The Complete 2021 Guide: How To Create a Product Roadmap

Just like Hannibal from the A-Team, we love it when a plan comes together! A roadmap will help organize your overall strategy at a high level by outlining your products or services, priorities and goals.

According to Aha!, your product road map “lays out the big efforts required to meet your overall business objectives and the timeline for implementing features and requirements that align with your strategy.”

What should a product roadmap look like?

A roadmap is an overarching strategy that will hit on short-term and long-term goals and objectives. It is not a detailed description of each and every thing the company wants to achieve.

“Product managers and project managers both rely on roadmaps to give teams a clear strategic overview, helping keep everyone aligned.” (airfocus)

Instead, it hits the high points, highlighting milestones. Another important piece of the roadmap is that it is a living, breathing time frame. It can be adjusted based on employee feedback, customer needs or shifting business priorities.

The roadmap is highly visual and easily digestible. Here is a look at a Roadmap slide from a Kroma PowerPoint Presentation.

What should be in a product roadmap?

Timeline:

Don’t let the term fool you, this isn’t about specific dates but a more general timeline. What will your accomplishments be in Q1 or Q2? What are your goals for October? What needs to be done now and what can wait until later?

Features:

Identify the features you would like to complete within the timeline above. What are we creating? What problems are we solving with this? Who will be using this product?

Goals:

Map out your product and/or business goals, this allows people to know where your business is headed. Plan out your audience goals and team objectives here.

“A vast majority of roadmaps miss the why behind what they are building and just focus on features — they are disconnected from the product strategy and have no clear goals or themes.” (Productboard)

What is the difference between a roadmap and a project plan?

We’ve heard these terms used interchangeably before, however, they are not the same thing. Like we’ve said the roadmap is a general mapping of deliverables and goals. A project plan gets into the minutiae of a specific project or product release.

The roadmap may say something like “Q2, launch dashboard analytics module.” On the other hand, the project plan will describe the dates in Q2, what analytics the dashboard will house and how the data will be pulled into the dashboard.

You can see in that example, how the roadmap is broad, and the project plan is more detailed. A roadmap helps with investor or stakeholder buy-in for your project. Keep it visual and simple to follow.

Are there product roadmap tools I can use?

Look no further, because Kroma has roadmaps already made just waiting for you to customize! All you have to do is sign up for Kroma and get your business goals mapped out!

Already a member? You’ll find the roadmap templates under Expert Decks, or just search ‘roadmap’ and voila!