
Define product strategy Outline your product vision, goals, and initiatives. There are five basic steps to building a product roadmap:ġ. Product roadmaps are particularly useful for communicating high-level product plans to company leadership, partners, and customers.

Product managers use roadmaps to coordinate a cross-functional product team around a common goal, such as the launch of a new product or a major release. Then create a corresponding project plan to capture the step-by-step actions you will take to reach each goal along the way. Use a roadma p to define the high-level goals and give an overview of how you will accomplish them.

A project plan is a supporting document that lays out the specifics of what you need to do to achieve those initiatives.

What is the difference between a roadmap and a project plan?Ī roadmap is a visualization of your strategic initiatives and the major areas of work you will pursue. The roadmap helps everyone involved understand what is coming next and who is responsible - so you can stay on track and deliver valuable product updates. Since roadmaps provide a high-level framework for strategy, timing, and feature work, many internal (and even external) stakeholders may reference the roadmap throughout the product development process. Product managers are responsible for creating and maintaining the product roadmap. Anyone with access to the roadmap can quickly understand the plans and rally behind what you will achieve together. You can share your roadmap with a variety of audiences - including executives, teammates, other groups in your organization, and customers. This can be an extremely effective planning approach because it provides a clear way to visualize and communicate what you want to accomplish and when. Roadmapping is the exercise of creating a roadmap. Plans are organized into goals, initiatives, epics, and features - with a timeline for releases at the top. This is an example of a strong product roadmap built in Aha! Roadmaps. As a high-level plan for how you will accomplish your goals, a roadmap helps you picture the work that needs to be done along with a corresponding schedule. It ties together your strategy (the "why"), the work you will need to do to achieve your goals (the "what"), and a timeline for completion (the "when"). Jump ahead to find the details you need most:Ī roadmap is a visual representation of your strategic plans. This guide provides an overview of roadmapping best practices.

Several different types of roadmaps are now widely used in most organizations - including business, technology or IT, project, and marketing roadmaps. Today it is a popular strategic planning method for businesses and teams of all types. In the last several years, however, roadmapping has expanded beyond product management. Roadmaps have been closely associated with the product development process.
