A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that maps out the vision and direction of your product offering over time. It communicates the why and what behind what you’re building.
The product roadmap has several ultimate goals:
Describe the vision and strategy
Provide a guiding document for executing the strategy
Get internal stakeholders in alignment
Facilitate discussion of options and scenario planning
Help communicate with external stakeholders, including customers
The roadmap is is a guiding strategic document as well as a plan for executing the product strategy.
Types of Product Roadmaps
The steps to document the vision and strategy, get internal stakeholders aligned, and establish options and scenario planning are also great for a “traditional” product roadmap. However, it’s not agile. Traditional product roadmaps involve making decisions about features that would most likely never be built, much less implemented. It isn’t suitable for the distributed version of Agile.
The Product Roadmap Channel is not exactly the same as the traditional product roadmap because it uses the roadmap itself as the product roadmap. This might mean that a team building a shared product roadmap will need to use different terminology.
Creating a Product Roadmap
It’s important to first consider the big picture.
Why do you want to develop a product?
Why is this product important to the business?
What problem is this product solving?
What is the scope of the problem?
What are the tools and technologies involved?
Are there any markets or segments with existing products?
How do these markets and segments complement each other?
Will the solution be scalable across all relevant markets?
Once you’ve answered these questions and have a thorough understanding of the problem and market you’re addressing, you can consider developing a product roadmap.
Benefits of a Product Roadmap
Product roadmaps communicate the why and what behind what you’re building.
Improve the ability to understand your customer’s pain points.
Improve communication among team members.
Strengthen product communication.
Provide visibility to individuals and internal stakeholders.
Conclusion
A product roadmap has a very broad purpose and scope. It must communicate both the why and what behind the digital product offering.
Over the next few weeks we’re going to continue building the skills needed to create products like great products deserve. Next week we’ll be diving into what it takes to develop the thinking around a clear vision and strategy for your product offering.
We’ll be covering the following topics:
The process of creating a vision for your product.
Leading a team that pulls together the resources and knowledge to develop and implement a product strategy.
Creating a product roadmap for any kind of digital product.
If you’ve got questions about what’s covered in these articles, let us know in the comments. We’ll be happy to help.
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