What is a roadmap?
A roadmap is a visual representation of a business' strategic planning. It helps companies strategize decisions and encourage team collaboration.
A roadmap acts as a communication tool and a high-level document that provides "the why" behind business goals while laying down the methods to achieve them. Team members use it to understand business goals and the set methods for accomplishing them. It explains a company’s obligations, responsible parties, methods, and reasons for being.
Many organizations use strategic planning software to create their business or product roadmap while enabling effective team collaboration.
Types of roadmaps
There is no universal strategy that applies to all businesses, so each needs a unique plan to reach its goals. Several types of roadmaps help in strategic planning, and it's vital to pick the best roadmap that suits one's project. Below are a few most common ones.
- Marketing strategy roadmaps help businesses outline the market to launch or promote a product.
- Visionary roadmaps represent the ongoing changes in the current industry and society. It gives a larger picture of the trends and how a product will fit, even though users' interests shift.
- Platform roadmaps outline the technical requirements for the product to run successfully. For example, an operating system needs hardware to run on, or else no one can use the product.
- Technology roadmaps give organizations a plan for future initiatives regarding technical infrastructure. For example, the IT team can roll out a software update schedule for the next six months.
- Internal and external product roadmaps deal with the evolution of a product. The internal roadmap provides clear development priorities and ensures everyone is on the same page. External roadmaps convey a product's benefits to the clients, press, and analysts without giving too much technical information.
Elements of a roadmap
The most critical components of a roadmap are described here.
- Product vision: Any good roadmap must include a product vision that addresses how the product will fit into the target market and improve the lives of consumers.
- Goals: This step involves the strategy or the actions that act as the primary development guideposts. Choosing the right metrics, requirements for a successful launch, and the product's potential financial benefits are all a part of this aspect of roadmaps.
- Requirements: Clients’ needs and feedback are the leading requirements for creating a successful product. The marketing and sales teams commonly determine these requirements by communicating directly with the consumers through online communities and surveys.
- All-inclusive plan: This is an overarching plan that will make the vision a reality. If a step misfires or goes wrong, this plan can help users realign and begin again without losing hope.
- Metrics: Adding relevant current metrics and long-term goals to the roadmap helps decide which features need to be updated or eliminated, increasing the chances of a product’s success.
Roadmap formats
Here are a few popular roadmap formats.
- No-dates: This type of roadmap provides flexible timelines. It's beneficial for companies with constantly shifting priorities. For example, a business or organization in its early stages of development needs to process new information on a day-to-day or weekly basis.
- Timeline: When an organization juggles multiple departments or deadlines, a complex timeline roadmap works well. It gives the team a visual structure based on a time or goal to ensure success.
- Hybrid: This roadmap style contains dates and maintains flexibility while allowing professionals to plan for the future. For example, this would work for a company that creates a roadmap organized by a month or a quarter.
Benefits of roadmaps
A roadmap is a great way to communicate strategic intent. It helps product and company goals with development and aligns the team toward a common goal. Below are some benefits roadmaps provide to their respective users.
- Organizational leadership: Roadmaps provide a regular update on work status in an understandable format.
- Product owners and managers: Roadmaps help owners and managers by unifying teams working on products and allowing them to communicate priorities effectively.
- Developers: Roadmaps give a precise big picture of the project so team members can set priorities and make fast, autonomous decisions.
Best practices for creating roadmaps
Building and maintaining a roadmap is a continuous process. For a successful product roadmap, it is important to follow these best practices.
- Be flexible. Product development is never a straight line. Organizations should be open to change and ready to respond to shifting markets.
- Communicate cross-functionally. It's essential to communicate with every team involved in the process of development. A single member can only have answers to a limited number of questions.
- Be logical. A roadmap's foundation must be data, business goals, and strategic vision. Data should be added because it’s valuable. Managers must learn to reject data that doesn’t help the roadmap’s creation.
- Focus on the short-term and long-term. Concentrate on short-term strategies and map them to long-term goals.
- Review the roadmap regularly. A roadmap has to be reviewed regularly. Supervisors can decide when to make tweaks.
- Provide the roadmap’s access to all stakeholders. Everyone related to the process needs to have access to the roadmap and should be able to check it regularly. Organizations must stay in touch with stakeholders to ensure alignment.
Learn more about scenario planning and understand how businesses plan strategies to address potential uncertainties.
Sagar Joshi
Sagar Joshi is a former content marketing specialist at G2 in India. He is an engineer with a keen interest in data analytics and cybersecurity. He writes about topics related to them. You can find him reading books, learning a new language, or playing pool in his free time.
