A product roadmap is a summary that gives an overview of your product's specifications, vision, features, and direction to devise a strategy in the form of a roadmap. When you are a beginner and want to express the vision of your product in front of your customers, make necessary roadmaps defining its strategy. This is the time to create a product roadmap that paves the way for further work. To work on building a product roadmap product for the first product, you have to identify the goals, features, and vision of your product that you will portray in the roadmap. Ranging from strategy to releases is a multi-step process to build a product roadmap.
Your product roadmap should portray an effective vision of your product features and the potential effort you are putting into achieving the goals till the release of a product. The whole process of identifying the vision and planning to build a product roadmap strategically is done with the collaboration of the whole team along with the product manager.
Importance of Product Roadmap
Creating product roadmaps for your product needs an arduous effort. It would be best if you looked highly committed to your goals for proper product management and marketing through a roadmap. Your commitment to your goals is efficiently expressed through the product roadmaps you create. The product roadmap product serves as a promise to your team members and consumers about the quality and accountability of the product. Roadmaps describe every bit of the product in the timeline, like updates, releases, and delivery of the product.
Presenting your product needs a severe effort of strategic planning, among which a product roadmap plays a vital role. Connecting the product strategy to the implementation helps in presenting your work with efficacy in the roadmap. Moreover, the product roadmap gives consumers an idea about where and why they are investing in the specific product.
Different types of Product Roadmaps
Depending upon the teams and customers, you need to choose among any one of the product roadmap types. There are different types of roadmaps that possess other features. As different teams and audiences look at the product roadmaps differently according to their work; the relevant product roadmap product gives an effective view. The information portrayed in various types of product roadmaps is similar but is explained in different ways.
Epic Roadmaps
In this type of product roadmap, you can integrate related features that will assist in planning and organizing future work and advanced features. This product roadmap helps imagine work delivered across multiple releases. This roadmap is also beneficial in addressing key features of products and making prioritized decisions.
Feature Roadmaps
Feature roadmaps give detailed information about the updates of new features in the product through a timeline in the roadmap. This is the best product roadmap that delivers the information about when and what the updates in features are going to come in the product.
Portfolio Roadmaps
A portfolio product roadmap is an effective way to express the strategic plan of work on your product to your leadership and teams. Moreover, this roadmap also provides an effective view of how different teams will be working together. In a single view, you can present planned releases over multiple products.
Release Roadmaps
A release product roadmap is a process that provides information about activities and work that need to be done before bringing a released product to market. It helps address the issues like when and how the releases will be done and who would be working and being responsible for the releases and delivery. Moreover, this roadmap assists in communicating release activity charts with other teams like sales, marketing, and consumer support.
Strategy Roadmaps
It portrays the product roadmap of your high-order efforts to achieve the aims. This is the best product roadmap that assists in keeping the leadership aware of the initiatives and teams working on building the product roadmap.
Building your product roadmaps
When you need to build a product roadmap for your product, it needs a strategy that will define the aims and associated initiatives. You will be working with teams to achieve these goals and complete the initiatives you have taken. The basic things to create a product roadmap are goals, initiatives, releases, features, timelines, and epics. Your product goals should be realistic and attainable within a specific time. Moreover, the releases are clearly defined on the timeline to address the concern of teams, leadership, and customers about the working and arrival of new products or updates in the roadmap. The newly developed features and updated features should also be communicated in the timeline in an effective way, along with the dates of releases to the teams and customers; when you are done with choosing the type of product roadmap, you need to follow these steps to work and build a product roadmap.
Defining product strategy
First of all, you need to identify the "Why" for your product to devise a strategy. This "why" of your product will explain in the product roadmaps how your potential efforts are supporting the whole business. In the strategy of a product, there will be detailed goals, initiatives, and vision associated with the product in the roadmaps. You will be identifying your customers, their requirements, and techniques to gather the crowd in the market. Moreover, the elements of your product's strategy define details about the building product roadmap.
Gather information and ideas
Product teams can gather information and ideas about the requirements of the product and updated features from different sources. These sources could be customers, customer support teams, and other internal teams. The customer support team will better understand the requirement of customers through their responses and feedback. Moreover, you can also focus on the weaknesses of your products and can come up with ideas and strategies to improve the shortcomings in the features of your product in the roadmaps.
Define features of the product
By identifying the specific product features through ideas, goals, and initiatives, you can effectively create a product roadmap. Different tools and templates are available; by using them, you can add the requirements and features in it to convey them to customers. You can also skip any of the features that are not good to go with the details. However, the feature could be added later on whenever you need to communicate it to the customers. Moreover, the reviews of other customers could also be added when you create a roadmap to present the customer's point of view.
Organize releases
When you are done with the and why of your product in an effective way, then there comes a time to explain and present the "when" of the product. After explaining the product's features, you can add the delivery dates on the timeline with releases. Few teams prefer to organize releases based on development capacity instead of organizing them according to the product launch.
Figure out roadmap views
This is the final step in which you look at things you have defined in roadmaps. To look up the roadmaps on different views, choose a roadmap template or software. You need to know about the viewers of your roadmaps before running them. Additionally, it is also necessary to understand what the important information that you want to convey is. Identify whether the audience is interested in getting detailed information about the product and the exact dates of release and delivery.
FAQs
What is in a Product Roadmap?
A product roadmap is a crux that defines the vision, specifications, and direction of your product. As a beginner, if you want to present your product in front of an audience, make an effective roadmap that conveys detailed information about the product ranging from goals to releases. Roadmaps creation is a multi-step process that requires goals and initiatives to carry on further.
What is a Product Roadmap Template?
The product roadmaps template is the platform that allows for building a product roadmap in this pre-organized template. You can simply add your product details starting from the manufacturing till the delivery of the product. The timeline will focus on deadlines and goals associated with your product.
What input do you use to build your product roadmap?
The inputs required in constructing product roadmaps include market, technology, customer reviews, and product strategy. The market will provide you the details about customers' requirements, competitors, and market trends. Product strategy provides you with a direction to follow that will eventually lead to obtaining your product goal. The advancement of technology and other necessary updates in the features of products are also necessary to address.
What should a roadmap include?
Roadmaps of your product need to have goals and initiatives explained in the product strategy. Roadmaps also include the features and updates associated with the product. The timeline is set to meet the deadlines while achieving the goals according to the strategy of the product. Furthermore, it also requires to list of the dates of releases, updates, and delivery.
How do I create a roadmap for my business?
First of all, you need to identify a goal and initiative for your business. After that, you must choose the type of roadmap you need to create. As different teams or audiences need to have different types of roadmaps. After choosing a type of roadmap and goals for your product, make sure that you have gathered information and ideas from outside to devise a strategy. These outside factors could be the customers, competitors, or market personnel. This will help you in shaping a better strategy and roadmap for your product till the releases. Then define the features and requirements of the product that are necessary. Along with the features, you also need to define the dates of updates associated with specific features in the roadmaps. The release dates and delivery of products are also necessary to explain in the roadmaps.
