A product roadmap is much more than a list of upcoming projects to be completed. It captures your overall product direction, outlines the work you’ll do to accomplish your objectives, and presents everything on a timeline for completion. Your product roadmap is a stand-alone document that details progress and demonstrates how the entire product team’s efforts support the overall strategy.
Most product roadmaps have the same components, but to create the best kind of roadmap, product managers must take into account a number of factors, including their audience, the roadmap’s purpose, level of detail, and timeframe. In this article, we’ll look at six typical product roadmap examples to help you create eye-catching visualizations for various scenarios.
What is a Product Roadmap? | Examples and Overview
What are the 4 types of roadmaps?
You can use the following four types of business roadmaps:
1. Department roadmaps
To improve their operations and strategies, some internal teams or departments produce roadmaps. For their network architectures, computing processes, cybersecurity protocols, and other technological systems, for instance, IT professionals may develop roadmaps.
2. Business development roadmaps
Business development roadmaps assist organizations in quickly and effectively expanding their operations. A business development roadmap shows how company strategies, project initiatives, and market needs relate to one another.
3. Product roadmaps
A product roadmap defines the development of a product. Product roadmaps may be most advantageous for product development and marketing teams.
4. Project roadmaps
Project roadmaps offer graphical representations of a specific project’s goals, deadlines, activities, and deliverables. To manage resources, assign tasks, and update their teams on progress, project managers and leaders frequently develop project roadmaps.
What is a business roadmap?
A company’s plans, organizational structures, objectives, and deadlines are depicted in a business roadmap. Roadmaps offer visual representations of organizational charts, project schedules, business plans, and other textual documents that could use some visualization. For their teams or business partners, project managers, supervisors, and other company leaders frequently create roadmaps.
Why are roadmaps important?
Project teams, departments, and businesses can all benefit from the visual aspect of roadmaps in a number of ways, including:
How to develop a roadmap
Here are the six typical steps to follow as you create your roadmap, though specifics will vary depending on your needs and goals:
1. Understand the overall vision
Understanding the primary purpose for creating the roadmap will make it easier to design its subcomponents, such as tasks and deadlines. The overall goal of the roadmap may be to create a new product, reorganize a particular department, or oversee a sizable cross-departmental project. Think about your objectives for the roadmap when determining the roadmap’s overall purpose, such as:
2. Create the unique goals
Most roadmaps have specific aims within the larger vision. For instance, if you are developing a roadmap with the overarching objective of business development, smaller goals might include boosting market growth, hiring new staff, or keeping more clients. Individuals and teams can better understand their responsibilities and monitor the progress of their organization by setting smaller goals within the larger roadmap vision.
3. Support the goals
Give each objective on the roadmap support with pertinent tasks and assignments. Include deadlines for some roadmaps, such as those for product or development. Indicate on the roadmap which staff members, teams, or departments have particular duties and responsibilities.
When assigning or creating the tasks and responsibilities for the roadmap, you might need to speak with other employees depending on the type of roadmap and your position with respect to the roadmap. Consider meeting with department heads from other departments to discuss their contributions to the project, for instance, if a project roadmap involves multiple departments.
4. Show the structure
The visual representation of the relationships between different project components, team members, or departments on roadmaps is a significant advantage. Depending on the type of roadmap, the precise structural components might include:
5. Minimize the risks
Be aware of the difficulties associated with a specific roadmap in advance. Roadmaps assist you in making plans beforehand, giving you the chance to lower any potential risks before they become issues. For instance, if there is a discrepancy between deadlines, determine the correct date and ensure that everyone involved with the roadmap updates their calendars.
6. Revise the roadmap over time
Change your roadmap as necessary as your project or assignments related to the roadmap get started. Roadmaps are adaptable documents that you can update in response to new data, developments, or subtasks. For easier modification, most businesses choose to create their roadmaps digitally.
4 Roadmap examples
Four examples of detailed roadmaps that could benefit your project, team, or business are provided below:
1. Department roadmap for a marketing team
For employees to understand their individual responsibilities and work toward shared goals, marketing teams create department roadmaps. Most marketing departments manage multiple campaigns at once, so roadmaps can aid in more effectively balancing various strategies and projects.
Depending on the team’s or organization’s current goals, department roadmaps may include objectives related to:
2. Business development roadmap for a startup
A business development roadmap can assist startups in identifying their top priorities and the best way to go about achieving them. Goals like these could be included in a business development roadmap’s components:
3. Product roadmap for a release timeline
One type of product roadmap is the release timeline roadmap. Release timeline roadmaps assist teams in organizing tasks that must be completed by various deadlines for phased product releases. For instance, a group of programmers may choose when to release the first software update prior to the launch of a new product so that they can proactively prepare to fix any technical issues.
Release schedule roadmaps can also enhance coordination between offices involved in product development or release. For instance, customer support teams must get ready to assist customers in a different way after a new update to current technology products.
4. Project roadmap using Now-next-later roadmaps
Departments or businesses can determine their short-term and long-term priorities with the aid of now-next-later roadmaps. A now-next-later roadmap enables businesses to visualize their most pressing tasks or deadlines while remaining mindful of their upcoming obligations. Organizations working on projects with many different components can benefit from now-next-later roadmaps. A now-next-later roadmap, for instance, can assist your team in explaining to clients the overall value of an upcoming product without providing specific deadlines.
FAQ
How do you write a roadmap?
An example of an outcome-driven, rather than output-driven, roadmap is a objectives timeline roadmap. This roadmap provides broad organization alignment on product direction. Anyone can easily comprehend when you’ll work toward each of our business goals and where that sits in relation to your most important milestones.
What is a good roadmap?
- Choose the type of roadmap.
- Share your “why”
- Tailor your roadmap to your audience.
- Prioritize the right themes.
- Stay flexible.
- Use the right roadmapping tool.
- Make the roadmap clear and compelling.
- Assign broad timeframes for milestones.
What are the different types of roadmap?
‘A great product roadmap must be: clear, flexible, abstracted from details, and easy to understand. Whatever kind of roadmap you develop, it must be focused on the big picture and problems that need to be solved, not on finding solutions to those problems.
