Master Product Roadmaps as a Beginner PM 🏁

Hey Impactful PM! It’s Areesha :)

I know you’re struggling with that perfect product roadmapping skill. 😶

Of course! ‘Cause mastering Product Roadmaps is an essential skill for product managers since we are the flag bearers of the future.

That’s what our Group Product Manager always says ⚡

Why do we need Product Roadmaps? 🤔

Product Roadmaps have multiple benefits for different stakeholders. Most importantly, they illustrate the product strategy and vision on a broad level that tells stakeholders if this strategic visions aligns with company goals.

Benefits to different stakeholders

• For senior leadership: The roadmap fosters visibility into the product development process. Executives can track progress towards goals and hold teams accountable for delivering on the roadmap's promises.

• For product owners, product managers: It helps prioritize features and initiatives based on their contribution to the bigger picture. The roadmap serves as a communication tool to gain stakeholder buy-in for the product vision and development approach.

• For development teams: The roadmap clarifies priorities and helps development teams focus on the most important features at any given time. This reduces ambiguity and improves development efficiency.

Groundwork

Roadmaps aren’t a child’s play my friend.

They must be crafted thoughtfully with careful planning and time investment.

Let’s understand what groundwork you need to lay for creating an impactful roadmap.

Have a Clear Vision and Strategy 🎯

I know you’ve heard about this a million times. 🤷‍♂️

But a clear product vision and strategy act as the foundation and guiding light for any product management activity.

What problem are you solving? Who are your target users? How will your product achieve its goals?

This "why" behind your product guides everything on the roadmap.

Read here about crafting an effective product strategy and a compelling product vision as a first-time product manager.

Know Your Audience 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦

I’m not talking about your product’s target audience here.

I’m talking about your roadmap’s audience.

As a product manager, you need to tailor the roadmap's level of detail to your audience.

For executives, a high-level overview with themes and goals might suffice. For development teams, more granular details on features and timelines would be helpful.

Building a Strong Product Roadmap 👷‍♂️

Here’s what you must do while building the actual roadmap keeping vision, strategy, and audience in mind 👇

Group Features into Goals 🎯

I’m repeating this again, you don’t want to present a laundry list of features to stakeholders.

Developers and engineers must be communicated how building new features connects to the product’s vision and strategy, and why they need to be prioritized.

How to do that?

Group features/functionalities into overall product goals and strategic themes. These themes become “swim lanes” of your roadmap providing a clear structure and purpose.

Senior executives, general managers, and other stakeholders are simply concerned with the final impact that you bring to the table for the company. So, they do not need to know in-depth details of what you will be working on.

Rather communicate just the high-level goals that your product will achieve at different milestones.

Developers and engineers of your product will put their efforts into building the features and functionality of these product goals. So, they need to know in-depth details, the level of features, and their timelines to deliver on time.

You can break down goals into epics, features, and user stories.

Epics are overall product goals.

Features are major breakdowns of how these goals will be achieved in parts.

User stories are breakdowns of a single feature that developers and engineers work on building release-by-release.

Release Dates & Milestones 📆

Define measurable goals for each strategic theme on your roadmap.

We cannot be building things forever!

Define what success looks like for each theme. Meaning, when do you call this feature “complete”? Use metrics to track progress and validate your roadmap.

Setting release dates and milestones helps you understand what goals you achieved in how much time.

Prioritize Based on Impact ✔

Prioritization is key 🔑.

You likely won't have resources for everything at once.

Use a prioritization framework like the prioritization matrix to assess features based on factors like customer impact, business value, and effort required.

You want to build features with higher customer impact and business value with low and minimal effort first.

And put the ones with higher effort and medium impact toward the end of your roadmap.

Executing the Roadmap 🏁

Creating beautiful roadmaps and abandoning them is a recipe for disaster.

As a product manager, you need to live the roadmap. ⚡

Here are some things to keep in mind to make your roadmaps effective throughout the journey.

Keep Updating Your Roadmaps 🖊

Product roadmaps are living documents, not set-in-stone plans. Be prepared to adapt based on new information, needs, user feedback, and market changes.

Make sure to update your roadmaps every week or fortnightly to keep them accurate with your current development plans.

In the end, you will be held accountable for not delivering what you promised. Better safe than sorry 🙂 

Communicate Effectively 🗣

Regularly communicate the roadmap to stakeholders at all levels, keeping everyone aligned and informed.

Not just stakeholders, but communicate change of plans to your delivery teams (app and engineering) as well keeping them aligned.

Use Clear Visuals 👁

Make your roadmaps visually appealing by using clear and concise visuals. Consider using roadmap software or online tools for an interactive and dynamic presentation.

Build your first roadmap from scratch

Follow these tips to master product roadmaps and effectively communicate your product strategy, guide development efforts, and keep your team focused on achieving the right goals.

That’s all for today !

Stay tuned for some freshly-baked PM tips, strategies, insights, weekly Q/A digests and more right into your inbox!🚀

Cya!
Areesha ❤️