How to Build a Product Roadmap

Introduction to Product Roadmap

A roadmap is a plan for the future. It helps you know what you're doing, where you're going, and how you're going to get there. It's not enough to see the goal. You need to know what you're going to do to get there.

The roadmap is a set of milestones, dates, and actions that show how your product will progress. It is a clear vision of where you want to go and how you want to get there. A product roadmap is not a document that describes what you are going to do. It is a plan for how you are going to do it.

To help you nail your following product roadmap, we'll walk you through the challenges of product roadmaps and our best ideas for how to overcome them.

Why do you need a Product Roadmap?

Having a product roadmap can help you organize your product development efforts. It can help you understand how your customers are using your product, and it can help you decide what features to build next. The proper product roadmap can help you prioritize your work and focus on the right things.

Who is responsible for the product roadmap?

Every company has a product roadmap, a collection of short-term and long-term goals that describe the vision for the product and its features. The product managers and the team create these goals. The product managers are responsible for ensuring that the roadmap is accurate and complete. It's also their job to ensure that the roadmap is kept up to date and updated when necessary.

How to build a product roadmap?

Roadmaps are a critical part of any successful product, yet it's surprising how many companies never get their roadmap right.

Every good roadmap has a destination. This is the point you're trying to reach, something that will delight your customer.

A product roadmap is not just a list of features. It should be for user experience, growth, and profitability.

To write a better roadmap, here are the six ways to do so :

1. Product Vision

The proposition is what makes your product or service unique. It tells your users what they gain by choosing you over your competitors.

The product roadmap is the bridge between the vision and goal of the product and its actual delivery. It allows you to align your company's resources with the product's purposes and create a shared understanding of how you will get there. It also allows you to communicate your vision and goals to your team and customers.

Product roadmaps are often built more out of habit than intent. They are the result of strolling down a list of product ideas and picking the easiest or most practical ones to complete. The resulting roadmap is not a compelling, vital statement about where the business should go but a list of moderate-value products.

2. Create models

You can create themes by looking at your backlog through the lens of organizational goals, through the lens of structural changes, or by examining it through the lens of user experience. But the best way to do this is by looking at it through the lens of organizational goals.

A good strategy will cut out all the unnecessary features and tell you what needs to be in the product.

3. Assign priority

The value of a theme to customers is apparent from your user research. Something that solves a significant user pain point, and is easy to explain and understand, has high value.

Often creating a model means developing new business models or systems, which is hard to do in the early stages of product development.

4. Build your narrative

When there's a story to tell, a vision helps you build a narrative for your product or service. The narrative is the key to making a connection.

You can direct your energy and effort efficiently when you have a clear vision.

5. Plan carefully

The broader organization needs to know when a particular feature will be launched. So the roadmap becomes a list of promised features, each with a delivery date. That is an understandable request, but as we have seen, it leads to unrealistic plans.

6. Look for opportunities

If you're not thinking of how to solve customer problems, then you're wasting time. Instead of building features without understanding underlying needs, tweak the product's existing capabilities and deliver a better solution.

Embracing Uncertainty

You should plan your roadmap into three phases. In the first phase, you set a direction. In the second phase, you expand the capability and develop further expertise. In the final phase, you build on what you have learned to deliver more advanced capability.

A good product roadmap tells you, at a high level, which opportunities you're going to address. It might even show how you'll address specific opportunities with increasing levels of sophistication.

Detailed planning should be done in parallel with your project. To avoid confusion, each document is kept separate.

Focus and discipline

A good product roadmap is based on your vision and focuses on delivering value to your users. You can achieve clarity by having a simple, adaptable plan that includes the big rocks, the smaller tasks you need to accomplish, and the order they should happen.

The inverse roadmap layout is an uncommon presentation format that can help you communicate your strategy clearly and organize. It also makes it easier to align your plan with other plans across the organization.

All organizations have desires and plan to attain greatness and success. To achieve this, the founder and the people in charge must impress a sense of focus and discipline upon their organization.

I hope this post was enlightening and shed some light on effectively building a roadmap for your product development.

For further reading check out this guide on Two Roadmaps Diverged: Strategic and Tactical Routes to Product Development by Toptal.