How to Create a Product Roadmap (+Template)

A product roadmap template may 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 modifications and grows, the remainder of the group should adapt with it. Every new characteristic or performance modifications the way you promote and market your product. Product tweaks may have an effect on your income fashions, or require you to carry on new workforce members. Exterior shoppers or advisors will wish 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 varieties — 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 talk about some greatest practices to get you began. Don’t overlook 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 inside groups — gross sales, advertising, finance, and many others. — across the identical organizational objectives. That’s as a result of every division may have enter and visibility into the roadmap. This plan can even assist your exterior stakeholders and shoppers keep knowledgeable in your product technique.

I prefer 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 if you’re making a product roadmap.

Varieties of Product Roadmaps

The three most important sorts of product roadmaps are:

• horizon planning roadmap;
• characteristic roadmap; and
• detailed product backlog.

Folks typically use the generic phrase “roadmap” to explain any type of planning doc. That’s why I prefer to categorize a roadmap as one in all three sorts. Every kind communicates completely different info 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 to develop to get there?
• Stage 3 (Detailed Product Backlog): What are the product backlog gadgets we have to full to launch these options?

Stage 1: Horizon Planning Roadmap

A horizon planning roadmap usually consists of three overlapping horizons, every of which represents your objectives for a selected time period.

You’ll outline your short-, medium- and long-term objectives in every horizon. Horizon 1 usually seems at what you’re hoping to perform within the subsequent three to 6 months. Horizon 2 extends six to 18 months and Horizon 3 might 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 typically useful to assign a theme to every horizon. For instance:

Horizon 1:

• Set up rapid must allow gross sales and attain your minimal viable viewers.
• Theme: Core Inputs (constructing the fundamental 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: Knowledge Insights (iterating based mostly on utilization information)

Splitting up your imaginative and prescient into horizons helps you ruthlessly prioritize your options. It would allow you to determine probably the most vital gadgets inside every theme and consider what’s most important on your minimal viable viewers.

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

Stage 2: Characteristic Roadmap

A characteristic roadmap lets you bucket your options into completely different classes and assign a timeline for every characteristic launch. Startups will usually plan options 4 to 6 months out, whereas a extra established firm may look so far as 12 months prematurely.

A characteristic roadmap seems 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 workforce 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 characteristic roadmaps on a month-to-month foundation. Bigger corporations may achieve this quarterly. This roadmap may very well be inbuilt PowerPoint or Excel, however I’d advocate migrating it to a product administration software 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 characteristic launch into backlog gadgets the event workforce can sort out. In different phrases, it’s time to start out planning your sprints. A lot of the collaboration for this roadmap is finished inside the product improvement workforce.

By now, you’re working completely in your challenge administration software. You’ll dimension every backlog merchandise and allocate it to a workforce member. Usually, you gained’t be capable of plan your product backlog a couple of or two months prematurely. (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:

1. outline your product imaginative and prescient;
2. determine your objectives and targets;
3. decide your timeline;
4. determine your key initiatives;
5. prioritize your initiatives;
6. assign possession; and
7. assessment 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 objective 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 help you get began.

2. Determine Your Objectives and Goals

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

3. Decide Your Timeline

Primarily based in your objectives and targets, you could decide a practical timeline on your product roadmap. This could embody milestones and deadlines for every section of improvement..

4. Determine Your Key Initiatives

That is if you construct out your Stage 2 characteristic roadmap. Determine the important thing initiatives that can allow you to obtain your objectives and targets. These ought to be particular initiatives, options or enhancements that can transfer your product ahead. Hold your characteristic updates inside swim lanes to make sure the knowledge is definitely digestible.

5. Prioritize Your Initiatives

Time to transition to Stage 3: product backlog. After you have an inventory of initiatives, you will need to prioritize them based mostly on their significance and impression in your minimal viable viewers. This may allow you to deal with probably the most vital duties first.

6. Assign Possession

Every backlog merchandise ought to have a transparent proprietor who’s chargeable for driving it ahead. This may 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 repeatedly. This may allow you to keep on monitor and regulate your plans as wanted. It is best to actually be in search of suggestions and enter out of your friends at each step within the course of. Useful insights from advertising, gross sales, finance or another division might inform the way you iterate as you progress throughout your roadmaps. A change to your horizon planning will trickle all the way in which all the way down to your backlog, so it’s necessary to be adaptable.

Product Roadmap Greatest Practices

Some necessary product roadmap greatest 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. Your complete course of ought to be collaborative from begin to end.

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

Numerous this suggestions is gathered ad-hoc. You may get insights from a proper product roadmap assessment, however a few of the greatest 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, however it’s good to keep up flexibility.

I’ve made a behavior of periodically saving outdated variations of roadmaps. Whereas I all the time keep a dwelling 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 objectives.

Take a Storytelling Strategy

Studying easy methods to create a product roadmap consists of mastering the artwork of product storytelling. You have to 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 primarily telling the story of your product journey.

If the product supervisor has a productive dialog with the pinnacle of gross sales, they should inform the story of the product’s evolution by way of the roadmap. This ensures that the dear info from smaller conversations is captured in a dwelling doc that everybody can entry.

Product Roadmap Template

In case you’re making a product roadmap, it’s greatest 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 together with your workforce.

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