Product roadmap

Last updated Jun 5, 2023

Roadmap:

• A high-level view of the expected product and its requirements
• Estimated schedule for reaching milestones

• Clarifying the sequence of deliverables
• Showing teams how their efforts relate to the north-star vision. In other words, their ultimate goal.
• Showing stakeholders the incremental value that will be achieved over the course of the project (rather than reviewing it as one big delivery at the end)
• Helping stakeholders roughly understand the layout of the work behind the deliverable

• Letting stakeholders think the roadmap is set and unchangeable. This may cause stakeholders to impede teams’ ability to adapt in response to new information, as well as put a lot of pressure on teams to achieve deadlines no matter what it takes.
• Spending too much time fine-tuning delivery dates versus keeping them rough and improving specificity as the dates get closer
• Putting all the work into creating the roadmap rather than producing the deliverables

• Make it highly noticeable to the team and refer to it frequently.
• Clearly indicate the highest priority items.
• If possible, clearly indicate the highest value items.
• Make it visible to your wider stakeholder group so that they can use it for their planning.
• Conduct regular reviews of the roadmap with sponsors, stakeholders, and the team to ensure that it is still providing the blueprint for the project.

• Ensure product release dates are only rough estimates
  • As in Agile things can change