Product managers, create your product roadmap in 5 steps with our foolproof method
A product evolves over time, and above all according to the often changing needs of customers and the market. It therefore requires very specific construction and monitoring.
That's why the product roadmap is an essential tool for every product manager! This evolving roadmap enables you to plan and monitor the various stages in the creation or improvement of a product, while keeping your teams mobilized throughout the project.
But how do you build it effectively? Here are the answers in 5 steps, and our key tips for maximizing your success... with examples to back it up!
What is a product roadmap?
The product roadmap is a tool for monitoring the progress of a product, and provides a detailed plan of the path that teams will follow throughout the project. It acts as a sort of common guide for all project stakeholders, enabling them to step back and focus on the objective to be achieved.
A product roadmap must therefore be :
- accessible, so that all stakeholders can access it when they need to,
- visual, to make reading and monitoring the project pleasant and, above all, readable,
- understandable, to facilitate progress and ensure that information is assimilated,
- organized by theme, so that tasks can be easily prioritized.
5 steps to a professional and efficient product roadmap
1 - Take the team's requests into account!
Product creation is a team effort.
🔎 Essential point: collect all feedback, requests and needs from your team in order to properly establish your product strategy .
But that's not all. It's important to gather insights from a number of players:
- end-users, through consumer behavior analysis,
- internal stakeholders: investors, product sponsors, etc,
- business teams: marketing, sales, finance, customer service, etc,
💡 Also consider analyzing the market in which your product is positioned via in-depth market research: trends, competitors, regulations, etc.
2 - Think long-term: define your product vision and objectives
Now that you've finished analyzing your market and your customers, it's time to define your objectives and establish your product vision! This step is essential, as it represents the foundation on which you will then build your roadmap.
The product vision describes the reason why the product has been created. To define it, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who are the consumers who will use your product?
Example: you're in the middle of developing an anti-aging cosmetics product. The consumers who will use your product are, for example, active women aged between 35 and 55.
-
What problems does your product solve?
Example: your product helps mature women reduce wrinkles and improve the appearance of their skin. -
What added value does your product bring to its users?
Example: your product brings aesthetic value to its consumers: it improves their self-confidence and reduces their complexes. -
What are the competitive advantages of your product?
Example: your product is the only one on the market to combine two acids known for their anti-aging benefits, hyaluronic acid and glycolic acid.
Next, clearly define your objectives and the results you want to achieve. They must be :
- achievable,
- defined in time,
- measurable (via KPIs)
- aligned with the company's long-term objectives.
💡 A little hint: tell yourself that objectives answer the question "where are we going?", while results answer "how are we getting there?".
3 - Identify and prioritize tasks
Now that you've established your product strategy and set your objectives, make a list of the tasks involved in your project. Then classify them by theme to help you find your way around.
To do this,you need to define a few elements:
- Releases : these correspond to the date on which you plan to launch the product;
- Calendar : this can be quarterly, semi-annually or even annually;
- Status : this is essential if you want to know how the project is progressing in relation to forecasts;
- The people responsible for each task , and the time allocated to each.
You can also classify the various themes by sector or division. Here are a few examples:
- Marketing: develop a mobile application, write an SEO article, etc. ;
- Customer service : improving the user experience, building loyalty, etc. ;
- Sales: prepare a negotiation plan and sales pitch;
- Production: design packaging or establish prerequisites for a digital product, define delivery dates, etc. ;
- Financial: calculate product profitability after the first six months on the market, etc.
👉 Then prioritize these themes according to their contribution to the product strategy. It's a good idea to work on only one theme at a time, unless you have a large team.
4 - Don't keep your product roadmap to yourself, share it!
The product roadmap is useless if you don't share it with everyone involved in the project:
- team members,
- management committee,
- the relevant business units,
- customers, etc.
So, by presenting your project with understandable objectives and precise deadlines, the roadmap can become an absolute source of reference. And to make matters worse, you'll find it easier to get your managers or investors on board.
5 - Measure and monitor results with a magnifying glass
Last but not least, it's time to measure and monitor results. Indispensable to the success of your product, it makes it easy to compare the results obtained with those expected.
And for this, there's nothing like a dashboard to track all the indicators linked to your project and make the right decisions thanks to their analysis!
✅ A significant advantage is that you can retrieve new data to modify and improve the roadmap.
Bonus: 3 tips for optimizing your roadmap
Update your roadmap daily
It's essential to constantly update your product roadmap in line with project deadlines, resources and milestones. That's why flexibility is one of the major advantages of the product roadmap. This advantage helps you to modify tasks and/or other features at any time without disrupting the basic structure.
👉 Good to know: specialized software automatically updates your roadmap, making you more efficient.
Involve all your teams and stakeholders
Involving all your stakeholders and team members is essential if they are to consult the roadmap with a clear, visual presentation.
This applies to :
- Finance,
- customer service
- product development,
- management, etc.
Equip yourself with the right software
If you're looking for a more relevant way to build and monitor your product roadmap, there are a number of software solutions to suit your needs. Real decision-making aids, these solutions save you time (thanks to roadmap templates , for example) and efficiency, by enabling you to define :
- the number of people involved,
- the number of tasks to be carried out
- the length of the deadline, etc.
Here are a few examples:
Foxplan
FoxPlan is a project portfolio management software perfectly suited to product creation. Thanks to its hybrid approach, which supports both traditional project management methods and agile practices, it is particularly well suited to the development of IT products. It supports product managers and product owners in all aspects of roadmap design and management:
- continuous integration with Jira, to ensure ticket management while maintaining a roadmap vision ;
- optimal resource management, even in agile mode;
- precise definition and management of budgets to avoid budgetary drift;
- evaluation and monitoring of potential risks, to ensure a better response at every stage of the roadmap.
Harvestr
Harvestr is a comprehensive, intuitive and easy-to-use digital product management platform that helps you build attractive and engaging product roadmaps . Thanks to its advanced customization features, you can create roadmaps according to your communication needs, and easily share them with your teams and customers. A true all-in-one tool, the solution also enables you to :
- prioritize your product developments using qualitative and quantitative data;
- synchronize your product roadmaps with ticketing tools such as Jira or Github;
- communicate different versions of your roadmap to different people;
- automatically update the roadmap in real time according to incoming customer feedback.
Product roadmap and agile methodology
The product roadmap is often used in conjunction with the Agile working method, since it shares the same characteristics. It is intended to be scalable and flexible. The Agile method helps teams to take account of :
- market developments (a new competitor on the market, new legal regulations, etc.),
- customer feedback,
- variations in customer needs, etc.
🪄 The agile method is a magical tool: it makes it possible to modify your project management according to variations in the environment without disrupting its progress or structure.
This is exactly the case with the product roadmap. It guides teams in the development of their product, while remaining flexible and modifiable.
👉 The product roadmap is particularly well suited to fast-moving sectors such as IT and e-commerce.
In a nutshell: the product roadmap in 5 seconds
You've got it: the product roadmap is essential for tracking the development of your product, whether it's digital or tangible, with a B2B or B2C target... it's a real performance lever for you and your team!
🏃 And here are the 4 quick and easy reasons why, for those of you in a hurry:
- It positions itself as a real communication tool to collaborate more effectively with your team on product vision and strategy,
- It gives the whole team and management the benefit of complete, effective product tracking, thanks to its clear structure and pleasing visual appearance,
- It helps you to identify potential problems quickly, and to resolve them through corrective action,
- It aligns all the stakeholders in your project and gives visibility to the whole team.
So, are you ready to build your product roadmap?