A product roadmap is the high-level visual document that is strategic and maps out the general stages of the product development. It describes the overall product’s vision concerning the company’s business adjective.
A Product Roadmap Typically includes the following:
- A vision of the product that is what the product is going to be in the future.
- Strategies that your company is going to use to achieve the vision of the product. Strategies are in the form of execution plans.
- Goals that are time-bounded, and can be measured and analyzed using metric.
- Features of the products or part of functionality to be implemented.
- Status Markers that are used to notify the completion of tasks or used to track the progress of the work.
- Metrics to measure the date driven goals and assist the progress.
Including the following points, product roadmap should be simple and understandable. Product Roadmap is highly beneficial when it is useful and applicable. Creating Product Roadmap is often challenging. Because it involves multiple people, event, teams, tasks, deadline, and procedures, etc. However, there are various online tools and software to help you build a product roadmap. You can use online templates like Hive Product Roadmap to develop your Product Roadmap. I use this product roadmap template, it provides a strong framework to build product roadmaps. It allows you to clearly and efficiently map out the vision of your product.
Here are a few tips to Create a Product Roadmap:
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Define your Vision and Strategy of the Product
You need to define vision by taking into account all your internal and external stakeholders. Consider your market, competitors, and your customers while defining your vision. Once you have obtained all the necessary information, now you are ready to develop execution plans and work on the roadmap.
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Define your Audience
The audience here refers to the people or stakeholders whom you will present the product roadmap. There are different types of stakeholders in the company, and you have to build the roadmap according to a format that can be understood by the stakeholders whom you are presenting the map.
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Choose the Right Format
The suitable format will not impact the content, but also makes it understandable to the specific audience. Example:- Feature-based roadmap is fit for the engineering and development team, whereas sales-based roadmap is suitable for marketing and management team. Choose the right format and highlight the goals that are time-bounded and prioritized on the timelines, so that you can carry out the product development in the right direction.
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Tailor your Metrics to actual Features
Metrics that are tailored to actual features will help you track the progress of your goals and objectives. You can build metrics according to your needs that can be customer-oriented or business-oriented, development-oriented, etc.
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Use Roadmap Tools
Building the roadmap is difficult. Use advanced analytical tools that can speed up the process of developing product roadmap. You can choose cloud-based tools, online roadmap templates to make your task easier.
