How to Create a Product Roadmap

A product roadmap template may also help you successfully talk and refine the technique and imaginative and prescient on your product.

Most profitable corporations are consistently constructing and iterating on their merchandise or platforms. Because the product adjustments and grows, the remainder of the group should adapt with it. Every new function or performance adjustments the way you promote and market your product. Product tweaks would possibly have an effect on your income fashions, or require you to carry on new group members. Exterior shoppers or advisors will need to keep knowledgeable, as nicely.

It’s important that each a part of your group understands the place your product goes and the steps required to get you there. That’s the place the product roadmap — in its varied types — comes into play.

I’ve been creating B2B SaaS merchandise for practically 20 years. At York IE, I oversee the event of our platform for strategic progress, Gasoline, and assist our shoppers launch and develop their very own merchandise. No matter dimension or business, each firm wants strategic roadmaps that assist them outline and execute on their imaginative and prescient. Making a product roadmap is a collaborative, iterative course of that requires fixed communication.

Let’s discover ways to create a product roadmap and focus on some finest practices to get you began. Don’t neglect to obtain our product roadmap template as you begin the planning course of.

Desk of Contents

What Is a Product Roadmap?

A product roadmap is a high-level strategic doc that helps corporations outline their product technique and lay out their priorities. A well-designed product roadmap establishes a shared understanding of the product imaginative and prescient, the steps wanted to realize it and the timelines related to these steps.

Your organization’s product roadmaps ought to assist align varied inner groups — gross sales, advertising, finance, and so forth. — across the identical organizational targets. That’s as a result of every division could have enter and visibility into the roadmap. This plan may also assist your exterior stakeholders and shoppers keep knowledgeable in your product technique.

I wish to suppose there are three ranges of highway mapping, every of which is extra appropriate for sure stakeholders. It’s necessary to know the variations once you’re making a product roadmap.

Sorts of Product Roadmaps

The three most important forms of product roadmaps are:

horizon planning roadmap;function roadmap; anddetailed product backlog.

Individuals usually use the generic phrase “roadmap” to explain any kind of planning doc. That’s why I wish to categorize a roadmap as one in every of three varieties. Every sort communicates completely different data for various audiences — and every degree is extra granular than its predecessor.

Right here’s how we outline them at York IE:

Stage 1 (Horizon Planning Roadmap): What’s our long-term imaginative and prescient for the product?Stage 2 (Characteristic Roadmap): What options do we’ve got to develop to get there?Stage 3 (Detailed Product Backlog): What are the product backlog objects we have to full to launch these options?

Stage 1: Horizon Planning Roadmap

A horizon planning roadmap sometimes consists of three overlapping horizons, every of which represents your targets for a selected time frame.

You’ll outline your short-, medium- and long-term targets in every horizon. Horizon 1 sometimes appears to be like at what you’re hoping to perform within the subsequent three to 6 months. Horizon 2 extends six to 18 months and Horizon 3 may define your imaginative and prescient for the following 18 months to 5 years. You’ll work collaboratively with leaders throughout the enterprise to outline your horizons and their timelines.

It’s usually useful to assign a theme to every horizon. For instance:

Horizon 1:

Set up instant must allow gross sales and attain your minimal viable viewers.Theme: Core Inputs (constructing the essential options of your platform)

Horizon 2:

Broaden your core providing to proceed progress and add worth for purchasers.Theme: Optimization (optimizing these options)

Horizon 3:

Define the inspirational initiatives that get you nearer to market dominance.Theme: Information Insights (iterating based mostly on utilization knowledge)

Splitting up your imaginative and prescient into horizons helps you ruthlessly prioritize your options. It’ll show you how to establish probably the most essential objects inside every theme and consider what’s most important on your minimal viable viewers.

Horizon planning roadmaps are sometimes up to date as soon as per quarter or as soon as each six months. They’re usually inbuilt PowerPoint, Excel or an identical device that any member of your group can use.

Stage 2: Characteristic Roadmap

A function roadmap means that you can bucket your options into completely different classes and assign a timeline for every function launch. Startups will sometimes plan options 4 to 6 months out, whereas a extra established firm would possibly look so far as 12 months upfront.

A function roadmap appears to be like just like a Gantt chart or schedule. It’s useful to make use of swim lanes, which present the sequencing of labor inside every class. Bear in mind: You’re speaking when the options are launching, not when the product group is constructing them. It’s necessary that advertising, gross sales and different departments have enter into which options are launching and when.

Rising tech corporations ought to replace their function roadmaps on a month-to-month foundation. Bigger corporations would possibly achieve this quarterly. This roadmap may very well be inbuilt PowerPoint or Excel, however I’d advocate migrating it to a product administration device comparable to Notion or Jira in case you can.

Stage 3: Detailed Product Backlog

You’ve outlined your imaginative and prescient and the options wanted to get you there. Now it’s time to interrupt up every function launch into backlog objects the event group can sort out. In different phrases, it’s time to start out planning your sprints. A lot of the collaboration for this roadmap is completed throughout the product improvement group.

By now, you’re working fully in your venture administration device. You’ll dimension every backlog merchandise and allocate it to a group member. Generally, you gained’t have the ability to plan your product backlog a couple of or two months upfront. (Agile methodology requires flexibility!) Product backlogs are sometimes up to date weekly or bi-weekly as a part of your dash ceremonies.

Learn how to Create a Product Roadmap

The steps to create a product roadmap are:

outline your product imaginative and prescient;establish your targets and aims;decide your timeline;establish your key initiatives;prioritize your initiatives;assign possession; andreview and refine.

1. Outline Your Product Imaginative and prescient

Start with Stage 1, horizon planning. When making a horizon planning roadmap, begin by defining the overarching aim of your product. This ought to be a high-level assertion that captures the essence of what you’re making an attempt to realize. A product roadmap template may also help you get began.

2. Establish Your Targets and Goals

After you have a transparent imaginative and prescient, it’s essential to break it down into particular targets and aims. These ought to be measurable and achievable inside a selected timeframe.

3. Decide Your Timeline

Primarily based in your targets and aims, it’s essential to decide a practical timeline on your product roadmap. This could embody milestones and deadlines for every section of improvement..

4. Establish Your Key Initiatives

That is once you construct out your Stage 2 function roadmap. Establish the important thing initiatives that can show you how to obtain your targets and aims. These ought to be particular tasks, options or enhancements that can transfer your product ahead. Hold your function updates inside swim lanes to make sure the data is well digestible.

5. Prioritize Your Initiatives

Time to transition to Stage 3: product backlog. After you have a listing of initiatives, it’s essential to prioritize them based mostly on their significance and affect in your minimal viable viewers. This can show you how to give attention to probably the most essential duties first.

6. Assign Possession

Every backlog merchandise ought to have a transparent proprietor who’s accountable for driving it ahead. This can assist guarantee accountability and hold everybody on monitor. A part of this step is sizing, through which you allocate how lengthy every backlog merchandise will take to finish amidst your dash.

7. Assessment and Refine

Assessment and refine your product roadmap recurrently. This can show you how to keep on monitor and modify your plans as wanted. It’s best to actually be searching for suggestions and enter out of your friends at each step within the course of. Useful insights from advertising, gross sales, finance or another division may inform the way you iterate as you progress throughout your roadmaps. A change to your horizon planning will trickle all the best way right down to your backlog, so it’s necessary to be adaptable.

Product Roadmap Greatest Practices

Some necessary product roadmap finest practices are:

Share and collaborate in your roadmaps.Consistently iterate.Take a storytelling method.

Share and Collaborate on Your Roadmaps

No profitable firm is making a product roadmap in a vacuum. All the course of ought to be collaborative from begin to end.

The product supervisor is accountable for driving the roadmap and gathering enter from throughout the enterprise. They’re additionally accountable for synthesizing suggestions from the management group to the remainder of the group. Deliver them up to the mark on why you made these adjustments and hold everybody up to date on the evolutions and interactions of the roadmap.

Numerous this suggestions is gathered ad-hoc. You would possibly get insights from a proper product roadmap assessment, however a few of the finest concepts are gathered from water cooler conversations or Slack messages. Repeatedly work the room for enter, validation and ideas.

Consistently Iterate

Since you’re constantly iterating your product, a roadmap ought to evolve repeatedly. I’m not saying you need to be tweaking your horizon plan each single day, but it surely’s good to take care of flexibility.

I’ve made a behavior of periodically saving outdated variations of roadmaps. Whereas I all the time preserve a residing doc, it’s good to look again at earlier variations to see the place we’ve iterated — and the way nicely we’ve caught to our preliminary targets.

Take a Storytelling Strategy

Studying the right way to create a product roadmap contains mastering the artwork of product storytelling. You could join your imaginative and prescient to your roadmaps and clarify the strategic steps you’re taking to make that imaginative and prescient a actuality. You’re basically telling the story of your product journey.

If the product supervisor has a productive dialog with the top of gross sales, they should inform the story of the product’s evolution by means of the roadmap. This ensures that the precious data from smaller conversations is captured in a residing doc that everybody can entry.

Product Roadmap Template

For those who’re making a product roadmap, it’s finest to start out instantly. As a result of highway mapping is such an iterative and collaborative course of, you’ll be higher off the earlier you begin conversing along with your group.

Don’t let perfection get in the best way of progress. Obtain our product roadmap template, seize your management group and begin aligning your group round your product imaginative and prescient. Every new model of your roadmap will get you nearer to your final targets.