Product Roadmap – The Comprehensive Guide

Product roadmap is a strategic document that most product managers’ lives revolve around. The preparation, presentation, execution and maintenance of a roadmap requires an understanding of product vision, collaboration with various stakeholders and more importantly alignment with the outcomes the customers want to achieve. In this blog post, we’ll explore various aspects of a product roadmap.

What is a Product Roadmap?

A product roadmap is a statement of intent, a visual summary of product visions or a blueprint of how to execute company’s strategy. It is dynamic in nature and open to adjustment based on company’s strategy or new learnings from users or markets. A product roadmap is just another tool – which is used to put to paper what to build next, though the fundamental task of a product manager remains to find the right problems to solve!

What are the benefits of a product roadmap?

The benefits of a well-maintained product roadmap are countless. It may feel like being directionless in absence of a roadmap. The product trio (Product, Engineering and Design) must understand the direction in order to build the right thing and solve the right problems.

A product roadmap is a signal of product’s direction and vision. It visually communicates company’s strategy and shows the intent to achieve it.
Well-defined roadmaps bring transparency and builds confidence in the customers or internal stakeholders by clearly showing what is being done or built.
It helps with alignment and stakeholders’ buy-in and unites the team behind a common purpose to avoid any friction or disagreement around where company’s resources should be used.
It shows the short-term and long-term view of the problems we want to solve and allows for course correction as required. This also allows for a birds’ eye view of where the company or product is headed – at the same time keeping room for adaptability to changed circumstances.
It serves as a single source of truth for the product trio, internal stakeholders, customers, prospects, board members, etc.
Roadmaps helps in planning and prioritization the steps for delivering the product, while staying focused on the customer value.

What a product roadmap is not

While it is important to understand what a product roadmap is, it is equally important to understand what it is not – so the integrity of a product roadmap can be maintained, and true value and purpose can be achieved.

Note that a product roadmap is NOT –

A feature release plan or a project plan.
A static document that is immovable or unchangeable, with granular and tactical tasks, with fixed deadlines
Solely created by the product manager based on gut-feel, without consultation with related stakeholders.
A product backlog, or a feature backlog, a feature wish-list, a scheduled to-do list, etc.

Best Practices while building a Product Roadmap

Now that we have understood what a product roadmap is and is not, let’s dive deep into some of the best practices while building a product roadmap.

Understand the purpose and intent of the roadmap

Preparing a roadmap requires a lot of effort and collaboration across multiple teams, hence it is very important for anyone to understand the purpose and intent behind why we need the roadmap. Additionally, the following dimensions must be carefully considered to bring clarity among all involved stakeholders.

Why do we even need a roadmap?
What format shall we choose?
How far in future the roadmap should contain items for?
Who has access to the roadmap and where is it stored?
Who are the intended audience of the roadmap?
How frequently will the roadmap be reviewed? When do we change it or mark it as obsolete?
How do we communicate changes in the roadmap to the intended audience?
What criteria shall we use to add/modify/remove items from the roadmap?
How do we indicate what customer needs or business strategy roadmap items are aligned towards?

Indicate the Outcome, not the Output

First, let’s understand the difference between output and outcome. An Output is what features or functionality we are building and sometimes, how we are building it – whereas an outcome is why we are building it. The outcomes indicate what value the users or customers will receive, and what core problems will be solved.

So, the product roadmap should clearly indicate the outcomes, rather than the outputs. As indicated in the previous section, a product roadmap is not a feature list; so, the focus should always remain on the why we are building something.

Some product roadmaps indicate both the output and outcomes, however the outputs must be tied back to outcomes, so people understand why something is being built and what problems it intends to solve.

Incorporate stakeholders

The most time-consuming tasks for product managers are identifying the stakeholders they need to consult with while creating or updating the roadmap. This is even more difficult in large enterprises. However, early engagement of required stakeholders in the roadmap building or preparation phase is vital for a successful product.

Stakeholder engagement does not only mean bringing everyone in a call and dictating what is going to be added to the roadmap, rather it means ensuring buy-in from all involved parties through the power of influence and soft skills.

Product managers should conduct a lot of one-on-ones with each stakeholder to ensure their voices are heard and they understand why a request is being considered vs. being denied.

Ensure ruthless prioritization

Product managers, fundamentally, must address the right problems, and not every problem. During roadmap planning, different techniques and methods for prioritization come handy in deciding what to include vs. what to omit.

Data Driven Prioritization – Being data-driven, or data-informed helps product managers in being objective in choosing the right problem to solve and avoid any preference based on gut-feel. Product managers must have data-based mindset and review both quantitative and qualitative data, including surveys, customer feedback, etc.
Alignment with Product Vision – The product roadmap items must be prioritized based on how aligned they are with the product vision. Understanding where the product is headed and why helps in picking up the right problems to solve and hence include in the product roadmap.
Voice of customer – This is another important tool that helps in prioritization. The product managers must remain feedback-informed and assess what core problems the customer have, and how they are currently solving it. Different problems must be weighed in terms of how much value they will generate for customers and whether they are worth solving. The analogy of vitamins vs. painkillers is well applied here.
Outcome vs. Output – Product managers must also understand why someone is is requesting what they are requesting to be built. The true intentions behind requesting for a solution must be understood. Sometimes, customers are short-sighted and do not fully understand their own problems – and end up requesting for something that seems valuable but does not address any core problem. Product managers must go to the root of a request and understand what outcome we are trying to achieve, what value it may bring to the users, as well as whether it is aligned with company’s goals and the problems the organization is trying to solve.

There are a number of prioritization techniques available for use, and product managers should choose one of these, based on their applicability and relevance, rather than reinventing the wheel. Prioritization techniques vary in complexity and product managers should utilize only those that are well understood by everyone involved in the process.

Adaptability and flexibility

This is by far the most important aspect of a roadmap, that product managers must be sensitive towards. Roadmaps must be built in a way that is open to adapting to changing situations and flexible to account for addition/modification or removal of items.

While it is desired to have a sense of stability in where the product is headed towards, allowing for flexibility brings in true agility.

Remember, how the recent Covid pandemic required most companies to drastically shift what they were building and how fast they needed to deliver?

What informs a product roadmap?

While prioritization helps in what to choose from a number of identified problems to solve, we must also know where to source these problems from. It is not always true that a problem will be discovered on its own, rather product managers must be on a hunt to fish for the problems – before even thinking what to solve for.

Company strategy and goals – The company vision will inform the direction a company needs to move towards, which will ultimately lead to forming a strategy on how to fulfill the company’s vision. This leads to different goals and initiatives. For example, if the company needs to address a new market, the existing product may need to be tailored to suit the new set of users. These company goals and initiatives become the source of features that may be put on the product roadmap to be built over near-term or long-term.
User Analytics – Analyzing the user journey within a product will help product managers discover the different aspects of the product that requires improvement. It may also lead to what needs elimination. Ultimately, where the users currently stick to likely creates more values for users. This can be an excellent source of issues/problems that product managers may look at solving based on customers adopting or abandoning some aspects of the product. It should be kept in mind if any new or improved feature or functionality may support or harm the existing user journey, i.e. the happy path.
Voice of the customer – Customer feedback may be number one source of problems for many companies. The qualitative data gathered from surveys, different feedback channels, insights, comments, etc. need to be analyzed and translated into new problems to solve. The customer sentiments, needs, wants and desires are well reflected in their feedback and opinion, along with how they interact with different support channels. Product managers can draw inspiration from VoC to derive what to build next.
Potential Customers and Markets – Existing or probable competition, emerging technologies and markets, changing needs, generation changes, etc. give birth to completely new problems and hence new solutions. New problems are discovered that were never thought of – as being problems! The key is to keep analyzing the competitive landscape, new technologies, new ways of life, etc. and incorporate delighters so the product can stay differentiated.

Purpose Alignment Model

Purpose Alignment Model, originally created by Niel Nickolaisen, is a model of prioritization, especially for roadmaps, that helps product managers filter the items that should go into the roadmap. It also helps them look at the product features and analyze how they align to strategy, customer needs, and expectations. Below is a picture that well illustrates the model –

Partner – For the features in this category, we should partner with someone else to build. They’re not mission critical but help us gain market share.
Differentiative – These features help us gain market share by how they make us different from the competition.
Parity – This category of features are must-haves and we must deliver them at a minimum performance level with the current market, but only the minimum needed to compete. We want to keep it simple.
Who cares – These are neither market differentiators nor mission critical, and probably not needed or worth building into the product.

Roadmap for different audience

Product roadmaps must be tailored for different audience to eliminate any confusion and avoid showing too much or too little.

Internal, customer-facing teams – The roadmap should stay high level with loose indication of timeline.
Internal, product trio (engineering, product and design teams) – The roadmap should be comprehensive, granular and may contain technical roadmap.
Customers and prospects – The roadmap should stay high level, with no timeline. This should be aligned with product vision and may be used for persuasion for selling to new customers.

The decision for how much details to include in roadmaps depends on industry, compliance or regulatory requirements, competitiveness, organization maturity, etc.

Format of Product Roadmaps

There are many formats of product roadmap, and based on the audience, the format may be selected.

Theme-based roadmap – This format categorizes roadmap items based on themes.
Timeline based roadmap – This format includes general timelines (quarters, months, etc.) and sometimes broadly as short-term items or long-term items. These roadmaps may also be based on sprints or other agile timelines the company sticks to. Another interesting way to categorize product roadmap items are Now, Next and Later. This allows for flexibility in the roadmap, as the Later items can be changed until they become Next.
Hybrid roadmap – This format combines both formats as indicated above.
Objective-driven roadmaps
Objectives-on-a-timeline roadmaps

The story behind a roadmap

Each roadmap needs to tell a story, else they will not be received or understood well. All of us relate to a story much better than abstract text or jargons. Based on the occasion, audience and the goal, the product manager may carefully choose what story they wish to tell.

Story of the progress or improvement – how the roadmap helps the product progress towards achieving its vision and how it improves the overall experience of users.
Story of empowerment – How the product empowers the users, rather than relying on different teams (e.g. sales, marketing, support, etc.). This is also known as the shift-left approach.
Story of alignment – How the problem aligns with customers in terms of problem-solving. It shows that both the product and the customer are trying to solve the same problem!
Story of impact – How the product positively impacts the users and improve their lives.

Process to create a roadmap

Now that we are almost towards the end of this post, let’s look at the practical steps to create a roadmap. It is also noteworthy that product managers do not always create roadmaps from the scratch, and it is mostly another iteration of an existing roadmap.

Establish ownership around who will lead the overall roadmap creation and gain alignment from related stakeholders. Most probably, this is the product manager or product owner, however for larger features, it may be a senior product manager, or a director.
Understand the outcome we are trying to achieve and ensure alignment with product vision, strategy and objectives. This will help avoid clutter on the roadmap that people may start questioning.
Gather feedback from stakeholders or iterate based on their suggestions/input. This is the collaboration phase where the stakeholders are consulted to finalize the items that will ultimately be placed on the roadmap, to be built in the near-term.
Select a roadmap format, depending on the need and audience. This will require defining the information hierarchy – whether the items will be organized based on product area, initiatives, epics, themes, features, etc., and what kind of timeline it may contain, if necessary.
Finalize and store the roadmap to a location that will be accessible to all required stakeholders. Communicate the finalized roadmap for the current iteration.
Conduct a retrospective to understand what worked and where to improve in the roadmap planning process.

Conclusion

While it may seem like a daunting task to create and maintain a roadmap, it is no less important to implement it. Unless the roadmap items are implemented, the outcome cannot be achieved, and the value cannot be realized.