What is a product roadmap?

In this video, product managers discuss product roadmaps.

What is a product roadmap?

As we learned in Week 1, a product roadmap is an important tool for product managers. It is an evolving plan of action that shows your goals and priorities and demonstrates the route the product is likely to take on your journey towards fulfilling the product vision.

A product roadmap describes the value you propose to deliver to your users and your organisation. It also helps coordinate the work of your product team as it creates a shared understanding of where your product is going and why.

It is also a useful tool for getting stakeholder buy-in. It helps stakeholders understand your product’s overall strategy and the goals you’re working towards. It shows the various stages of the production process and how you’re working to create value for users.

What a product roadmap is not

Below is a list of other tools used by product managers that are often confused with roadmaps but have distinct uses and functions:

Release plan

A release plan shows when specific features of a product will be released.

A roadmap does not include a commitment to specific features. The items in a roadmap focus on outcomes for the user, not specific features or solutions.

Gantt chart

A Gantt chart is a visualisation of the different tasks the product team needs to complete and the time allotted to each. It also highlights the relationships between the different pieces of work.

Bug log

Product managers or their teams record bugs or minor issues with their product in bug logs. A bug log is an informal record that does not require the team to fix things in any particular order.

Product backlog

Backlogs are essentially to-do lists. As covered previously, they are different but equally as vital as roadmaps. Teams use backlogs to manage the delivery of specific user stories, features and tasks in smaller, time-boxed periods.

Delivery plan

Creating a high level delivery plan can be a good idea as the planning process will help the team understand the deadlines, dependencies or assumptions you need to check in your research and engagement. Be careful that you’re not putting too much effort into detailed planning when you don’t yet know exactly what your users need.