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 mobilised throughout the project.

But how do you build it effectively? Here are the answers in 5 steps, and our key tips for maximising your success... with examples to back it up!

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What is a product roadmap?

The product roadmap is a tool for monitoring the progress of the product and provides a detailed plan of the path that the teams will have to follow throughout the project. It is a sort of common guide for all the project stakeholders: they take a step back and set themselves the objective to be achieved.

A product roadmap must therefore be :

• accessible, so that all the stakeholders can access it when they need to,
• visual, to make reading and monitoring the project pleasant and, above all, easy to understand,
• understandable, to facilitate progress and ensure that the information is assimilated,
• classified by theme, so that the tasks to be carried out can be easily prioritised.

5 steps to creating a professional and effective product roadmap

1 - Take the team's requests into account!

Product creation is a team effort.

🔎 It's essential to gather all the feedback, requests and needs of your team in order to establish your product strategy correctly .

But that's not all. It's important to gather insights from a number of players:

• end users, by analysing consumer behaviour,
• internal stakeholders: investors, product sponsors, etc,
• business teams: marketing, sales, finance, customer service, etc..,

💡 Also remember to analyse 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 analysing 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 basis on which you will then build your roadmap.

The product vision describes the reason why the product is being created. To define it, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are the consumers who are going to use your product?

  Example: you are in the middle of developing an anti-ageing cosmetic 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 to 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-ageing benefits, hyaluronic acid and glycolic acid.

Next, clearly define your objectives and the results you want to achieve. They must be :

• attainable
• defined in time,
• measurable (using KPIs)
• aligned with the company's long-term objectives.

💡 A little tip: remember that objectives answer the question "where are we going?", whereas results answer "how are we getting there?".

3 - Identify the tasks and prioritise them

Now that your product strategy has been established and your objectives set, make a list of the tasks to be carried out 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 : this corresponds to the date on which you plan to launch the product;
• The calendar : this can be quarterly, half-yearly or even yearly;
• Status : this is essential if you want to know how the project is progressing in relation to the forecasts;
• The people responsible for the tasks and the time allocated to each.

With regard to the different themes, you can classify them by sector or division. Here are a few examples:

• Marketing: developing a mobile application, writing an SEO article, etc. ;
• Customer service : improving the user experience, building loyalty, etc. ;
• Sales: preparing a negotiation plan and sales pitch;
• Production: designing the packaging or establishing the prerequisites for a digital product, defining delivery dates, etc. ;
• Financial: calculating the product's profitability after the first six months on the market, etc.

👉 Then prioritise these topics according to their contribution to the product strategy. We recommend that you only work on one area 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 business units involved,
• 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 closely

Last but not least, you need to measure and monitor results. Essential to the success of your product, it makes it easier to compare the results obtained with those expected.

And for that, there's nothing like a dashboard to track all the indicators linked to your project and make the right decisions based on their analysis!

✅ A significant advantage: you'll be able to retrieve new data to modify and improve the roadmap.

Bonus: 3 tips for optimising it

Update your roadmap on a daily basis

It's vital that you constantly update your product roadmap in line with project deadlines, resources and stages. That's why flexibility is one of the major advantages of the product roadmap. This advantage helps you to change tasks and/or other features at any time without disrupting the basic structure.

👉 Good to know: specialised 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 :

• the finance department
• the customer service department
• the product development department
• management, etc.

Equip yourself with the right software

If you want to be more relevant when building and monitoring your product roadmap, there are a number of software solutions that can help you. These solutions are real decision-making aids, saving you time (thanks to the roadmap templates , for example) and improving 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 the design and management of their roadmap:

• 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 deviations;
• assessment 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 customisation features, you can create roadmaps according to your communication needs, and share them easily with your teams and your customers. A genuine all-in-one tool, the solution also lets you :

• prioritise your product developments using qualitative and quantitative data;
• synchronise your product roadmaps with your ticketing tools such as Jira or Github;
• communicate different versions of your roadmap to different people;
• automatically update the roadmap in real time based on incoming customer feedback.

Product roadmap and agile methodology

The product roadmap is very often used in conjunction with the Agile working method, as 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 magic tool: it makes it possible to modify your project management according to changes in the environment without disrupting its progress or structure.

This is exactly the case with the product roadmap. It guides the teams in the development of their product while remaining flexible and modifiable.

👉 The product roadmap is particularly well suited to sectors where things change quickly, such as IT or e-commerce.

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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 driver for you and your team!

🏃 And here are 4 quick and easy reasons why, for those of you in a hurry:

• It is positioned as a real communication tool to collaborate more effectively with your team on the product vision and strategy,
• It gives the whole team and management the benefit of complete and effective product monitoring, thanks to its clear structure and pleasing visual appearance,
• It helps you to identify potential problems quickly and 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?