This tool offers also a practical feature enabling to build of Kanban boards, which you can customize to form a roadmap. Image source: Miro. Can product teams move to an OKR-only system? Is it possible for OKRs to replace product roadmaps? During the introduction phase of the product life cycle, the main goal is creating a product that addresses the problems and needs of customers. Here, an OKR-only system works well. During the growth phase when the product and features are developed, a product roadmap comes into play alongside an OKR system, aligning each item with the objectives.
At the maturity stage, all features are built and the product is optimized to fulfil the objectives. Here, an OKR-only system is possible. When it comes to the end of life maintenance phase, no new features are built, and each task is associated with an output, meaning an OKR-only system is feasible. OKRs may not be a total replacement of a product roadmap, but it is possible to use them alone at certain phases. Base your decision according to the product in question, the lifecycle stage, and the requirements.
A product roadmap is a dynamic and visual communication tool that aligns teams around a high-level product strategy. There are many types of product roadmap, from timeline and strategy to column and portfolio. Creating a product roadmap involves planning, building, and presenting. The type of roadmap you choose helps determine the software you use. Remember to keep things simple, be flexible, and stay focused on goals and benefits.
Get in touch to find out more. Daria Brylova. Pedro Sousa. Piotr Szczechowiak. Krzysztof Bondar. Joanna Swatowska-Rybak. Skip navigation Logo of Netguru. What is a product roadmap? Why is product roadmapping important in product management? Objectives timeline roadmap Larger enterprises and those working in complex environments use an objectives timeline roadmap to share a zoomed-out approach with stakeholders. Now-next-later roadmap This format offers flexibility and is useful for businesses whose priorities shift regularly.
Release timeline roadmap This roadmap type communicates the activities that must happen before a release occurs. Hybrid product roadmap Hybrids include dates but not hard dates. Strategy roadmap Strategy roadmaps display initiatives or high-level efforts required to achieve the product goals. Column roadmap Column roadmaps group components according to color-coded bars or columns.
Portfolio roadmap This type shows planned releases across multiple products in a single view, and is useful for providing a strategic overview. Theme-based roadmap This top-down approach groups goals and plans into high-level strategic categories called themes. Department-oriented roadmaps A firm can have one global roadmap, visible and available for everyone.
How to create a product roadmap? Planning a product roadmap The planning phase is a period of research and problem discovery that requires ruthless prioritization. Keep the following in mind: Generate goals for a specific period of time and make sure these objectives align with the product vision.
Identify user problems. Keep internal teams and stakeholders aligned, ensuring collaboration from start to finish. Define your metrics and KPIs to measure success.
To do that: Choose a roadmap format see above for types and below for examples. Identify dependencies early on in the process. Be sure to mark milestones to ensure visibility. Presenting your roadmap Presenting a roadmap is the ideal time for product managers to show their skills. These people think high-level and interdepartmental. They care about business goals and how the roadmap helps them achieve their objectives.
They also care about resource allocation and how their investment creates a return. This team cares about code, integrity, efficiency, and scalability. They want to understand the value of their efforts. Explain the intrinsic value of each feature and milestone and set realistic timeframes. Sales and customer support. It explains the details around why and what you are going to be producing.
Product roadmaps are a way to make sure that all teams are on the same page when it comes to product priorities. They involve taking a high-level view of the product and figuring out where there needs to be an emphasis while also aligning priorities with vision and strategy. A product roadmap allows for feedback and consensus on the plan and lets everyone in on the process.
It looks at all areas of the product journey so any gaps can be identified. Roadmapping a product produces a flexible, adjustable document that can change if company focus or market conditions need it to.
Usually, it is the product manager who is responsible for building a product roadmap. They put it together based on the vision and strategy of the business and then listen to the other teams involved in the production. It is an adjustable piece so input can be used as needed. Since your product roadmap and product plan has to span a lengthy timeline, many key factors should be included. Product features need to be highlighted along with vision and strategy. This is critical as it sets your company on the path to creating a specific product strategy.
It is the vision of what is desired and the potential that it has. This spells out what you want your product to be at the end of the project. This is the case you build for your product. You want internal and external stakeholders to know the overall business goal of the project. Explain how this product is going to benefit the business and blend with the vision already set out. Once these things are aligned, the roadmap is used to keep this strategy moving forward and staying consistent.
You need to get information to outline your needs. I like to recommend using no more than three to five features per goal, as a rule of thumb. To help you develop your agile product roadmap, I have created a goal-oriented roadmap template called the GO Product Roadmap. It consists of five elements: date, name, goal, features, and metrics, as the picture below shows.
You can download the template for free from romanpichler. Before you create your roadmap, capture and validate the product strategy. I like to regard the strategy as the path chosen to realise your vision and the roadmap as an actionable product plan that communicates how the strategy is implemented. In other words, I like to derive the roadmap from the strategy. Make sure that you can confidently state these, that you have done the necessary product discovery and validation work.
Otherwise, you risk creating a product roadmap that is not realistic and actionable. I like to use my Product Vision Board to describe the product strategy. The board captures the vision, the target group, the problem to be solved or the benefit to be provided, the key features of the product, and the business goals.
You can download the Product Vision Board template from romanpichler. Your product roadmap should tell a coherent story about the likely growth of your product. Each goal should build on the previous one , particularly as long as your product has not reached maturity. To come up with the right roadmap narrative, follow these two tips: First, break the user, customer, and business goals stated in the product strategy into specific and measurable subgoals. Then order the subgoals so that they form a coherent story.
If I wanted to offer a healthy eating product, for example, that helps middle-aged men reduce the risk of developing type-2 diabetes, the the goal of the first, initial release MVP might be to build a user community. The goal of the second release might be to increase engagement, and the goal of the third one might be to generate revenue. Second, resist the temptation to add goals and features to the product roadmap to please powerful stakeholders or broker a deal.
While I am a big fan of collaborative product roadmapping, this should not result in weak product decisions and compromises, see my tips Secure Strong Buy-in and Have the Courage to Say No below.
Be careful not to add too many details to your product roadmap. Keep your roadmap simple and easy to understand. Capture what really matters and leave out the rest by focusing on the goals. Keep the features on your roadmap coarse-grained and derive them from the goals. Do not show epics or user stories on your product roadmap but keep them in the product backlog.
Use the product roadmap as a strategic product plan and the product backlog as a detailed one that facilitates execution, as the picture below shows. A great way to get to agreement is to collaborate with the key stakeholders and involve them in creating and updating the product roadmap. This allows you to leverage their ideas and knowledge, it creates shared understanding, and it makes it more likely that people will support the plan.
Running a collaborative roadmapping workshop is a great way to engage everyone and create a shared product roadmap, as the following picture illustrates. Make sure, though, that you ask a skilled facilitator, for instance, your Scrum Master , to facilitate the workshop. This includes choosing the right decision rule , for example, consent, and ensuring that everyone is heard and nobody dominates. See my article Making Effective Product Decisions for more help on how to successfully decide with stakeholders and dev team members.
While you want the key stakeholders to support the product roadmap, you should not make the mistake to say yes to every idea and request. This would turn your product into a feature soup, a random collection of features. Use your vision and product strategy to make the right decisions.
Take a genuine interest in what the individual has to say and seek to understand her or his underlying need or motivation. This makes the person feel valued and understood, which will make it more likely that the individual is able to hear a negative answer and is still willing to support the roadmap.
How did we fix this? We also agreed on a consistent way to manage and present them. This enables the product management team to share their developing plans with each other and allows me to provide some high-level direction as context for planning. We also make sure that key things are presented to the company at our monthly all-hands meeting. Another big impact you can make on roadmaps comes through how you coach your team. However, it is your role to keep asking your team good questions.
You should push them in the direction of key pieces of insight or research, highlight relevant things other teams are working on, and help them think about the bigger picture. And this should be a constant process — not just when they review their roadmap. Your other key role should be to cultivate this. What you do here depends on the organisation, the people in senior positions, and how they are used to working.
Typically this involves establishing buy-in of the principles of a roadmap-driven approach, and encouraging everyone to focus on the results we want to see rather than the things we think should be built.
It also means working with others in the leadership team to agree a clear set of strategic priorities and providing the teams with protection from left-field requests. You may need to get more involved in business development to do this. Knowing what questions to ask in order to understand the thinking of your CEO and other key stakeholders is also a valuable set of skills you can focus on developing.
Encouraging your team to relate their successes and achievements to what was planned on the roadmap will also help to establish, reinforce and maintain trust in the process. Essentially, the key is constant communication and celebration of success.
In practice, every company is different and presents someone in a leadership role with a very different set of challenges on how to help their team develop roadmaps. Matt is a digital product leader who likes to improve the world by making useful things. The "agile onion" and the layers that you as a product leader should be in.
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