Product Roadmap: Examples, Types and Key Features

However, strategizing a product roadmap is not that simple! It requires an in-depth understanding of the market, the latest trends, beneficial innovative technologies, and more. Especially, when you are working on complex projects like mobile app development services building a mobile application is not easy when more than 3.5 million apps are already in the stores and the tech market is highly competitive.

In addition, you might face challenges like transforming your initial idea into a vigorous product strategy. Thus, you must consider each important aspect when working on such huge projects for ultimate successful execution.

The guide explains the significance of the product development roadmap, the essential steps of the process, the role of the product manager, and more.

What is a product roadmap?

Referred to as a result-center summary, the product development roadmap is a core tactical document reflecting the product development plan for your new product. There is each step documented in this crucial development process to streamline the whole development plan.

A product roadmap might have countless objectives, including:

• Define the core vision and applicable strategies
• Align the internal stakeholders and synchronize the entire process
• Encourage dialogue of options available and scenario preparation
• Assisting on how to carry out the plan and implement it successfully
• Aid in facilitating communication with external stakeholders such as clients and more

The roadmap, to put it simply, is a strategically organized document of a product’s features that also reflects a certain timeline or a specific period of project completion.

Why are product roadmaps important?

A good product roadmap will go beyond serving additional perspective on the wider scale by highlighting any overlooked opportunities and removing roadblocks. You can utilize a product roadmap to analyze and determine your project’s long-term growth and success as well.

The product development roadmap is the only authentic source of product vision and information. A product development roadmap describes the goals, benchmarks, and activities of a product and synchronizes them to deliver the best outcomes. The product development roadmap serves as the primary framework for the team’s daily work during development, and it is updated in response to developments and amendments during working on a project.

The efforts of individual team members only make sense in the milieu of the product roadmap within the business. Many workers see it as the only window they have into the direction the company is going and the reasoning behind certain decisions at the managerial level. A product roadmap helps ensure that every individual in a firm understands the business’s vision, objectives, and goals and works altogether towards achieving ultimate goals.

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Who is responsible for the product roadmap?

A product manager holds the responsibility to captain the ship in each circumstance. With his vast industry knowledge and in-depth understanding of market trends, he describes what success looks like for a product, pinpoints the consumer need and bigger corporate goals that a feature will address, and rallies a team to make that vision a reality.

As a product manager, he was held responsible to gather data, suggestions, and user input using different approaches such as surveys and more. The product manager will then prioritize these materials to create strategies, which are then implemented to construct the roadmap.

Cross-functional cooperation is a must for the finest product roadmaps. To offer a Complete Product Experience(CPE), the product manager will have to ensure team members’ participation and collaboration to efficiently deliver outputs.

A product manager is held responsible to:

• Conduct a thorough examination of the market and the competition
• Set time limits for the completion of tasks and product development plan
• Describe the product to all relevant parties, including management and customers
• Provide lines of contact with consumers that are ongoing and develop the product’s idea, strategy, and methods between the production team levels to explain the strategy

How are other teams using product roadmaps?

Teams outside of product management adopt product roadmaps for their openness, visibility, and excellent communication. In order to ensure their success, your teams need to understand your product development strategies, as mentioned below:

Leadership

Leadership teams and board members are interested in learning how your product ideas and strategies fit with the mission, objectives, and elite-level business KPIs of the organization.

Sales

Any impact on clients, including functionality specifics, timing, and reasons why they should be concerned, will be of interest to the sales team. This aids in creating the ideal message for potential clients.

Marketing

The marketing crew in your company will be interested in seeing all of your objectives, features, and total consumer advantages. They can better plan for go-to-market efforts by doing this.

Customer Support

The essential features or upgrades you want to offer must be communicated to the customer support staff. This enables them to better inform clients and manage expectations.

Engineering

Engineers must comprehend the high-level strategy as well as the intricacies of your product plans, features, releases, and other crucial aspects of the product development plan.

Product Roadmap Types

It might be challenging to give the appropriate facts when there are so many factors that make up a product roadmap. Even a stellar product roadmap may simply convey a portion of the crucial information about the product, soon become obsolete or erroneous, or fail to provide the appropriate information for the target market. Therefore, product managers must keep in mind all the factors that can make or break their million-dollar product roadmap and try to overcome all the possible challenges.

You may select from a few different sorts of product roadmaps depending on the nature of your plan, strategies, and audience in order to succinctly provide the most pertinent picture. Each sort of roadmap displays comparable information in a little different manner, typically with varying degrees of specificity. Make sure to choose the one that best fits all of your plan’s requirements. Below mentioned are a few product roadmap types that you may consider:

Portfolio Roadmap

Displaying upcoming releases for several goods from a single perspective, portfolio roadmaps help give leadership a strategic overview of your goal and a broader understanding of how various product teams collaborate.

Feature Roadmap

It displays the delivery schedule for new features and applications. Features roadmaps are perfect for communicating information and telling potential customers and other crew when and what is coming and how it can benefit you.

Epic Roadmaps

These kinds of roadmap types are crucial for bringing pertinent components together to help you plan and organize upcoming tasks. Setting objectives, communicating key emphasis areas, and visualizing work done across several releases are all facilitated by an epic roadmap.

Strategy Roadmap

A strategy roadmap is useful for updating leadership on the status of initiatives and ensuring that cross-functional teams are on the same page on the overall company strategy. It helps demonstrate the high-level efforts you intend to do to fulfill the objectives of your product roadmap.

Release Roadmaps

This kind of roadmap explains steps that must be taken before you can release products to the market, including when each step must be completed and who is in charge of delivery. Release roadmaps are viable for synchronizing release operations with other cross-functional teams like sales, marketing, and customer support.

Product Roadmap Examples

Your product plan needs to be precise, useful, and pleasing to the eye. Additionally, it must include suggestions from collaborators, stakeholders, and clients to make it effective. A dynamic roadmap is preferable to static charts or spreadsheets since greater efficiency is concerned. In addition to that, if the plan changes or experiences some modifications, then it must be updated automatically and promptly to avoid any complications in the future. Beneath mentioned are a few crucial examples of the product roadmap that you may consider according to your specific needs:

A Goal-Oriented Product Roadmap

A goal-oriented product development roadmap makes it easier to organize and explain all of the information. Every feature has a purpose that is determined by its goals. Simple phrases like “increase user engagement” or “speed up the registration process” might be used to describe a goal. You may maintain your roadmap elevated and make your policy and vision clear by structuring the content around the goals. A perfect way to develop your perfect product roadmap.

Feature-Based Product Roadmap

Using a feature as the main focus of your roadmap will make it highly robust that can bring expected outcomes ultimately. A feature roadmap outlines your schedule for providing members with additional details and serving potential consumers at a greater scale. This template is also useful for conveying more specific information, such as the status of particular features as well as the application of the product.

IT Product Roadmaps

IT roadmaps are often more basic documents made to support the primary strategic product development roadmap. The internal teams utilize such templates to develop and streamline technical needs. Technology roadmaps aid with resource allocation and specify how a certain technology will be used, as well as define how it will benefit the users eventually.

A Strategy Roadmap

A strategic roadmap refers to a general-purpose product development roadmap template. It can contain any sort of information and can be tailored to diverse audiences. It is an elite-level overview of extensive product information connected to a certain aspect, depending on the short or long-term objectives.

Now-Next-Later Roadmap

A prioritised description of the activities, sprints, and features is provided in the now-next-later roadmap. In essence, it’s a condensed form of a backlog that divides information into horizontal and vertical categories. It outlines what is going to be released right away, what will be ready soon, and what would be delivered later. This roadmap’s goal is to highlight priority in the most straightforward way possible.

How to Create a Product Roadmap?

Establishing the product goals and activities that your efforts will support is the first step in creating a product roadmap. Once those are established, you may choose which product releases and features best support your plan before visualizing everything on a timetable.

Your technique for creating roadmaps will be influenced by a few factors. One is your audience; depending on who you want to see on your roadmap. You can see how different sorts of roadmaps may be used to emphasize various features in the table above. You can also choose which specifics to include (and which to exclude) as you develop and personalize your product roadmap to ensure that the information displayed is pertinent to whoever is seeing it.

1. Formulate Vision of your New Arrival – Product

The formulation of a good product roadmap requires careful consideration of all important aspects of the growth policy. Speak with stakeholders, communicate with current and potential clients, and research the industry and your competitors as well. Create client profiles, pay attention to what salespersons are conveying, and engage with your potential clients straightforwardly. Let the leadership and managing staff know about user-end reviews.

2. Identify Market & Audience

A set plan of action is not how a product development roadmap works – it is way beyond that. To accomplish your long-term objectives, you must properly communicate with your target audience. Without knowing your target audience and what their preferences are, you might not communicate successfully. The format, topic matter, and material of your plan and strategy majorly depend on the targeted group of people you’ll be presenting it to. Make every effort to make things apparent about your objectives.

3. Define Product Strategy and Choose an Appropriate Format

The development of an innovative product strategy in line with the product plan and roadmap should begin right away. The structure of the roadmap and product strategy might have massive effects on the data you choose as well. Therefore, the template you choose needs to be appropriate with respect to certain defined spectators. For instance, the technical crew is recommended to adopt a strategic-based plan, while the marketing division might find it ineffective. Likewise, the timeline’s elements also must be highlighted to avoid any circumstances during the development plan. This will make it more obvious which goals need to be met first and when in order to successfully complete your product development plan.

4. Evaluate & Administer Plans

The product crew typically receives creative product recommendations from in-house management and consumers who interact with customers. Once they have been prioritized and structured, this advice might be utilized to assess what to include in your plan. Consider ranking concepts using criteria that represent your approach as a method of goals concept assessment.

5. Define Requirements, Features, And Metrics

When developing a minimal viable product (MVP), concentrate exclusively on a small subset of metrics. Metrics will enable you to gauge your development and view an even bigger picture. Your product plan begins to take form at this point. You may use KPIs that are focused on either business goals or consumer needs, depending on the goal of your roadmap. You can use market and competitor analysis to find pertinent KPIs, or you can consult an industry expert. Furthermore, you will know what to concentrate on for your initial release and what to enhance while iterating for your product’s following releases if you set your KPIs on time.

6. Use Roadmap-Focused Tools

It could be challenging to create a roadmap using an application like Excel. Your presentation will be static as a result and difficult to modify. With cloud-based road-mapping tools, you can speed up the process and keep the product development roadmap updated as priorities changes. You could think about using a roadmap planner, open projects, and other significant resources to effectively modify and make changes to your plan. They are all equipped with outstanding features and cutting-edge applications to create a solid product development roadmap.

7. Organize into Releases

You have so far concentrated on establishing the “why” and the “what” for your product roadmap; the next step is to consider the “when.” You may use releases to map out your delivery timetable once your features have been sorted and given priority orders. Releases are frequently arranged by product launch, however, other teams prefer to set up their roadmaps according to their capability for development.

8. Choose Roadmap Views & Tools

The final stage before releasing your product roadmap is to provide examples of everything you have previously outlined. It is recommended to use road mapping tools or road map templates to explore different roadmap viewpoints. Consider the following questions to effectively produce a product plan for your new development:

• Who needs access to this product roadmap?
• Describe the most crucial message you want to deliver.
• Do they need to know specific dates or just a general time frame?
• How is my target audience going to perceive this message?
• Do the specifics or the broad picture matter more to my audience?

9. Keep the Information Up to Date & High-Level

You must put your attention on giving the overall strategy and vision but not only generic information, in order to maintain the effectiveness and integrity of your strategic framework. Though your little pieces of information are important, your product roadmap is a strategy that must be lucid and simple to read. Nevertheless, make sure to refrain from going into excessive detail or providing extraneous material that might make your audience lose interest.

The dynamism of your roadmap adjustments is the second point to be made here. New features and objectives will be added as your product develops. A product roadmap must be updated often to maintain a record and communicate the information to the other stakeholders, which entails a slow evolution of the product.

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Product Roadmap Templates

Making a plan is an important first step toward a fantastic product development roadmap. Your product plan will be the best gauge of your growth and impact if you do it right using the right approaches such as choosing the appropriate roadmap templates. Make sure to continue brainstorming, collaborating with others, and updating your roadmap to keep your project moving forward and make it successful.

Using road-mapping templates available online, which many product teams use to represent their ideas, is the simplest way to keep everyone in harmony and have your product development roadmap updated automatically. It also aids in keeping everything on track from the beginning of the plan to the successful execution.

For a basic guide, have a look at our examples of several types of roadmap templates for a product development roadmap. It shows how several types of roadmaps differ architecturally offering endless benefits. The first example displays a featured-based roadmap that is organized around many platforms and high-level objectives in a variety of fields. Learn about them in detail here:

Feature-Centric Product Roadmap Templates

A product feature roadmap outlines your schedule for providing clients with additional capabilities. This template is useful for conveying more specific information, such as the status of particular features than what is shown on a release roadmap.

A Theme-Focused RoadmapTemplates

A theme-based roadmap is equivalent to a goal-oriented one. Both of them deal with “why” questions, answering all the essential details and satisfying queries from the user end. The only major difference is that themes incorporate many objectives into a single one which makes it relatively little bit effective.

Agile Roadmap Template

This agile product roadmap shows how epic may interlink to strategic themes. This roadmap perspective may help the engineering crew analyze how their ongoing work relates to the larger plan.

Portfolio Roadmap Template

Portfolio roadmaps present all the upcoming releases for every product you are overseeing in one view. This will offer you a clear picture of the scenario and help internal teams understand how their various tactics are related to one another.

Product Release Template

These roadmaps are helpful for defining the significant activities that must be completed in order to present your product upgrade to users, such as phases and milestones. This template may be useful for setting up cross-functional release processes inside your company involving sales, marketing, engineering, and customer support.

Roadmap-Supporting Documents

In all of its iterations, a product strategy must still keep the broad informative focal points. Two more artifacts that support a strategic roadmap may be used, allowing us to omit low-level details from the report.

• Among the Scrum artifacts, a product backlog is a set of elite-level specifications and characteristics. User stories are the main component of backlogs, which are produced by product owners. A product backlog is simply a strategic to-do checklist for innovative product development.

• The exact release dates are specified in an effective product release plan. Flexible release plans are often created by product managers. A release plan provides more definite dates for the delivery of a certain feature, whereas a product roadmap assists to illustrate the development of product releases. It’s also usual practice to include specific features or problem fixes in development sprints.

• When developing a digital product, a distinct document known as a technological roadmap is frequently employed. It provides technical information about your product’s operation, as well as a list of the innovations that must be used to execute the product roadmap. A technology roadmap defines the technological tools that should be employed to accomplish these goals, while a product roadmap keeps high-level definitions and concentrates on broad commercial objectives.

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Conclusion

The product roadmap concerns prioritizing and organizing your product to bring the best outcomes eventually. It allows you to assess the initial idea, evaluate feature strategies, identify gaps, determine necessary steps, and decides which features might be revised, restructured, or completely eliminated. A product roadmap acts as the essence of the development of your new product.

There are several ways to create a product roadmap for a product. However, for a successful roadmap plan, it is essential to choose the appropriate themes, templates, and features. Online tools are also of great importance, which you can consider to thoughtfully build a new product development roadmap.

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