A great product roadmap is less of a strategy tool and more of a means of communication; and yet, good communication signals good strategy.
As a product manager, roadmapping has been a way to journal out my thoughts on what the next stint of development should focus on. I look at the stats, consider user requests and opinions and check out what competitors are doing to rough-draft what makes sense to build now, next and never. I then fold out the paper and store it out of sight then go work it out with my team.
Roadmapping is not a solo activity. It's as cross-functional as it gets; encompassing getting data from the sales team, user complaints from customer success, metrics from our analytics tool and pulling up reviews from socials and PlayStore.
You want to build something people want. And if you're listening, your users are telling you exactly want they want. This is what the product discovery process is about.
A great product roadmap is based on:
Qualitative and quantitative data on user needs and feedback
Analysis of usage data to inform areas of high and low customer focus
Data around points of friction and affected customers to help prioritise roadmap plans.
Research into market opportunities and competitor content
A roadmap should also reflect internal stakeholder needs aligned with customer value.
A strategic roadmap balances larger complex dev projects with smaller iterative user needs.
This balance allows dev teams to build for current users while exploring potential for new market growth opportunities.
This process is augmented when PMs make data-driven decisions.
Here’s a sample of how to map out what you need in order to prioritize feature requests:
And here’s how you might prioritize the above feature requests:
Examples of Public Roadmaps:
Nala is a money transfer service on a mission to increase economic opportunity for Africans worldwide. In specific, they facilitate Africans in diaspora to send money back into the continent at affordable rates. Their roadmap and feature request tool is hosted on Notion.
2 -GitHub
GitHub has a very detailed roadmap with items that look more like Jira development tickets. What they're working on has been mapped out to several months in advance, with appropriate tags. This way, they're able to communicate to their users what to expect when which has a way of building brand trustworthiness and loyalty.
3 - Buffer
Buffer hosts their product roadmap on Trello and they're not shy about why they make it public. Apart from wanting users to comment and upvote on features they're eager to use, they claim that they're building it for their competitors as well since they believe that: "There’s plenty of opportunity for everyone to be successful! All in all, we think this could raise the bar for all of us, and challenge Buffer to build the best, most valuable features possible."
As you can see, there are several roadmapping tools that can come in handy when creating a roadmap that works for you. Tools like Notion, Trello, Roadmunk, Click-Up and Jira all work well with varying levels of colour and complexity.
A Product Roadmap is as personal as a journal but can be as public as a newspaper;
There is no universal template on what a perfect roadmap looks like for you and your organization. As long as you marry the needs of the user, with that of the business, bearing in mind the business and competitive landscape, you can create a map that works for you, and change it up as frequently as is appropriate.
Should you decide that you want your users to directly influence it, publishing it has it's advantages.