful Roadmap

• Tailor it to your audience: Understand the people using the roadmap and tailor it to them accordingly. 
• Keep it visual: The best roadmaps are those the entire team can see in a visual format. So, use charts, graphs, and times to make your document easy to understand. 

You can use product roadmap templates if you’re not good at creating visual representations from scratch. They’ll help you showcase your product journey, highlight important features, and create an agile roadmap that morphs as you achieve each milestone. Use charts, graphs, or timelines to make your roadmap understandable.

• Maintain flexibility: Agile development aims to create a minimum viable product you can improve on over time. Therefore, your roadmap must be flexible.
• Reach a consensus with your product team: You should agree about what product you’re creating or improving from your first meeting with your team. That way, you can get every team member along as you proceed.
• Know the type of product roadmap you want: You can use different product roadmaps as a product manager, depending on the situation. Two of these product roadmaps are feature roadmaps or internal roadmaps.  If you want your roadmap to adequately communicate your goals with the product to the stakeholders and other team members, you can create these two roadmaps.

Common Tools and Templates You Can Use to Create a Roadmap

Tools and templates make it easy to plan your product and create a clear roadmap for your team. Some are free, and some are paid. I’ve mentioned some of the best product roadmapping software below.

Canva

This is a free tool to present a product roadmap to your team. Canva comes with templates you can easily edit. You can download and share it with your team, who can, in turn, make changes if you approve.

Jira Software

Jira has a free and paid subscription. The free version allows you to create roadmaps for a small team. If your team is large, you may have to subscribe.

Airfocus

Airfocus has a one-tool-to-do-it-all vibe. It’s a simple tool that can help you create a roadmap as soon as possible. Airfocus is integrated with Trello, Jira, and Github. It also has a drag-and-drop interface, so you can easily create your roadmap without a hitch.

Wrike

This tool displays your roadmap in a Gantt chart format, though you can change it into a Kanban or list view. It’s great for product management, but you can also use it in all other industries, especially if your business model is SaaS.

If you use project management tools like Asana or Monday, you’ll definitely love Wrike. You don’t have to pay for Wrike if your team has five people or fewer.

 Google Spreadsheet

The Google suites offer free apps, and you can color code the activities you need to include in your product roadmap and edit them as needed.

Free Product Manager Templates to Create Your Roadmap

The best product roadmap is a high-level visual document. That way, your team members and stakeholders can see everything that should be done at once. 

The following are free product manager templates you can use to create your roadmap

What Are the Key Components of a Roadmap?

While templates can help you quickly create a product roadmap, understanding what elements you need to include and why you need to include those elements will help you craft an effective product roadmap. Let’s explore some of the most common elements, their significance, and how to customize them for your company or product.

a. Vision & Goals: This part of the product map describes what the product’s strategic goals and long-term vision are. It’s a guide to ensure that all future activities align with the product’s purpose and direction.

If you’re using a table, your vision and goals can be outside the table on any side.

b. Initiatives & Features: This section is where you turn your ideas into actionable steps. You should define the features you’ll be prioritizing for your development, why you’ll be prioritizing those features, and your overall product strategy.

c. Timeline & Milestones: Ensure that your roadmap communicates the timeframe you’ll need to carry out your features and initiatives. This will make it easier for you to track your progress as you proceed and hold your team accountable for delivery. 

How to Prioritize Features and Tasks on a Roadmap

Prioritization in product management means deciding the features your product should have and the tasks you need to carry out to create those features. 

• Customer Needs & Market Trends: Focus more on features that solve user problems and align with current market trends. Conduct user research to know what your potential users’ pain points are and analyze what your competitors offer to stay ahead.
• Impact & Effort: Learn to weigh the impact of each feature against how much effort the development team will need to make them a reality. If the product is still in its early stages, focus on creating high-impact features that are easier to implement.
• Dependencies: Some features require other features to be fully established. So, consider any dependencies between features and prioritize features with fewer dependencies for early development to avoid delays.
• Strategic Alignment: Customize your product roadmap to align with your company’s goal and vision.

Why Should You Regularly Revise and Update Your Roadmap?

Product managers present their ideas and how they want to achieve them with roadmaps. However, the tasks on the documents are not meant to be fixed. Your product will evolve over time as the development team works on it. The evolution may be because of market changes and shifts in user preferences. Whatever it is, having a flexible roadmap will make it easy for you to stay up-to-date with your potential users and customers.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When You’re Creating a Roadmap

At this point in the article, you should already know how to create a product roadmap. However, there are some common mistakes you’ll want to avoid to make sure your roadmap is as effective as ever. These mistakes are:

a. Leaving out an Important Feature: When you’re building a roadmap, make sure you include all the product features that are necessary for your project to succeed. You don’t want to leave anything out and risk missing an important element.

b. Long Presentation to Stakeholders: Be clear and concise when you’re presenting your roadmap to stakeholders. Remember, no one wants to sit through a long and boring presentation when they could be doing other things.

c. Arbitrarily Creating the Roadmap: Make sure to build consensus among stakeholders before finalizing your product roadmap. If your team doesn’t agree with what you include in a product roadmap, it’ll be difficult, if not impossible, to execute.

Conclusion

So, you’ve finally reached the end of this thrilling article on how to build a product roadmap. Congratulations! It’s time to put all that newfound knowledge to good use and make one for your idea. To inspire you along the way, you can find countless product roadmap examples in this article that can help you get started. Just remember that every organization is unique, so your roadmap needs to be customized to fit your specific goals and challenges.