10 best practices to follow for a great Product Roadmap!

A Product Roadmap is a list of key delivery focus areas. It mainly answers two questions :

1. When (do you want to release)?
2. What (is the priority)?

A Product roadmap must not be confused with a Project Plan. A roadmap communicates a clear vision of a product – the direction we want to take.
The roadmap’s core intent is to capture the value of the product that is to be delivered to the customer. It is also crucial not to view roadmaps as feature lists to be sized and estimated – aka product backlogs. Though a good roadmap does eventually lead to a Product Backlog.

The above picture illustrates the link between a Product Roadmap and a Project Release Plan.

The primary ingredients of a good Product roadmap are :

• Product Vision
• Business objectives (outcomes or goals the product will achieve)
• High level delivery timelines

In this blog we would like to put forth these 10 best practices around effective product roadmap creation which has worked for us in our Agile consulting engagements.

1. Any Product roadmap must align with organizational strategy
2. Agree upon the set of top priorities before capturing them on a roadmap 
3. Avoid capturing information around resources and (detailed) timelines
4. Capture themes which are nothing but high Level customer needs & problems
5. Avoid presenting solutions or outputs on the roadmap
6. Avoid presenting the roadmap as Gnatt charts, with dates et al
7. Start the roadmap with a vision (Picture of a better future) 
8. The Vision statement must lead to identification of measurable outcomes 
9. Identify personas of user roles to gain a better understanding of the product
10. Understand and identify the technology stack to be used for delivering the roadmap

What are some of the things that work for you while drafting a product roadmap? We would love to hear your feedback on the above best practices. Please reach out to us at “[email protected]” for any support in your agile transformation journey.

Sudha Madhuri
Agile Consultant, Benzne