Product Roadmaps Relaunched

Chapter 2. Components of a Roadmap

What you’ll learn in this chapter

An Example Roadmap

The primary components for any product roadmap

• Product vision

• Business objectives

• Themes

• Timeframes

• Disclaimer

Secondary components to answer the concerns of certain stakeholders

• Features and solutions

• Confidence

• Stage of development

• Target customers

• Product areas

Complementary information to provide context for your roadmap

• Project information

• Platform considerations

• Financial context

• External drivers

A document that can effectively rally your troops around a plan needs to be more than just a list of features and dates.

It needs to tell the story of what it will be like when you achieve your vision, what it will take to get there, and how you will know if you are making progress.

A lot of product people think of a roadmap as a simple chart with dates and features, but a document that can effectively rally your troops around a plan needs to be more than that. It needs to tell the story of what it will be like when you achieve your vision, what it will take to get there, and how you will know if you are making progress.

Every roadmap is different, and exactly what yours looks like will depend on what you are trying to communicate and to whom. There’s no template or boilerplate you can plug-and-play for roadmap greatness, and a standardized roadmap doesn’t work across all organizations.

In this chapter, we will explain each of these primary roadmap components using a simple (hypothetical) product roadmap for our favorite ...