Product Roadmap
Product roadmaps are living visual documents used to describe the progress towards the high level vision, strategy and future direction of the product, providing aspirational goals and a guiding light for the work being done in the teams. They are often used as a visual aid to help with options and scenario planning, and product discussions with stakeholders and customers.
Good Product Roadmaps are continuously updated with recent information relating to the progress towards the goals incorporating any adjustments allowing the roadmap to evolve as more is known.
Roadmap Components
Time Based
- Boundaries - These can be self imposed deadlines, budget constraints or other boundaries that need to be respected
- Milestones - These are indicators along the timeline when events, features or deliverables are expected
- External Events - Events outside of the team such as competitor releases, or compliance deadlines for example
- Last Responsible Moments - These are the last possible moments when a decision has to be made in the timeline. In the run up to these last moments of responsibility data can be collected through iterations, prototypes or testing for example, which can then help to inform the right decisions to be made once
- Releases - These can either be predicted moment in the timeline when releases are expected, or in the case of continuous delivery, a timetable of release dates irrespective of which features are completed
- Sprints / Iterations - These are defined time-boxes used by the teams for delivery, and a feature may be delivered in one or more Sprints or iterations
Scope Based
- Goals & Intent - The goals and intent behind the product roadmap and the associated features provides a reason or context for the work and why it is needed
- Impact / Outcome - The intended impact or outcome of a feature when it is delivered can be useful to understand what a stakeholder or customer can expect to do when it is delivered
- Features - These are the broad features that are expected to be delivered on the timeline and may well be broken down into epics and user stories for finer granularity
- Prioritisation - Which features are more important than others in order to achieve the desired impacts or expected outcomes
Usage
Product Roadmaps are often used by Product Owners and stakeholders to discuss the product and understand the intended positive impact to clients or customers at a high level. They can also be used by Product Owners and Agile Team Members to determine how the product can be delivered with respect to the technical capabilities and capacity of the teams.