What is a Product Roadmap?

Effective product managers lead their teams towards a vision of the future, and to do so they lean on product roadmaps. As the name implies, a product roadmap is a guide that product managers create, and the purpose of such a guide is to identify key steps to take and the order in which to take them.

Crafting a product roadmap is no different from planning a road trip. Think about the last trip you planned. You likely first began by identifying key destinations, key dates, and a theme of what kinds of experiences you wanted to get from your road trip.

From there, you likely dove into research to flesh out the details of each particular stop on the trip. Based on the details, you then had to work through tradeoffs – you likely added, removed, or changed the sequence of destinations based on the constraints that you faced at the time.

Product managers do this all the time for their product teams! They take on these roadmapping exercises to lead their teams on a journey towards the product vision of the company. 

Product roadmaps describe the steps you need to take to move from your current location to your desired destination. Because different companies and teams can have different timelines, product roadmaps can span a variety of timeframes.

For example, one way to pull together a product roadmap is to paint a forecast 12 months into the future, or 4 quarters. The first quarter is at 90% confidence, the second quarter is at 70% confidence, the third quarter is at 50% confidence, and the fourth quarter is at 30% confidence.

After all, the landscape might change and you might need to re-prioritize. Plus, hidden complexity, bugs, or delays could all shift your roadmap.

So, it’s not possible to be 100% confident in any quarter, and it’s also hard to maintain the same level of confidence when projecting multiple quarters out because each future quarter contains additional uncertainty. 

Of course, you should never build product roadmaps in a vacuum. Your roadmap should enable you to move product goals and business objectives forward. Ideally, you should tie your roadmap to north star metrics and counter metrics to keep your product goals moving forward.

What is the Value of a Product Roadmap?

A powerful product roadmap is built to serve a product strategy.

In product management, you’re faced with multiple viable alternatives all of the time. A product strategy mandates that you select one viable alternative out of many, and that you say no to many other alternatives.

Because a roadmap forces you to take your journey one step at a time, it means that you will take a specific step in a specific sequence.

Of course, product roadmaps are always subject to change.

The power of being agile and flexible means that product managers are always re-evaluating their roadmaps based on new information, and they will reach into their backlogs to identify whether there are better sequences of work to tackle to enable the business to reach targeted business goals.

As the team works through product development, you’ll gather new information that will validate or disprove your current hypotheses. From here, you and your product team will iterate through new versions of the product roadmap.

Product roadmaps are not just meant for your immediate product development teams. They’re also powerful tools for aligning internal stakeholders with the direction that your product is headed.

As an example, providing sales teams with visibility on where your product is headed will enable them to sell more confidently in the field. Doing so enables you to secure the buy-in of executives from various internal departments.

Similarly, you’ll also be able to provide clarity to external stakeholders such as customer executives and customer users. If you decide to publish your product roadmap, you can set expectations around which new features are in scope, which are out of scope, and when they can expect you to deliver those items. 

Furthermore, by sharing with customers, you can gather feedback from customers on why certain items should be added or removed. Many times, roadmaps can even be used to sell or persuade customers to buy into the startup’s current offering so that they can be part of upcoming improvements or features down the line.

Done correctly, product roadmaps are powerful tools that enable product managers to drive impact and alignment.

Product Roadmap Template

Although each team may use different tools to maintain a product roadmap, even simple tools like a Google spreadsheet or a Microsoft Excel document can enable you to craft compelling roadmaps.

First, a product roadmap should be kept high-level and should not dive deep into any single identified feature.

One simple way to structure your product roadmap is to ensure that each row includes the following columns:

1. 1. Feature idea / name
   2. User story and requirements 
   3. Effort required 
      • You’ll have to work with your team to figure out the best way to define effort required. This could be a time or $ cost
   4. Sequence
      • Which items should be done first? Which items should be done later? Be sure to use prioritization to identify what will give you the strongest ROI, or return on investment.
   5. Estimated release date
      • Remember to keep this high-level and either come up with or work with your engineering manager to estimate time required to complete the feature

Of course, a product roadmap means tackling multiple features within some sequence, so you’ll need to first start from a list of features before you actually have a roadmap. 

Product Roadmapping Tools

While product managers are generally tool-agnostic, you can get ahead of the curve by familiarizing yourself with these popular roadmapping tools.

• ProdPad: Lets you capture ideas and feedback, create product specs, and build product roadmap. 
• ProductPlan: Lets you plan and communicate your product roadmap.
• ProductBoard: System of record for product management that helps teams make products people want.
• Aha!: Web-based product strategy and roadmapping software for agile product managers.
• Roadmunk: Visual roadmap software for product management.
• Jira: A flexible and scalable issue tracker for software teams.
• Excel: A straightforward way to put together your thoughts.
• Google Sheets: Easy for startups to use to quickly collaborate on feature ideas.

Summary

Product managers are in charge of taking their products and their teams on a journey towards a brighter future. To do so, product managers create roadmaps that ladder up to the company’s vision. These roadmaps enable product managers to guide their teams, align internal stakeholders, generate excitement from current customers, and convert new prospects.

By understanding the possible steps you can take to get to your vision and sequencing them in a compelling way based on current constraints, you can deliver significant impact.

 

---

Interested in learning more about product roadmaps? You might want to check out our popular course: One Week PM. You’ll learn the fundamentals of product management, how to launch your own side project, and how to dominate product manager interviews.