How to Create a Product Roadmap

Ultimately, a clear product roadmap that includes all relevant details will help developers build the best product possible. In addition, a roadmap should be visual and cater to each specific audience.

Here are some additional best practices for building an effective product roadmap. 

Best Practice #1: Present a Visual Product Roadmap 

An effective product roadmap will do more than tell: it will also provide a simple, realistic visual representation of your vision and how it ties to company goals. Additionally, a roadmap should be persuasive and easy to understand. Managers may use PowerPoint and spreadsheets when making a product roadmap, but there are also many popular software options that make it easier to create visually compelling roadmaps. For these reasons, many product managers prefer flexible task management tools that have features such as swimlanes, drag-and-drop editors, movable cards, and other interactive elements.

Best Practice #2: Have Different Versions of the Product Roadmap 

In his LinkedIn post, Google Developer Shrinath V explains common difficulties in product roadmaps. If a sales team and dev team use the same roadmap, sales might commit to a feature to close a deal without consulting the developers on timing or probability. This scenario is just one of many problems that can occur if there is one party making changes or if you don’t have a way to track who is making changes.

Remember, a roadmap helps you gain buy-in. Each internal department has a unique role in making the product successful, each department will also care about something different. For example, marketing departments typically want to understand how product features will look and behave, while sales wants details about when the product will be ready for purchase. To avoid publishing hard dates that could change, speak in terms of quarters or months. 

“Don’t fall into the trap of specifying dates for anything that’s not already a work-in-progress or that isn’t well defined and well understood. Any attempt to set a date for something that’s outside the one to three month time horizon is not only a mistake, but is bound to fail,” says Cliff Gilley, technologist and Product Manager of The Clever PM.

Each of the following product roadmap examples were created in Smartsheet, and display time frames instead of specific dates. 

Example: Here’s a product roadmap that is broken out by quarters. This setup enables you to better track product developments over a longer period of time, rather than tracking towards specific dates.

Example: This product roadmap is broken out by quarter and the highest priority tasks. With this roadmap, you can easily track each step of development and ensure that you tackle the high priority tasks first. 

When creating an external product roadmap, remember that you will usually share it with company investors, industry analysts, customers, and the media. Even so, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. 

Gilley advises that for internal roadmaps that you intend to share with customers, the product roadmap should reflect sufficient details without tipping your hand to any specific strategies that you’re considering. 

For an external roadmap that you plan to share with investors, convey your strategic thinking and structure it in a way that presents confidence but still leaves doors open for innovation and responsiveness, without jeopardizing your financing rounds. 

Below is an example of an external roadmap format:

Best Practice #3: Share Your Product Roadmap 

“The primary reason we want the product roadmap to be visible to anyone in the organization is that product roadmaps represent the plan of execution against the company vision and strategy,” explains Gilley. 

Product roadmaps organize and communicate a lot of information: what your development team is building, the problem the product will fix, and the business goals your product aspires to achieve. This means your roadmap has the opportunity to speak directly to external or internal concerns and paint a clear picture of your intentions. 

To executives, the roadmap validates your product’s usefulness to a market that aligns with the organization’s strategic direction, and also proves that it enhances the company’s position. To your development team, the roadmap demonstrates progress and fosters inspiration. And to other internal departments, such as sales and marketing, the product roadmap sets expectations about product benefits, its comparisons to similar products, and the potential for conversions. 

To external customers, a product roadmap shows that you value their input and care about their needs. By sharing a roadmap externally, you signal that their awareness is a crucial part of your product’s success, which increases the likelihood of purchase. Additionally, it’s an opportunity to engage with customers and emphasize your brand story.

Janna Bastow, Co-founder of ProdPad and Mind the Product, explains the strategy behind her roadmaps. “Our product roadmap has actually become a central part of the way we communicate our priorities with our customers,” she says. “Customers love the transparency. We’ve found that as long as we’re open and honest about our priorities, customers are actually very forgiving. We hold onto the feedback we get and reach back into it to guide the way we approach their problems – and our customers know that.”

“When the roadmap is hidden, the narratives about where the product is going, when, and why are now outside of the product manager’s control and directly in the hands of the rumor mill and office grapevine,” adds Gilley.

Best Practice #4: Create a Flexible Roadmap

Todd Olson, Founder and CEO of Pendo, recommends that you write “SUBJECT TO CHANGE” on all product roadmaps. Maintaining flexibility in your timeline and deliverables will enable your team to react calmly to roadblocks, and to adapt your plan to fit changing needs. 

However, keep in mind that a product roadmap should have a single owner. This individual is the only person with the authority to add and remove items. 

Best Practice #5: Involve Your Stakeholder Community in Regular Intervals

Product roadmaps are meant to be shared with internal development teams and others who have a role in the product’s success. Rather than being static, your roadmap should function like a reader board that gives a current snapshot of project status. So, in order for your product roadmap to do its job well, it needs consistent input from the product owner. This means updating your roadmap daily to capture any market changes, new planning directions, added resources, or shifting priorities. By regularly updating your roadmap, you help constituents understand factors that account for a product’s progress or delays. 

Karthik Vijayakumar, podcaster, author, and product maker at Design Your Thinking, shares that continual updates also create a deep level of shared ownership that in turn drives results. “Without this, product roadmaps end up in nice documents without having seen the daylight,” he shares.

Best Practice #6: Spend 10 Minutes with Your Product Roadmap 

Carving out chunks of time to review the product roadmap helps you identify trends and set priorities. Before checking email or cruising Twitter, give your product roadmap your entire focus. 

Sameena Velshi, Head of Product at Roadmunk, makes it her morning ritual. “Since I started allocating a few minutes to my roadmap every morning, my days have been more grounded. I analyze both the granular (What is each dev working on today? How close are we to that next release?), and the big picture (Are we on track to make quarterly goals in line with our STRATEGY?),” she says. “It’s given me a new sense of control and perspective over our approach to product management.”