product management roadmap presentation

Product Roadmap Presentation: 6 Examples Included Templates

Simon Sinek’s rise to fame is marked by his unwavering determination to challenge conventional thinking.

He consistently questions corporate practices and fearlessly presents bold opinions that disrupt the status quo.

In his book “Start with Why” , Simon Sinek boldly claims that the ‘Why’ behind your actions matters more than the ‘What’. This principle isn’t limited to leadership or personal motivation; it extends to every facet of the business, including product roadmaps. Product roadmaps transcend mere slides or visuals; they serve as the linchpin for strategically aligning internal teams and external stakeholders with the product vision and strategy .

They act as the bridge that connects the visionary ‘Why’ with the practical ‘What’, bringing the envisioned goals within the realm of execution.

So how to create and present roadmaps effectively?

In this article, we’ll reveal the art of creating roadmap presentations that don’t just align internal teams and external users but also set the stage for a successful execution. 

Limitations of relying on PowerPoint

During my early days in Product Management , I was introduced to PowerPoint for building roadmaps.

Our former product manager shared a bunch of Powerpoint templates with us and we loved the flexibility and versatility the tool provided.

However, it didn’t take long for us to realize that it had a number of limitations that we couldn’t ignore.

While it is a versatile tool for various presentation needs, it may not be the best fit for roadmap presentations. 

Please look at the PowerPoint template above that I have frequently used to present roadmaps during the early days.

Maintenance challenges

Roadmaps often evolve with changing business priorities and require a more dynamic platform that can reflect real-time changes and updates.

Anyone who has used PowerPoint would know how easy it is to become disoriented by the misalignments of the visual elements and how hard it can get to maintain and update.

Moreover, given that the Powerpoint roadmaps always sit in their own silos, away from the tools used by the product development teams, any updates in the roadmap have to be manually translated into the development plans each time to ensure consistency. 

Presentation challenges

Modern roadmaps are not just about displaying information but also about engaging the audience.

Powerpoint’s lack of interactive elements can make a roadmap feel one-dimensional, missing out on the depth and engagement that interactive platforms offer.

Consider you are presenting your product’s roadmap at your annual town hall. You might want to resort to multiple views of the visual product roadmap, starting with a bucketized view, then a timeline view, and maybe a private/public view for different types of audience. With Powerpoint, it would mean duplicating all the effort to create each view you need.

Unlike specialized roadmapping tools, Powerpoint presentations lacks the capability to prioritize items on the go, making it challenging to convey behind-the-scenes efforts for choosing certain work items to stakeholders.

Collaboration challenges

Most product teams share roadmaps with stakeholders and external users to get their feedback and input. But sharing a Powerpoint roadmap presentation is like sending a message in a bottle. You have no way of knowing who accessed it, how they interacted with it, or what parts caught their attention. 

It also doesn’t allow users to provide qualitative feedback or upvote features directly on the roadmap.

This missed opportunity for engagement can be a significant blind spot and may lead to a disconnect between the product team and its users.

Relying solely on Powerpoint can be akin to using a compass in the age of GPS. 

Recognizing these limitations and exploring specialized roadmapping tools can lead to more effective, engaging, and insightful presentations.

The dynamic, interactive, and collaborative nature of roadmaps demands a platform that can keep pace.

6 templates for product roadmap presentations

Each style and methodology of roadmapping guides the product’s voyage, ensuring that every stakeholder, internal and external, is privy to the course ahead, its landmarks, and its destinations. 

Crafting your roadmap to echo both the intricacies your sales team and the broad strokes of your product’s journey ensures an informed, engaged, and collaborative voyage toward product success.

1. Kanban view

Netflix Roadmap, as taken from Gibson Hiddle’s blog

The Kanban View, with its intuitive design and inherent flexibility, serves as a potent tool for product roadmap presentation, ensuring tasks and initiatives are succinctly organized under buckets of time (monthly, quarterly or yearly), allowing stakeholders to clearly see where the development is headed in the future.

However, with a Kanban view , there is a risk of oversimplifying complex details as intrinsic dependencies and specific timelines may be underrepresented.

Additionally, the straightforward visual layout may also pose challenges when it comes to prioritization within each bucket, especially in larger and more complex product scenarios.

👉 Real-world Examples: Github Roadmap , Trello Roadmap , Netflix Roadmap

2. Now, Next, Later

The Now, Next, Later framework is an adaptation of the Kanban view and brings a high-level perspective to product roadmaps, distinctly categorizing items into immediate (Now), short-term (Next), and future (Later) buckets. 

It acts as a telescope scanning horizons, providing insights and maintaining a focus that spans from present tasks to future endeavors without committing to exact timelines. It does so without binding itself to precise timelines. This flexibility is especially vital for startups, where the ability to adapt to rapid shifts in priority is essential. Now, Next, Later roadmap can server as a effective product roadmap presentation.

👉 Real-world Examples: Lasso Roadmap , ProductBoard Template

3. Calendar or Timeline-Based roadmap

The Timeline view of a product roadmap (or some people’s saying timeline roadmaps) provides a clear, logical outline of the product’s development cycle, aiding transparent communication and efficient resource management.

It effectively conveys the product’s chronological progression, presenting start and end dates and facilitating stakeholder understanding and anticipating project phases. It also captures task dependencies, offering a realistic view of the project’s progression and helping teams avoid bottlenecks and delays.

👉 Real-world Examples: Notion Template

4. Private and Public roadmap views

Private roadmaps function as the organizational blueprint, keeping detailed strategies, technical specs, and precise timelines shielded from external view. It ensures all internal teams are aligned with the developmental, marketing, and deployment strategy, offering a detailed, confidential space for open internal discussions and strategic planning. 

On the flip side, Public roadmaps invite and incorporate user feedback , encouraging a community-driven development approach. They enable users to interact directly with the roadmap, voicing their preferences through upvotes and comments. This transparent strategy provides tangible data on user preferences and desires, aiding teams in prioritizing and refining features based on actual user input and demand.

Together, they facilitate a balanced development approach, harmonizing user involvement with technical teams and internal strategic alignment to navigate through the intricate path of product development.

👉 Real-world Examples: Usersnap Public Roadmap , Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap , Google Classroom Public Roadmap , Loom Public Roadmap , Airtable Public Roadmap

5. Roadmap swimlanes

Multifaceted organizations often employ multiple swimlanes to visualize parallel developments across different products or departments. 

A Portfolio Roadmap brings together product development trajectories of varied, albeit interconnected products such as Google Search, Maps, Gmail and Drive.

This panoramic view enables business stakeholders and product managers to quickly apprehend the status, progress, and future plans for an entire portfolio, facilitating informed strategic decisions and efficient resource allocation across varied products.

Simultaneously, Department specific roadmap roadmaps carve out a dedicated lane for each department, such as Marketing team or Development team, to detail their particular journey, milestones, and activities. While providing a detailed breakdown of activities, they also offer a lens to visualize how each team’s efforts contribute to the overall product and organizational objectives.

👉 Real-world Examples: Aha! Template , Jenkins Roadmap

6. Goals-based roadmaps

Goals or outcome-based roadmaps adeptly center the strategic narrative on overarching objectives, minimizing the explicit focus on granular details.

This abstraction allows stakeholders to grasp the overarching strategy and direction without getting mired in the specifics of features, which may evolve over time. 

By focusing primarily on outcomes, these roadmaps inherently embed resilience against the tides of technological changes and varying feedback, as they’re not tied to specific features or solutions that may need to shift in response to evolving contexts or insights. 

👉 Real-world Examples: GO template , Airfocus Template , Miro template

Best practices and ideas for roadmap presentation

In the grand theater of business, a roadmap presentation is your spotlight moment.

It’s where visions are shared, strategies are unveiled, and futures are shaped.

Here are some tips on how to craft a roadmap presentation that’s both an informative guide and a work of art.

Tip #1 – Start with the ‘Why’

Apple, under the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs, always began with the ‘why’. Before diving into the intricacies of a product, they delved into its purpose.

Similarly, start your roadmap presentation by addressing the ‘why’. Why this product? Why now? This sets the stage for a compelling, memorable, and meaningful narrative itself.

For internal presentations, I have also found that starting a product roadmap presentation off with a refresher of the product’s strategy can help make your next couple of hours much more peaceful.

Tip #2 – Unveil the BTS work

Akin to the BTS episodes of any show on Netflix, sharing all the effort that went into production (the direction, the schedules, the travelling, the equipment, the retakes etc) makes the audience appreciate the end result more.

Therefore, it is always helpful to demonstrate the discovery process you followed for conducting your market research, brainstorming and validating ideas, generating usability reports, conducting focus groups, surveys etc. This adds credibility.

And never be shy to show the hiccups and the wrong turns during your journey. Because you never know, just like a Friend’s blooper reel, the retakes might find more traction with your audience than the actual episodes.

Tip #3 – Stay away from the sharks

Whether you are presenting to internal stakeholders or external users, both would be interesting to know your product’s positioning through your roadmap. 

I recently attended a product fair where a CEO introduced his product roadmap with “think of it as AWS Cloud”, without differentiating it in any way. I spent the next 30 mins of the presentation connecting all their features with AWS Cloud features. 

It is crucial to establish a differentiating factor against your competition and build your presentation around that. Tesla entered the automotive space several decades later than its competitors like Toyota, Ford, Ferrari and others. However, by differentiating itself as a leader in the EV space, it created a new market landscape for itself.

Tip #4 – Focus on the outcomes

The roadmap features you spent weeks fine-tuning all the details are great. However, the audience is mostly only interested in what it really means for them.

Therefore, in your presentation, it is critical to shift the focus from features to outcomes.

If it is the external users of the product, you need to focus on how the roadmap aligns with their needs. How does the roadmap solve their pain points? For example, adding the social login capability will allow you the flexibility of SSO, where you don’t have to remember an extra set of login credentials.

On the other side, if it is the executive stakeholders or the investors, the focus should be to present how each roadmap item would help achieve the key business metrics and goals. Using the same example, adding the social login will help reduce the drop-offs during registration and increase our user acquisition rate by 15%.

This perspective resonates more with stakeholders than merely going over the buy in the features list.

Tip #5 – The ending

Once again, I am a big Steve Jobs fan. The master of marketing that he was, leaving an impression on the audience was his forte.

He would always save the big picture and the biggest announcement for the end. His famous “One more thing…” technique has since been copied by many leaders across the industry to conclude their presentation on a high-note.

Leveraging feedback for roadmap presentation and varied board views of Usersnap

Feedback is the lifeblood of any product. Integrating feedback into your roadmap presentations ensures they remain relevant and aligned with user needs. 

The importance of internal and external board views cannot be overstated.

While a public board view with upvoting engages customers and end-users, a limited board view ensures stakeholders are aligned, setting the stage for successful project execution. With the right tools, practices, and request feedback mechanisms, they can be the difference between product success and obscurity.

Usersnap’s varied board views offer a versatile way to present and gather feedback. Whether it’s the public portal for guest users or the limited board view for stakeholders, you can use the power of advanced filters to present different views of your roadmap to different users.

The variety of roadmap presentation styles is tailored to address specific product development needs and audience types. However, leveraging tools like Usersnap, which offer dynamic multiple views and capture customer feedback, can be instrumental in effectively presenting and adapting these roadmaps to various scenarios and stakeholder preferences.

Capture user feedback easily. Get more insights and make confident product decisions.

And if you’re ready to try out a customer feedback software, Usersnap offers a free trial. Sign up today or book a demo with our feedback specialists.

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Guide to building a product roadmap (with template and examples)

Editor’s note : This article was last updated on 30 May 2023 with more information about the components of a product roadmap, product roadmapping tools, and steps to fill out the product roadmap templates described herein. We’ve also added some FAQ about product roadmaps.

The world of product management thrives on planning and visualization, and one tool stands out as an embodiment of both: the product roadmap.

A product roadmap is a strategic document that outlines the vision, direction, and progress of a product over time. It highlights what a product team plans to achieve and how they intend to do it.

The ability to craft a good product roadmap is an essential PM skill. In this guide, we’ll define exactly what a product roadmap is and look at some examples. We’ll also walk through how to build a product roadmap and offer some general guidelines to help you choose the right format.

If you’d like to follow along as you go, these product roadmap templates can help you get started.

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is a shared, living document that outlines the vision and direction of your product throughout its lifecycle.

The roadmap, at its most basic level, articulates what you are building and why. It also lays out the team’s strategy for delivering value and serves as a plan for executing the overall product strategy.

What is the purpose of a product roadmap?

The primary purpose of a product roadmap is to communicate the strategic direction of the product. It aligns all stakeholders — product managers, developers, marketers, executives, and even customers — around the product vision and goals.

Beyond communication, a product roadmap serves as a guiding tool for decision-making, helping teams prioritize initiatives and features based on their alignment with the product vision and goals.

Key components of a product roadmap

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a product roadmap, a well-constructed roadmap typically includes the following components that, together, help convey the product’s trajectory:

• Vision — A description of the overarching goal or destination for the product. It sets the direction for all product activities
• Goals — The specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives that contribute to the realization of the product vision
• Initiatives — High-level efforts or projects that the product team undertakes to achieve the product goals
• Features — Tangible deliverables or functionality that the product team develops and releases over time
• Timeframes — Rough estimates of when the product team aims to deliver initiatives and features

How to create a product roadmap

Building a product roadmap involves the careful balancing of business objectives, customer needs, and technical feasibility. It’s about understanding what your market wants, what your team can deliver, and how these align with your company’s goals.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you’re a product manager for a productivity app:

• Your product vision is to be the go-to app for personal productivity
• One of your goals is to improve user engagement by 20 percent in the next six months
• To achieve this, you might initiate a project to revamp the user interface
• This initiative could involve features like a new dashboard, task prioritization functionality, and a daily summary email
• You might aim to deliver these features in the next two to three months

Embarking on the journey of creating a product roadmap may seem daunting at first because it depends heavily on your organization’s unique goals and circumstances. However, broadly speaking, the following steps will help ensure you cover all your bases when building your product roadmap:

• Define the product vision
• Set the product goals
• Identify initiatives
• Detail the features
• Estimate timeframes

1. Define the product vision

The product vision is the long-term destination for your product. It should be an inspiring and guiding statement that provides direction for your product over the next few years.

The vision should be broad enough to allow for flexibility, yet specific enough to provide clear direction.

2. Set the product goals

Product goals are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) objectives that, when achieved, will bring the product closer to its vision.

Your goals should be aligned with the overall business objectives and provide a clear path to the realization of the product vision.

3. Identify initiatives

Initiatives are the high-level efforts needed to achieve the product goals. They should be strategic and directly contribute to the achievement of the product goals.

Initiatives can span multiple releases and typically involve multiple features or tasks.

4. Detail the features

Features are the specific functionalities or tasks that need to be completed as part of an initiative. They provide the granular details of what will be developed and delivered.

Detailing the features involves breaking down the initiatives into actionable tasks that can be assigned to the development team.

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5. Estimate timeframes

Timeframes provide a rough estimate of when the initiatives and features will be delivered . These estimates are not set in stone but provide a guideline for when to expect certain features.

Estimating timeframes involves considering factors such as resource availability, technical complexity, and business priorities.

Product roadmap formats (with examples)

There are debates within the product community as to which roadmap format is the best. The truth is, none of them is perfect. The best format will depend on your organizational culture, company stage, team setup, and the nature of your product.

Regardless of which format you choose, every product roadmap should consist of three foundational elements:

Each element can come in several variations. Let’s review them one by one:

1. The ‘when’

This is the horizontal axis on a roadmap that indicates the timeline of your initiatives. It can be displayed in the following formats:

Calendar (monthly/quarterly)

Now-next-later.

Mapping your initiatives on a calendar is the most common way of visualizing a roadmap. The calendar should be either quarterly or monthly. Any longer unit will be too broad, and any shorter unit will be too unrealistically precise.

The benefit of using a calendar-based roadmap is that anyone can understand it without further explanation. The downside is that whenever you give people a timeline, it will be treated as a promise, no matter how much you insist it is not.

Below is an example of a calendar-based product roadmap:

Click here for a calendar-based roadmap template .

Note : Before attempting to fill out the template, be sure to select File > Make a copy from the menu above the spreadsheet.

The Now-Next-Later roadmap was invented by Janna Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product . The idea is to remove the false certainty of absolute dates by replacing them with relative timeframes:

• What are we working on now?
• What will we start next?
• What are we saving for the future?

A Now-Next-Later roadmap can help your organization escape the certainty trap. Instead of wasting time discussing when things will be done, it forces a discussion on what is more important.

However, while the idea of omitting dates makes sense in theory, it’s not always practical.

If internal stakeholders are always asking, “How long are we talking here? Weeks? Quarters?”, you might want to rethink whether the Now-Next-Later roadmap is bringing more focus or confusion.

2. The ‘what’

These are the core items on your roadmap that represent what you will be working on. They might include:

Non-feature initiatives

Also in this section:

• Product roadmap example

Can you mix and match roadmap items?

A product team’s main responsibility is building features users want , so it makes sense that features make up the bulk of product roadmaps out there.

However, if you think features are the only thing that should go on a roadmap, then you would be wrong.

There are many activities that a product team has to perform to facilitate the creation of new features, such as user research, tech debt cleanup , internal tool implementation, and product launch .

Including these non-feature initiatives on a roadmap can increase transparency and help educate the rest of the company about why a seemingly small feature can take so much time.

Again, this doesn’t mean you should put every task on the roadmap. Make sure to only include initiatives that offer strategic alignment.

A feature is a solution to a user problem, but you often don’t know what the best solution is ahead of time.

If you are not sure what features to commit to, it is best to simply state the problems you want to solve on a roadmap. This leaves you with more room to explore different solutions and gets everyone to focus on the core problems .

In addition to stating the problems you want to solve, you can also describe the outcomes you want to achieve on a roadmap.

These outcomes can be either user outcomes (e.g., “Users can find what they want easily”) or company outcomes (e.g., “Increase conversion rate by 50 percent”).

They don’t have to be written as quantitative metrics , but it always helps to have some objective criteria by which to define success.

Below are examples of items that might be included in a product roadmap:

3. Categories

You can use categories to group initiatives on a roadmap. They can be displayed as either swimlanes or tags.

Product teams commonly categorize initiatives on the roadmap by things like:

• Product area
• Nature of product work (feature, growth, product-market-fit expansion , scaling)
• Strategic pillar

You should not group initiatives by more than two dimensions on a given roadmap. After all, categories are there to help internal stakeholders digest your roadmap. Introducing too many concepts will do the opposite.

If you really have to, you can create different versions of the roadmap for different audiences.

How to choose the best product roadmap format

Remember, a product roadmap needs to be tailored to your specific context. Blindly following what other companies (especially FAANG) do is like wearing an outfit tailored-made for someone else — it will look sloppy.

There is no set formula that will tell you how to create a perfect roadmap, but I will share some general guidelines and best practices for choosing the best roadmap format for your product and business:

• If your organization is culturally more traditional, has complex dependencies across different teams, or offers a time-sensitive product, sticking to a calendar-based roadmap will be your best bet
• If your organization is still small or has a product-led culture , a Now-Next-Later roadmap could be a good option.
• If your product is in an established category where features don’t differ much between competitors, having only features on your roadmap is likely enough
• If the nature of your work requires more solution exploration (e.g., growth or innovation teams), having problems or outcomes on your roadmap will give you more flexibility
• If you work on a product so large that shipping a meaningful feature could take months or even quarters, you might want to break your work down into smaller chunks and include non-feature initiatives (e.g., user research) on your roadmap
• If your audience cares more about how you are balancing your bets, you can group your initiatives by product area, size, or type of product work
• If your audience cares about how your plan contributes to higher-level goals, group your initiatives by objective or strategic pillar
• If you are a product leader managing multiple sub-teams, your audience will likely want to see initiatives grouped by team

Product roadmap templates

We’ve created customizable templates for each product roadmap format described above (you can access each template in Google Sheets below):

• Monthly product roadmap template  ( access in Google Sheets )
• Quarterly product roadmap template ( access in Google Sheets )
• Now-Next-Later product roadmap template  ( access in Google Sheets )

Note : Before attempting to fill out a template, be sure to select File > Make a copy from the menu above the spreadsheet.

These templates are also available in Miro and Figma  formats.

Monthly product roadmap template

Time-based product roadmaps are a great way to visualize your product’s journey and development over time:

To fill out the monthly product roadmap template, take the following steps:

• Identify your categories — Start by dividing your roadmap into various categories or strategic themes
• Tag your initiatives — For each category, identify the initiatives that you plan to undertake. These can represent high-level projects or features that are aligned with the specific theme of the category. Tag each initiative for easier tracking
• Understand the nature of the roadmap — Remember that this roadmap is a living document and will change according to the latest information. It’s not a release plan, and it only contains strategic items. The timeframes are only rough estimations​
• Align with product strategy — The roadmap is only part of the product strategy. Make sure to align it with your broader product vision and strategy. Provide links or references to more information about your product vision and strategy, if available​

Remember, the key is to keep it updated as your product and strategy evolve over time.

Quarterly product roadmap template

To fill out the quarterly product roadmap template, follow the same steps as above, but split your timeframes into quarters rather than months:

Now-Next-Later product roadmap template

The same steps apply to the Now-Next-Later roadmap template, except you’re not defining concrete timelines for any of your initiatives. Instead, this roadmap template calls for organizing initiatives into one of three buckets — things to do now, things to do next, and things to do later:

Project plan vs. product roadmap: What’s the difference?

While both a project plan and a product roadmap provide a framework for organizing and executing work, they serve different purposes and operate at different levels of granularity.

A project plan is more detailed and short-term focused, outlining specific tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines. A product roadmap, on the other hand, is more strategic and long-term oriented, detailing the high-level initiatives and features that contribute to the product vision.

The table below outlines the key differences between a project plan vs. a product roadmap:

(Image: A side-by-side comparison of a project plan and a product roadmap with key differences highlighted)

Agile product roadmaps

In the context of agile product management, a product roadmap is a strategic tool, but with an added layer of flexibility.

An agile product roadmap is designed to adapt to changes, learning, and feedback over time. It prioritizes outcomes over outputs, focusing more on achieving goals and solving customer problems than on delivering a fixed set of features.

For example, instead of committing to deliver Feature X in Q2, an agile roadmap might commit to solve Customer Problem Y in Q2, leaving open the possibility of what that solution might look like.

Whereas a typical product roadmap might show expected release dates for these enhancements, in agile, the notion of sticking to deadlines becomes counterintuitive:

Agile development requires an ability to respond to change and address evolving needs at any particular moment. Agile teams also spend less time estimating and forecasting how long something will take and put that time back into experimenting and actually building the product.

As a result, we expect things to change in agile and dates quickly become wishful thinking or empty promises.

Another core principle of agile is fixed capacity. We achieve this by creating stable, long-lived, cross-functional teams. In doing so, we fix our capacity, meaning that scope and/or time are the dimensions that shift. Therefore, it is not possible to pin features to dates in agile.

When we do want to fix dates in agile, scope remains flexible. Both scope and time cannot be fixed in agile:

An agile roadmap, therefore, removes the notion of product deadlines . It still maintains the concept of time (i.e., feature A will come before feature B), but nothing is tied to a specific date.

Software and tools for product roadmapping

Product roadmapping software makes it simpler to keep track of large to-do lists, backlogs, and ideas. A roadmapping tool helps to keep the various teams and stakeholders involved in building a product on track to meet development goals . It can also facilitate online collaboration and communication between employees.

Choosing the right product roadmap software will completely depend on your team, its work style, and your budget and business goals. You’ll want to consider tools that enable you to more effectively:

• Communicate priorities — A roadmapping tool should help you visibly demonstrate why it’s important for a particular task to be completed in the grand scheme of a project
• Engage stakeholders — Stakeholders require updates on progress and what is happening, and roadmapping software should help you produce an easy visual aid to ensure efficient communication and build consensus for your product vision
• Provide visibility into work — Transparency is crucial to building trust with stakeholders. You should look for roadmapping tools that help provide visibility into what your team is working on and why
• Drive efficiency — Your roadmapping software should contain all critical information in one place, making it easier for cross-functional teams to understand priorities and what they should be working on
• Foster collaboration — The best product roadmapping software provides real-time communication tools, enabling teams to quickly huddle (virtually) to answer questions and discuss new ideas

Popular tools and software for creating product roadmaps include:

• Trello — Trello is a visual and easy-to-use project management tool. It’s a kanban-style list-making application that provides a simple way to organize your team’s tasks
• airfocus — airfocus is specifically designed for product roadmapping. It has an easy-to-use roadmap builder and can be customized to meet the needs of the product team
• ProductPlan — ProductPlan prides itself on its ability to help product managers easily build and share roadmaps. It has many templates that can be customized using a drag-and-drop builder
• Productboard — Productboard helps teams organize feedback, prioritize tasks , and create a visual roadmap. By putting a focus on customer feedback, product teams are more likely to focus on meaningful backlog items, which will improve sprint planning , the customer experience, and, subsequently, revenue
• Wrike — Wrike is a product management tool with a focus on improving internal collaboration and communication and boosting employee productivity by ensuring everyone is aligned with the product roadmap
• Aha! — Aha! is one of the most popular product management tools, boasting more than 500,000 users. This product management tool can easily create a timeline with details tailored to specific stakeholders
• Roadmunk — Roadmunk has several product roadmapping features, such as milestones, various roadmap styles, and tracking ownership of tasks. It’s easy to import your data and use the drag-and-drop feature to quickly create a product roadmap
• Monday.com — Monday.com ‘s product roadmap tool is more complex than most other options, so it’s best for larger teams that can really make the most out of all of its features and tools. One of it’s main highlights is its “high-level visual summary that explains the vision and direction of your product over time”
• Asana — Asana is a popular, comprehensive tool for work and project management. It’s quite user-friendly and doesn’t require a lot of time to build it out
• ClickUp — ClickUp is a paid tool, but its free plan is very generous. In terms of product roadmaps, it doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as some of its competitors, but roadmapping is listed as an “advanced” feature
• Craft.io — Craft.io is designed specifically for building product roadmaps. It’s highly customizable and has been pushing continuous updates to improve its tools and features

If you’re on a fixed budget, you could do worse than the following free tools for product roadmapping:

• Bitrix24 —  Bitrix24 offers simple product management tools and a variety of views, including a GANTT chart, kanban board, calendar, or planner. It also provides tools to help you efficiently manage scrum teams and projects
• TeamGantt — TeamGantt has a simple drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to customize prebuilt templates. Since it’s all online, TeamGantt allows for easy collaboration between team members
• OpenProject — If you’re looking for an on-premise solution, OpenProject may be a viable product management tool. It’s also available on the cloud
• FreedCamp — Freedcamp is not specifically built for product roadmapping but can certainly be modified and adapted for that purpose. It has unlimited projects, tasks, and users under its free plan and comes with customizable tasks, subtasks, and milestones

Product roadmap strategy, planning, and communication

Product roadmap strategy involves making decisions about what to include on your roadmap and why. It’s about aligning your roadmap with your product strategy and business objectives.

During the planning phase, you might consider factors like market trends, competitive landscape, customer feedback, resource availability, and more. Your roadmap should serve as a visual representation of your strategic decisions so that you can clearly and effectively communicate your vision, goals, and expectations to key stakeholders.

Below are some considerations and best practices for communicating your strategy and short- and long-term plans to key stakeholders with your product roadmap:

• Get your stakeholders excited
• Know your audience
• Collect feedback (and mute the noise)

1. Get your stakeholders excited

It’s the product manager’s responsibility to build and manage a live roadmap that is fluid and resilient. They must convince stakeholders why the investment makes sense, obtain buy-in and the support system from inside and outside the organization, set expectations, and deliver a sense of excitement about what’s to come.

You can generate the support they you to successfully push for investment in a new product or feature by:

• Securing executive buy-in to build and sustain the product
• Specifying short- and long-term needs from all teams
• Demonstrating cohesion with ecosystem partners
• Showing customers why the product is aligned to their needs
• Applying principles that offer flexibility to adapt while minimizing noise

The first step in defining a product is to convince leadership that the offering aligns with the corporate strategy. While a product vision presents this alignment and a cash flow analysis demonstrates the value, it becomes real when leadership views the product roadmap.

The information included in the roadmap should give the executive team confidence that the offering is viable and worthy of organizational and financial support. It should include a clearly defined goal and a list of key steps or milestones toward achieving that objective.

A product roadmap should also articulate the overall product strategy and provide context to explain how it will help the team deliver on the goals spelled out in the product vision.

2. Know your audience

The key to building a good product roadmap is to understand your audience. A roadmap designed to gain buy-in from company leadership looks very different from one meant to appeal to customers. This is where a theme-based product roadmap can really come in handy, as described in this helpful guide by Andrea Saez.

In the following sections, we’ll explain how to create a product roadmap that will gain buy-in from executive leadership, the organization as a whole, partners, and customers.

Executive leadership

A roadmap for leadership needs to capture when the MVP will be available, the target customers, expected revenue, and demographics of product usage. Stakeholders will want to know when attaining total market potential is feasible (general release) and considerations for upsell opportunities. With each feature, they will want to understand the purpose and sequencing.

The main purpose of a product roadmap is to educate and convince leadership that the product or feature is worth their investment. Another key reason is to seek their direction. You have some of the best minds on the call, so you might as well leverage it!

Leadership also needs to know the KPIs you monitor and will expect updates on how you track periodically. A product roadmap sets the stage for critical thinking. It sets expectations on when volumes will ramp so that leadership has a direction on the short and long-term outlook.

Be creative about what you present as a roadmap. Typically, presentations demonstrate a timeline at the top, the critical features, and a two-line summary. That isn’t sufficient in many cases. The narrative that captures the essential customers at each phase is vital.

Peer organizations

Creating product roadmaps for peer organizations requires a much broader perspective beyond the engineering team.

For example, consider the operations team when processing claims; manual processing might be necessary for some scenarios when starting a new initiative. Your ability to identify these scenarios, the number of transactions expected every month, and features that make such processing unnecessary can make or break a project. Consider every team the product touches internally, including legal, procurement, analytics, and implementation (we will gate to sales in a bit).

Turning our attention back to the product development team, understanding what “done” looks like is very important. While a customer or leadership-facing roadmap does not need a detailed view, this is crucial for a development team. The roadmap must break down further to articulate parts of a more extensive feature that needs prioritization versus later enhancements.

Implementation and customer success teams need clarity on when features are available in sandbox and production environments to prepare their teams with the requisite training. The analytics team needs communication when new datasets are obtainable to drive KPI measurements.

Development teams need a roadmap to devise the product architecture. Most successful products work because of a tacit alignment between product management and engineering .

I find it valuable to work with the team to get creative about breaking down a more significant feature. My rule of thumb is that if it takes more than two weeks to develop, a further breakdown might be necessary. This feature breakdown translates into a more detailed roadmap that drives cross-functional alignment.

Note that the feature split should be outcome-driven — it shouldn’t be a breakdown to measure progress alone. You may ask, why wouldn’t a leadership team care about this? To put it simply, they would, and communication is critical if the feature split is significant enough. Frequently, these splits are a matter of UX enhancements, not revenue-blocking ones.

System integrators (SIs) are frequently the medium between the product and the user. Their adoption could make or break your offering.

Consider an ERP system. Product companies such as SAP rely on system integrators such as Accenture to deploy and manage the solution for the client.

Imagine that your product’s enhancement (however well-intended) breaks existing customization. Suppose the SI didn’t see this coming, or this occurs frequently. In that case, the SI might stop upgrading the product because the client now considers the downtime due to an upgrade to be unacceptable. Don’t be that product!

Webinars are a great way to relay the product roadmap for the next quarter. While that constitutes a good start, it is critical to document, especially UI or API changes, and present a forewarning of possible compatibility issues. The bottleneck isn’t the work to prepare for an upgrade but showing poorly in front of the client.

Customers and users

Customers expect your product to provide immediate relief to a current pain point while also demanding that it goes above and beyond.

For an example, take this tale of two vendors. In one of my previous roles, our operations depended heavily on solutions from third-party vendors. Without getting into specific details, both vendors offered overlapping products.

The pain point was that data resided in their systems. Vendor 1 did not provide a standard interface to retrieve data for deeper analytics. Vendor 2 did, but there was considerable pressure to set up our AI and automation environments.

During our next quarterly, we requested both vendors to present their roadmaps. When vendor 2 showed us its roadmap, it was apparent that their reps had listened to our needs. More crucially, the roadmap included well-defined timelines. Vendor 1 had plans to deliver significant updates, including ones that would have made our issues disappear. Unfortunately, it never presented anything aside from a motivational speech. This eliminated vendor 1 and we consolidated our solutions through Vendor 2.

The account manager for Vendor-1 admitted offline that he never got the product team’s backing to present anything to the customer. Put yourself in their shoes: Why would a sales manager sell your product to the customer? If you cannot provide a roadmap, pricing, and timing for a product, you might as well not build it.

Another consideration is building a suite of product capabilities that enables incremental opportunities. Think of your product as a set of Lego blocks where the outcomes are more remarkable than the sum of the parts. You are overdelivering to most of your customers when you build something as an all-inclusive product.

A customer-facing roadmap is typically a quarterly or monthly timeline highlighting significant enhancements to the product. It needs to relay in about 15–20 words why the feature drives value for them.

The sales team prefers a similar snapshot. However, I recommend customizing it depending on the sales team’s audience.

3. Collect feedback (and mute the noise)

Knowing what feedback is crucial versus what is noise is essential to building sustainable products.

When introducing a new product, you can always expect feedback, which is god. However, most of it is tactical, and suggestions tend to resolve a symptom rather than a root cause.

As an example, once I had a customer demand a feature for a unique scenario. The sales team was adamant that the product was a no-go until we added the feature. We got on a call with the customer, talked through it, and determined it was an arcane rule that wasn’t even valid.

In other cases, I’ve seen product teams turn an enhancement request into an opportunity for a new revenue stream. The point is to separate the signal from the noise. Don’t be afraid to reprioritize your product roadmap when there is a good rationale.

Get on a call with the customer and have an open-ended discussion; you might discover unpolished diamonds that could lead to new avenues for success. Once you deliver an MVP, get close with the users and measure the product’s results against expectations. Understand the critical pain points. Then, brutally prioritize them against ROI, ease of development, the product’s readiness, and the market.

A well-designed product roadmap can be a powerful tool to help product managers secure buy-in from stakeholders and communicate their vision across the organization. It provides clarity, fosters alignment, facilitates communication, guides decision-making, and ultimately, helps drive product success.

Understanding how to create a product roadmap — and, more importantly, the power it can wield when communicated effectively — is a key step in the product manager career development journey and a crucial factor in getting any product development lifecycle off on the right track.

Product roadmap FAQ

How long should a product roadmap be, does a product roadmap include deadlines, how does a product roadmap relate to a product backlog.

In most cases, your roadmap should focus on the upcoming six to 18 months.

It is very rare for a product team to produce a meaningful plan any further into the future. If you ask 10 product managers how long they tend to stick to their roadmaps, nine of them will tell you less than three months.

Generally speaking, you should avoid committing to deadlines because software product development is full of uncertainties. There is no point making promises when you can’t fulfill them.

Unfortunately, the real world has constraints we can’t bypass, which sometimes makes deadlines a necessary evil. Don’t be afraid to impose deadlines if you have to, as long as you understand that they are the exception, not the rule.

It is perfectly fine to combine multiple approaches on the same roadmap.

For example, you can:

• Share concrete features you will soon build and high-level problems you want to solve in the future
• Pair initiatives with the outcomes you hope they’ll achieve

As a product manager, you own the backlog . Make sure to capture backlog items, drive transparency within the organization, and provide a rationale.

The product roadmap is a fluid document; it may evolve based on a wide range of parameters, such as a change in organization’s strategy, a shift in the market or user behavior, or the arrival of a new competitor.

The backlog needs to be regularly updated and realigned to keep up with changes in the product roadmap. It’s common for user stories and tasks to become outdated during this process, so you should remove these irrelevant items from the backlog as soon as you receive clear-cut direction from the stakeholders.

Remember that product management is 70 percent science and 30 percent craft, so get creative!

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• Product Management
• Product Roadmaps

Product Roadmap Guide: What is it & How to Create One

A product roadmap is a shared source of truth that outlines the vision, direction, and progress of a product over time. 

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Summary: A product roadmap is a plan of action for how a product or solution will evolve over time. Product owners use roadmaps to outline future product functionality and when new features will be released. When used in agile development, a product planning roadmap provides crucial context for the team's everyday work and should be responsive to shifts in the competitive landscape.

A product roadmap is essential to communicating how short-term efforts match long-term business goals. Understanding the role of a roadmap—and how to create a great one—is key for keeping everyone on your team headed in the same direction.

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is a shared source of truth that outlines the vision, direction, priorities, and progress of a product over time. It’s a plan of action that aligns the organization around short and long-term goals for the product or project, and how they will be achieved.

While it's common for the roadmap to show what you’re building, it’s just as important to show why. Items on the roadmap should be clearly linked to your product strategy and goals, and your roadmap should be responsive to changes in customer feedback and the competitive landscape.

Product owners use roadmaps to collaborate with their teams and build consensus on how a product will grow and shift over time. Agile teams refer back to the product roadmap to keep everyone on the same page about which product ideas have been prioritized and when, and to gain context for their everyday work and future direction.

Which teams use product roadmaps?

Roadmaps come in several different forms and serve a variety of audiences. Let's look at some product roadmap examples:

Internal roadmap for the development team:  These roadmaps can be created in several ways, depending on how your team likes to work. Some common versions include the detail about the prioritized customer value to be delivered, target release dates and milestones. As a general rule, development teams should use a product roadmap to understand the product strategy, how it connects to goals, and why initiatives have been prioritized. For the actual development work, dev teams should create a separate delivery plan that maps back to the product roadmap. Since many development teams use agile methodologies, these plans are often organized by sprints and show specific pieces of work and problem areas plotted on a timeline. 

Internal roadmap for executives:  These roadmaps emphasize how teams' work supports high-level company goals and metrics. They are often organized by month or by quarter to show progress over time towards these goals, and generally include less detail about detailed development stories and tasks.

Internal roadmap for sales:  These roadmaps focus on new features and customer benefits, and may even include key customers who are interested in these features in order to support sales conversations. An important note: avoid including hard dates in sales roadmaps to avoid tying internal teams to potentially unrealistic dates.

External roadmap:  These roadmaps should excite customers about what’s coming next. Make sure they are visually appealing and easy to read. They should provide a high-level, generalized view of new features and prioritized problem areas to get customers interested in the future direction of the product.

Why are product roadmaps important?

The biggest benefit of the product roadmap is the strategic vision it illustrates to all stakeholders. The roadmap ladders up to broader product and company goals with development efforts, which connects work across teams and aligns those teams around common goals to create great products.

• For organizational leadership, the roadmap provides updates on the status of planned features and improvements in a format that connects back to company goals and is easily understood.
• For product owners and managers, roadmaps unify teams working on high impact product enhancements and allow them to communicate priorities and why they were prioritized effectively with adjacent teams.
• For the developers themselves, roadmaps provide a better understanding of the “big picture,” which allows team members to focus on the most important tasks, avoid scope creep, and make fast, autonomous decisions.

How to create a product roadmap

To build a roadmap, product owners should evaluate ideas based on key criteria, such as market trajectories, customer insights and feedback, company goals, and effort constraints. Once these factors are understood, product teams can work together to start prioritizing initiatives on the roadmap.

The content of a roadmap will depend on its audience - a roadmap for the development team may cover only one product, while a roadmap for executives can cover multiple products. Depending on the size and structure of an organization, a single roadmap may span multiple teams working on the same product. An external roadmap will often cover multiple products aligned with one point of emphasis or customer need.

The most important takeaway: create a roadmap that your audience can easily understand. Providing too much or too little detail on the roadmap can make it easy to gloss over, or worse, to too intimidating to read. A roadmap with just the right amount of detail and some visual appeal can earn the buy-in you need from key stakeholders.

Presenting the product roadmap

The product roadmap needs buy-in from two key groups: leadership and the agile development team. Presenting the roadmap is a great opportunity to demonstrate to key stakeholders that you understand the company’s strategic objectives, the needs of your customer, and have a plan to meet them both.

As you move through the project, make sure to link your delivery team’s work back to the product roadmap for context and visibility into progress for your team and stakeholders. A tried-and-true method: map out the ideas you're committing to on your product roadmap, then break down those ideas into epics, requirements, and user stories on your delivery roadmap. Often times, each initiative will have a corresponding epic that needs to be broken down into smaller tasks to complete. Establishing this hierarchy makes it easier for product and development teams to make decisions together, and understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.

Using and updating the roadmap

Roadmapping doesn’t end once you’ve reached your final state. As the competitive landscape shifts, customers' preferences adjust, or planned features are modified, it’s important to take any learnings or insights, feed them back into your team’s discovery process and ensure the product roadmap continues to reflect the status of current work as well as long-term goals.

The roadmap should be updated as often as necessary - this could be every week or fortnightly - so that it can remain an accurate source of truth. As we’ve all experienced at one time or another, a roadmap is counter-productive if it isn’t up to date. You’ll know if your roadmap needs to be updated more frequently because your stakeholders will start calling you for updates instead of consulting your roadmap. These one-off requests reflect a distrust in your roadmap, and a huge potential time suck.

However, on the flip side, you don’t want to spend more time updating the roadmap than is necessary to achieve alignment between stakeholders and within your team. Remember, the roadmap is a product planning tool to think through how to build great products that will make an impact on your customers and on your business. If you’re spending time updating your roadmap that you could (and should) be spending on execution, re-think the cadence and how you take in inputs, feedback, and data from across the business to prioritize your initiatives.

Best practices for the best roadmaps

Building and maintaining product roadmaps is as much an ongoing process as it is a cultural practice to embark upon with your product team. There are a few simple ways to set yourself up for success:

• Only include as much detail as necessary for your audience
• Keep the roadmap evenly focused on short-term tactics and how these relate to long-term goals
• Review roadmaps on a regular basis and make adjustments when plans change
• Make sure everyone has access to the roadmap (and checks it on a regular basis)
• Stay connected with stakeholders at all levels to ensure alignment

Ready to make your very own roadmap? Get started for free with Jira Product Discovery .

Related resources

• Product Launch Resources
• Resource Management Resources
• Software Project Management

Bree's a Product Manager on the Jira team and she gets a huge kick out of building products that bring a bit of delight to daily working life. Outside of the office, you'll find her trawling Sydney's bookshops, running along the harbour and generally over-caffeinated.

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9 tips to create compelling product roadmap presentations

A crystal-clear roadmap is the best strategic communication tool for a product manager. When properly presented and shared across an organization, a product roadmap sheds light on what’s happening today, tomorrow, and in the future—and motivates teams to achieve more.

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A great product roadmap presentation helps you build trust with your team and stakeholders —letting them all see how you’re creating real value for the company. How you present a roadmap to your internal team can also inform how you should present it to your customers and get them on board with what’s to come.

This chapter dives into the best tips for roadmap presentations to keep every stakeholder invested and engaged before, during, and after you’re done presenting.

Boost your product roadmap presentation with product experience insights

Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys, and Feedback tools help you build your product roadmap presentation on a solid, user-centric foundation.

Why your product roadmap presentation matters

When it comes to keeping product strategy, business objectives, and execution aligned, the product roadmap is your key point of reference. Your work as a product manager (PM) involves working with internal teams and stakeholders to build a crystal-clear roadmap that clearly communicates deliverables, and the expectations for where the product is going and why .

Next, you need to get everyone else involved with the product on board and on the same page. The first step to evangelizing your product roadmaps across your organization is to get them out there for all to see with a product roadmap presentation.

Presenting your roadmap to key stakeholders is a great opportunity to tell a compelling story about where your product is going. 

A well-thought-out roadmap presentation will help you:

Align and validate your team’s roadmap

Reduce the risk of eleventh-hour surprises stopping you in your tracks

Smoothly deliver against your product strategy

Avoid stakeholder confusion or dissatisfaction on where the product is going

Make sure your goals stay customer-centric and align with both your users’ needs and wants, as well as your business objectives

How the product roadmap presentation helps you achieve your goals

Your goal with the product roadmap presentation is to gain alignment around the set of priorities you’ve arrived at. That includes:

5 components of a great product roadmap presentation

Every product roadmap presentation is different. In fact, to address every stakeholder’s needs, you may need to first create and present a general strategic product roadmap template, and then move on to discuss lower-level field roadmaps. 

However, there are some components that most product roadmap presentations have in common:

An introduction/agenda: this tells your audience what to expect, what the presentation is about, and how long it’ll last

Your purpose and product vision : the reasoning behind the new product (or new iterations) to give your audience some context and help them see the rationale behind your product direction

The product’s target audience: who are you trying to target with your new product/features? It could be your existing audience, or you might want to reach a new audience in a different market.

Your product roadmap: a top-level view of what you’ve outlined in your product roadmap. For example, you can showcase the anticipated timeline, but don't go into detail about each deliverable along the way.

Feedback and questions: at the end of the presentation, leave space for your audience to ask questions and provide feedback

💡 Pro tip : keep your presentation user-focused with a data-informed strategy and roadmap.

Use Hotjar to gather a rich mix of quantitative and qualitative product experience data for a user-centric approach. 

By providing a steady inflow of user data, Hotjar’s tools can help you ensure your product strategy and roadmap are always relevant.

A Hotjar heatmap in action

9 tips to ace your product roadmap presentation

Before you go ahead with your product roadmap presentation, think about how you communicate your roadmap at these stages:

Before the presentation

When you’re working on your product roadmap presentation, your main goal is to set it up for the best results . To do that, get to know your stakeholders’ needs and motivations, and try to anticipate questions and feedback that might come up in the presentation.

1. Know your audience

As you build your product roadmap presentation, focus on sharing the most relevant information with your audience. 

For example, the C-Suite and the Sales team care about different aspects of the product strategy, while customers and engineers are likely invested in different aspects of the product's direction. Every one of these groups has a varying degree of understanding around the inner workings of the product —and different ways of relating to you as the PM.

To tailor your presentation to the interests of the audience involved, you need to get to know them: their motivations, their deadlines, their pressures, what’s keeping them up at night. This will help you empathize with your stakeholders and create trust.

💡 Pro tip: if you don’t know your stakeholders, set up interviews so you can begin to understand them and their interests. Stakeholder interviews can be informal, simple conversations to get to know their motivations and challenges. They’ll also provide you with some less-obvious opportunities to influence your project’s chances of success.

Once you know your audience, you can tailor your product roadmap presentation to address what they care about and communicate your roadmap for successful buy-in . For example:

Engineering: they want to understand the value of their effort to the business, to customers, and towards improving the product. Keep it short-term and focus on developer-oriented themes—like scalability, usability, quality, performance, infrastructure, and product features.

Executives : these stakeholders care about the company's vision and goals, and how the plan depicted by the roadmap will help the company achieve them. Make sure your roadmap ties each initiative to customer value and business goals. Explain what features you’re adding, and more importantly, how the initiatives will help the product capture the market.

Customer-facing teams : these include Sales and Customer Success and Support teams that mainly care about what they can promise customers, when it will be ready, how it affects pricing, building trust and loyalty, and ways to reduce churn. Give them a transparent timeline they can communicate to customers and users, and show how the roadmap will introduce ways to reduce churn and improve conversion.

2. Channel your inner PANDA 

Building an effective and engaging presentation is all about product roadmap prioritization in the wild. As a PM, that can mean dealing with some pretty dangerous animals. 

From HiPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) to ZEBRAs (Zero Evidence But Really Arrogant) to RHINOs (Really Here In Name Only), these types of stakeholders can hold up the product development process or force you to focus resources on the wrong priorities.

PANDAs (Prioritizes Amazingly and Needs Data Always) make the best product managers because they prioritize strategically and take a data-informed approach. 

When it comes to developing a stellar product roadmap presentation, channeling your inner PANDA helps you:

Communicate convincing product narratives

Share user and business data that keeps team members aligned

Manage your backlog effectively

Highlight clear, measurable metrics that let you know you’re on the right track 

Keep the product team aligned on shared priorities and initiatives

Build trust with stakeholders who can see that you’re creating real value for the company

Product managers who Prioritize Amazingly and Need Data Always can confidently show that their product decisions will benefit their team, their organization, and most importantly, their users. This is the basis for cross-functional communication and buy-in from execs and other stakeholders.

💡 Pro tip : sharpen your user data to make better decisions for your product roadmap.

The best product managers use research for product prioritization , and Hotjar gives you the user data you need to prioritize brilliantly. 

Ask users direct questions and gather information on what’s important to them by using Hotjar’s non-invasive survey tools—like Feedback widgets.

Use Heatmaps and Session Recordings to spot issues and determine which bug fixes and product optimizations should be top of your list.  

When you’re guided by how your users experience your product and what their needs are, you can stop your priorities from being hijacked by loud-mouthed HiPPOs, arrogant ZEBRAs, or unfocused WOLF types.

A session recording captured using Hotjar

3. Structure the roadmap in themes, not features

Theme-based roadmaps are one of the best ways to give your product roadmap a memorable and meaningful narrative . As they highlight the big picture, themes show the broader objectives at play and make it easier for you to sell your product strategy.

High-level themes are great for structuring the roadmap and setting up your audience for the context you’re presenting in. To anticipate needs and questions during the presentation, make sure you can provide details into what’s behind each high-level item. 

For example, if you've called a theme 'essential services', break it down into key initiatives and epics that will be required to deliver the theme.

During the presentation

To get everyone on board during product roadmap presentations, your goal is to communicate clearly with your stakeholders and ensure everyone is on the same page.

4. Focus on the why 

Whether it’s a traditional feature roadmap or a problem-focused set of objectives and key results (OKRs), why you want to do these things matters. Is it to explore a new business opportunity? To increase satisfaction among a key segment of users? Something else?

If you expect your team to own building solutions—as well as defining and measuring their success—they need to understand why these initiatives matter to your users and the business as a whole. 

As you present, highlight the context for why you are including something on a roadmap, and remember to tailor your message depending on the audience. Technical teams need to see evidence for why you see demand for a feature. Executives want to see a strong connection between the development initiatives and the priorities of the business.

Remember to address different stakeholders' needs, which you may have uncovered in earlier stakeholder interviews or catch-ups. Be clear on the trade-offs you’ve had to make so stakeholders understand the different considerations you and your team have made.

💡 Pro tip : the data speaks for itself, but you can also tell a powerful story from the perspective of your users. 

Include user insights to prove the value of your ideas, and talk about some alternatives that you've excluded—and why.

Use Hotjar's product experience tools to Observe and Ask for user feedback that helps your audience understand the ‘why’ as much as the ‘what’.

The Hotjar Feedback widget

5. Communicate a convincing product narrative

Great product storytelling can get powerful exec HiPPOs on board, motivate disconnected RHINOs, and convince arrogant ZEBRAs and distractible WOLF (Working On Latest Fire) personas to get behind your product plans. 

As you tell the story of how your roadmap came together, use it as a tool to keep your audience engaged and rally their support around the plan . Include details like customer requests that inspired a new feature, features and functionalities that help push you closer to the product’s vision, or any particularly difficult prioritization decisions you can share.

Use simple and clear language and avoid industry jargon, especially if you're trying to align a wide variety of stakeholders. This will help communicate your product roadmap.

6. Engage your audience with visual aids

People need to see how all the components of your product strategy fit together, so invest time in making sure your product roadmap presentation template is well-designed .

Whether it’s dedicated product roadmapping or project management tools, PowerPoint presentations, infographics, Gantt charts, or Excel spreadsheets, every type of product roadmap presentation template uses graphic elements to help stakeholders visualize your overall product strategy, and help you chart the development and release of specific iterations .

A few key points to keep in mind: 

Vary your versions : present different versions of your roadmap for different audiences. A good way to do this can be to filter your roadmap content by epics or outcomes, and only show the ones relevant to the departments or teams you're presenting to.

Colormap : use color to distinguish between different themes, objectives, or categories on your roadmap. Don’t forget to include a legend outlining what each color signifies.

Keep it relevant : don’t overwhelm your audience with too many details. Your visual product roadmap should contain only the most relevant insights and graphics. When in doubt, take it out.

After the presentation

It’s time to tie up any loose ends and check in with your audience. As you do so, continue to request feedback and iterate on your roadmap presentation.

7. Tie in metrics

If you’re having a difficult time rallying the audience around your roadmap, remember that metrics are a great arbitrator . They are a powerful tool for selling your product strategy and getting buy-in across your organization.

Metrics related to the success of your product help you make objective decisions and not rely on intuition alone. You likely used these product metrics to make your roadmap decisions in the first place, so put them back to work for you when presenting your product strategy.

Your visual roadmap should present how initiatives influence key business metrics or a 'north star metric'. They’re an important part of the narrative around your product roadmap, so put these numbers front and center in your presentation. 

8. Leave room for questions and feedback

Make sure you give participants the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback on your product roadmap presentation. This will help you improve and have better ongoing communication around your roadmap.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to act on every single piece of feedback. Instead, actively listen and hear people out and make sure stakeholders feel heard and understood.

Some areas you can seek feedback on are:

Is the meeting cadence working for stakeholders?

Do they understand your product team’s priorities and trade-offs?

Do they understand the roadmap’s impact on them?

Then, follow up on any feedback shared during the presentation. After all, alignment isn’t one-sided—it’s an exercise in negotiating different views and opinions.

9. Keep the product roadmap updated and accessible

Once you’ve done a good job selling your product strategy, don’t hide it away. Make sure you follow up your roadmap presentation with thorough meeting notes and the updated roadmap. 

By now it’s clear that roadmaps can’t just be static documents—like an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint template. This also means th e roadmapping lifecycle doesn’t simply end with a presentation . You need to follow up on KPIs and progress, as well as keep your stakeholders and customers informed.

Continue to communicate updates and changes to your roadmap outside of meetings. Create a concrete, editable, and accessible space where stakeholders can continuously check-in, provide feedback, and keep up-to-date on changes. 

Some ideas of how to do this include:

A product roadmapping tool

A shared document

A dedicated space in your company’s knowledge sharing tool

A dedicated channel in your company’s messaging platform

A dedicated space for feedback in the roadmap artifact itself

Next steps for product roadmap presentations

Roadmap alignment is a continuous, ongoing process. And the way you approach your roadmap presentations can be decisive in how your product moves forward toward success. 

As you gear up to present your product strategy and the specific iterations it involves, consider what you do before, during, and after the roadmap presentation to build alignment.  

Understanding why certain product initiatives matter to your users and the business will allow your team, stakeholders, and customers to rally behind them much more than just being told they need to happen.

FAQs about product roadmap presentations

What should you include in a product roadmap presentation.

An effective, coherent roadmap presentation includes:

The context and ‘why’ behind each initiative 

Substance and concrete outcomes at each stage of the roadmap

A clear business impact of completing the initiative

Details about the product’s target audience to demonstrate how well you know the market, the users, the product, and the business goals

When should you deliver a product roadmap presentation?

There are a few situations where you might need to deliver a roadmap presentation. Here are a few of the most common: 

To get approval from business leaders for new products, features, or a change in product strategy

To alleviate conflicting messages from different stakeholders

To create a release plan that can be shared with customers

To get your team on the same page with and advocate for the product opportunities that will help your company reach its goals

How long should a product roadmap presentation be?

The ideal duration of a product roadmap presentation depends on how many products and features you need to discuss. We recommend reserving around 1–2 hours, including time for brainstorming and feedback at the end.

Product roadmap templates

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PowerPoint Product Roadmap Templates: Slides & Presentations

By Lulu Richter | June 8, 2024

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We’ve rounded up the most useful product roadmap templates for PowerPoint to help you visualize your product strategy and create effective roadmap presentations.

Included in this article, you’ll find the following:

• Quarterly milestones product roadmap template
• 5-year product strategy roadmap template
• Creative product roadmap template with road design  
• Related roadmap templates for PowerPoint and Google Slides  

PowerPoint 6-Month Product Roadmap Template

Download the 6-Month Product Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : Product managers and team leads can use this template to communicate a product’s high-level goals, initiatives, and timeline over a six-month period. This template is best suited for kickoff meetings, progress updates, and strategic planning sessions to ensure everyone is aligned with the timeline and objectives. Notable Template Features : This template’s clean, color-coded layout makes it easy to identify different phases and steps. Each month is clearly labeled at the top, and the steps on the left break down project components. The customizable text and color blocks make this roadmap template a versatile tool for a variety of projects and industries. For more planning and timeline tools, see our selection of  project timeline templates and  blank timeline templates , available in multiple formats.

PowerPoint Quarterly Milestones Product Roadmap Template

Download the Quarterly Milestones Product Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : This product roadmap template highlights key milestones for multiple products on a quarterly timeline. Use this template in quarterly reviews and stakeholder meetings to track and communicate progress across several products. Notable Template Features : This template clearly marks each quarter, which makes it easy to plan and track milestones over time. Each product has its own dedicated row, with color-coded arrows and markers to highlight significant milestones and phases. Use the customizable text fields to add specific details relevant to each of your products.

PowerPoint 5-Year Product Strategy Roadmap Template

Download the 5-Year Product Strategy Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : Use this template for long-term planning or to create a strategic overview of product development. Senior managers, product strategists, and executive teams can use this template to outline and communicate the high-level direction of multiple product lines over the span of five years. Use this template in strategic planning meetings, annual reviews, and investor presentations to clearly demonstrate the planned trajectory and major themes of your product lines. Notable Template Features : This template features a comprehensive layout that covers five years, which allows for detailed planning and tracking of product strategies. Each row includes color-coded task descriptions to differentiate between various initiatives and milestones. Customize the text fields and timelines to focus on your long-term goals.

PowerPoint Creative Product Roadmap Template

Download the Creative Product Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : Use this creative product roadmap template to visually illustrate the progression of product development. Use this template in strategy meetings, client presentations, and team briefings to capture viewers' attention and convey key details. Notable Template Features : This template features a winding road design that makes the presentation more dynamic and visually appealing. Each milestone is marked along the road to emphasize the project’s strategic path, and the editable text boxes next to each marker highlight product stages, specific activities, deliverables, or other information.

PowerPoint Agile Product Development Roadmap Template

Download the Agile Product Development Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : Use this template to manage and present complex product development projects using Agile methodologies. Product managers, Scrum masters, and development teams can use this template to keep track of multiple project streams and phases at once, or in sprint planning sessions and Agile retrospectives to ensure clear communication and alignment across all aspects of the project. Notable Template Features : The template includes slides for product, development, user experience, and quality assurance — together, they provide a comprehensive view of the entire product development process. Each slide offers a detailed timeline for each quarter, which allows you to precisely track key activities such as roadmap briefs, user requirements, and feature releases. The color-coded status key and work streams help you visualize progress and dependencies, so it’s easy to identify bottlenecks and adjust plans accordingly. You can also customize the template by updating the task descriptions and timelines. 

PowerPoint Product Stages Roadmap Template

Download the Product Stages Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : Use this template to outline the key phases of a project or product development process. Project managers, product developers, and business strategists can use it to present the sequential stages of their project to stakeholders, as well as in kickoff meetings, strategy sessions, and progress reviews to provide a comprehensive overview of the project's lifecycle and key deliverables. Notable Template Features : The template includes arrows to represent the phases of a product roadmap. For each product development phase, enter key details about your strategic objectives, activities, and deliverables. The visual structure of this customizable template enables you to easily communicate complex processes, making it an effective tool for project planning and communication.

PowerPoint Simple Roadmap Template

Download the Simple Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : This product roadmap template is ideal for teams that need to organize and communicate their short-term, mid-term, and long-term project plans. Product managers, development teams, and Agile coaches can use it to present on the current status and upcoming priorities of their projects, as well as in sprint planning sessions, roadmapping meetings, and strategic reviews to ensure everyone is aligned on immediate tasks, next steps, and future goals. Notable Template Features : The template features three distinct sections labeled Now, Next, and Later, which provides a straightforward framework for organizing tasks and initiatives based on their timeframes. Each section contains customizable placeholders to detail specific activities, goals, or milestones, so teams can clearly visualize and prioritize their work. The color-coded boxes help to differentiate between tasks, so it’s easy to track progress and adjust plans as needed. Overall, the simple and intuitive design of this template makes it an effective tool for Agile project management and strategic planning.

PowerPoint Product Roadmap Presentation Template

Download the Product Roadmap Presentation Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template: Product managers and team leads can use this template for strategic planning and communication, and startup founders can use it to present their product development plans to potential investors. Anyone involved in product development or project management can leverage this template to ensure their teams remain aligned.

Notable Template Features: This template covers essential aspects of product planning and offers a visually engaging way to present your product strategy. The Vision slide articulates the long-term goals and aspirations of your product. The Roadmap slide shows a quarterly timeline with key activities, and the Milestones slide highlights important dates. This makes it easy to track and communicate progress at a glance, and it saves time and effort so you can focus on the content rather than the design.

PowerPoint Product Release Roadmap Template

Download the Product Release Roadmap Template for PowerPoint

When to Use This Template : Use this template to plan and communicate the details of upcoming product releases. Product managers, development teams, and marketing professionals can use it to coordinate and track the progress of new features, bug fixes, and marketing activities. This template helps you provide a clear and structured overview of your product release schedule in release planning meetings, sprint reviews, and presentations. Notable Template Features : The template features a grid layout with columns for each release and rows categorizing new features, fixes, and marketing activities. Each cell is customizable, so teams can specify the details of what's included in each release. Color-coded sections help differentiate between types of tasks, and the template includes icons for new features, fixes, and marketing activities. This template is designed to facilitate Agile release planning by providing a comprehensive and adaptable framework for managing multiple aspects of product development and launch.

Related Product Roadmap Presentation Templates

Roadmap templates are essential tools for visually mapping out project timelines and strategic plans. These templates prompt you to outline milestones, goals, and key deliverables so viewers can easily follow project goals and progress. In this section, you’ll find free, customizable templates to enhance your presentations for team meetings, client pitches, and strategic planning sessions.

Project Roadmap Timeline Template

Use a  project roadmap timeline template to visually outline project phases, milestones, and tasks over the span of a year. The template provides a clear, structured timeline that enhances project planning, tracking, and communication among stakeholders.

IT Project Roadmap Template

IT managers and technical team leads can use this  IT project roadmap template to detail project activities, milestones, and departmental tasks across an annual timeline. This template also offers a color-coded structure to help with tracking progress, coordinating efforts, and ensuring alignment across multiple IT initiatives.

Agile Product Sprint Roadmap Template

Choose an  Agile product sprint roadmap template to organize and visualize sprint cycles over several months. The template design enhances sprint planning, tracks task progress, promotes team collaboration, and helps ensure timely delivery of project milestones.

Digital Marketing Roadmap Template

Digital marketing managers can use this  digital marketing roadmap template , available for PowerPoint or Google Slides, to plan and visualize initiatives across different channels throughout the year. The editable roadmap includes sections for social media, content marketing, market research, online, and web strategies, which allows teams to allocate resources and track progress effectively.

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Product Roadmap Presentation Template

Show colleagues, stakeholders, and clients the direction of your product development with the Product Roadmap Presentation Template.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the Product Roadmap Presentation Template 

The Product Roadmap Presentation Template outlines the direction of your product development. Use a product presentation template to show what you want to create, why you think your customers will value it, and how it aligns with your company's strategy. 

What is a product roadmap presentation? 

A product roadmap presentation is your opportunity to share product plans with your internal and external stakeholders. It presents the key information from your product roadmap , explaining how new products and product features align with business objectives and provide customer value. 

At the end of the presentation, product managers will have a chance to answer questions about product direction. It's a collaborative process, aligning your team and getting everyone on the same page. 

What should you include in a product roadmap presentation? 

Every product roadmap presentation is different. However, there are some common topics that crop up in most presentations:

An introduction and agenda

Tell your audience what the presentation is about and what it’ll involve. That way, they know what to expect and how long it’ll last. 

Your purpose and product vision

Show your audience the reasoning behind the new product (or new features) to give them some context. For example, customer feedback shows that buyers are looking for an additional product feature. That way, your audience can see the rationale behind your product strategy. 

The product’s target audience

Be clear about who you’re trying to target with your new product. It could be your existing audience, or you might want to reach a new audience in a different market.

Your product roadmap

Show your audience what you’ve outlined in your product roadmap, but keep it top-level. They don’t need to know all the ins and outs, so make sure you only outline the key information. For example, you can showcase the anticipated timeline but don't go into detail about each deliverable along the way. 

Any feedback and questions

At the end of the presentation, provide your audience with the opportunity to ask questions. This will be your opportunity to have a discussion with them and get their feedback. 

When should you deliver a product roadmap presentation?

There are a few situations where you might need to deliver a roadmap presentation. Here are a few of the most common: 

To get approval from business leaders

Before you can make any changes or launch new products, you need approval from management. Delivering a product roadmap presentation is a good place to start. Why? Because it shows them everything they need to know about the new product. They’ll see how your product themes feed into the company-wide strategy, how it’ll offer customers a better product, and whether it’s a viable product. 

To create a release plan

Creating a product roadmap presentation gives customers and business partners an idea of what to expect in the future. Think of Apple as an example. They don’t have specific release dates for their products, but the business provides regular updates of what improvements and changes they plan to make in the future. It keeps everyone in the loop and builds anticipation. 

To get your team on the same page

A product roadmap presentation is a perfect opportunity to get your product team (and anyone else involved in the product roadmap) on the same page. From the get-go, everyone has the same expectations and is fully aligned with the goals. 

How do you create a product roadmap presentation with Miro?

Miro is the perfect online presentation creator to quickly build a presentation. The Product Roadmap Presentation Template is ideal for collaborative teams. It’s intuitive, easy-to-use, customizable, and distributed teams can access it from anywhere. To get started, select this free template and follow these steps. 

Step 1: Add your roadmap to the template

Start by adding the key pieces of information from your roadmap into the template (it’s easy to add files if you want to upload images from the roadmap). Try not to overload the presentation with details from the roadmap. You only need to provide a high-level view of the crucial pieces of information, such as the timeline, budgets, and customer insights. 

Step 2: Customize the presentation template

With the key information in place, you can visualize where everything else will sit in the template. With Miro’s template, you’ll have access to our pre-made slides. They’re fully customizable, so you can move things around to suit your specific presentation. You can also add or remove slides, edit the placeholder content, and add your own company branding. 

Step 3: Add supporting information and context

Now you can start to flesh out the presentation. You’ll add your introduction and agenda, followed by the main purpose. Then, you can outline who your target audience is and add your market research to provide context. If you have data and customer insights to share, you can add shapes , charts , and link internally and externally to any relevant reports. 

Step 4: Get feedback from colleagues

When the template is complete, share the presentation with colleagues to get feedback and make any necessary changes. Using Miro’s digital workspace, it’s easy for teams to collaborate throughout this process — even if they’re working remotely. 

Step 5: Deliver the presentation

Select presentation mode to deliver the presentation in full screen. Use the arrow buttons or keys to move the presentation along (only the slides in the frames you selected will be visible).

How long should a product roadmap presentation be?

It varies depending on how many products and features you need to discuss. Around 1–2 hours is ideal and allows plenty of time for brainstorming at the end.

What’s included in this Product Roadmap Presentation Template?

In this template, you’ll get access to Miro’s ready-made presentation slides. Each slide in this template is a frame with placeholder text. Simply edit the content in the slides, add or remove new slides, and change their order to create your ideal presentation.

Get started with this template right now.

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Product roadmaps: A complete guide [+ templates]

When I'm managing even a small project, I have a system of notes, file folders, color codes, and lists ( so many lists) that I use to have any chance of keeping the project on schedule. My system works because I'm the only one who has to use it.

As a product manager, you don't have the luxury of maintaining total control over your project planning systems. You have to allow entire teams to share your organizing systems and still find a way to keep everything running smoothly. 

That's where the product roadmap comes in. A product roadmap keeps everyone on the same page as to where a product is and where it's headed next. It's also a status updater, a communication tool, and a governing authority that defines how product work needs to be documented, who's responsible for different tasks, and what milestones and deadlines need to be met. 

This guide will take you through every step of the product roadmapping process and even provide you with templates to get you started.

Table of contents:

What is a product roadmap.

A product roadmap (or product development roadmap) is a document that acts as the singular authority for information on a product's progress, including roles and timelines for all related teams and stakeholders. Roadmaps can be as simple or complex as necessary, but they're always easy to understand and accessible to everyone who is or will be involved in the product's development. 

A roadmap is what's called a "single source of truth": it aggregates all product information from every team involved in the development project. Individual teams can also have their own department-wide systems, but all of that information should also be stored in the product roadmap. That way, everyone on the project is referencing the same source for updated information.

What are the key components of a product roadmap?

Roadmaps are unique snowflakes (and honestly as complex): each one is different depending on the type of product in development, the industry the product belongs to, the size and shape of the product team, and the particular needs of the company producing the product. 

All differences aside, nearly all product roadmaps contain these key components:

Product features: Features are the functions the product needs to perform and the problems it should solve. Typically, the development team is in charge of sifting through feedback from users and deciding what features to implement next.

Epics: In agile product roadmaps, epics are collections of stories. They can span across multiple teams (or even across multiple software version launches), and there can be many of them involved in a given roadmap.

Product initiatives: Initiatives show how sets of stories, features, tasks, and projects come together to actualize product goals. Initiatives keep teams focused on goal-centric efforts.

Product goals: Goals correspond to product features and outline how and when that feature will be implemented. Goals should be time-bound and measurable, and a roadmap might include multiple goals on the path toward completing a single feature.

Product timelines: Usually, a product roadmap timeline will include not only the dates associated with each milestone, but also a list of the teams and individuals responsible for each process as well as the stakeholders affected by different updates and goal completions.

Why are product roadmaps important?

Product roadmaps keep every member of every team focused on the same goal. It can be all too easy to get caught up in the cycle of completing isolated tasks within individual teams, but with a unified roadmap, stakeholders at every level and in every department know where they stand in the development process and how their individual contributions factor in.

Let's say a software company is releasing an update to one of their products. The engineering team plays many of the key roles in executing the technical aspect of the release and accounts for the biggest chunk of the roadmap. Meanwhile, the UX team has its own tasks to ensure the updates are aligning with user experience standards. As all this is going on, the marketing team is updating social media, scheduling email campaigns, and building awareness for the key features of the upcoming update. At any given time, each of these teams can consult the roadmap to see where their roles fit into the project timeline as they continue performing separate tasks on projects related to other products.

A well-conceived product roadmap has these key benefits:

Improved goal alignment across teams and stakeholders

Transparency about timelines and progress toward milestones

More effective product planning

Clear translation of product strategy

Creation of a single source of truth for all teams and stakeholders

Streamlined development strategy

Development of a single, shareable visualization of product timelines, relevant teams, and required milestones

Clear outlining of priorities to fend off non-outcome-driven tasks and keep teams focused

Who uses a product roadmap?

This isn't exactly a shocker: the product manager and their team are responsible for building, maintaining, and facilitating the product roadmap. And if you're the product manager, you want to do everything possible to make sure that only your team manages the roadmap—especially when operating at scale, roadmap planning can very quickly become a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation.

Some concrete tasks that the product management team is responsible for include:

Building the product roadmap

Updating the product roadmap with changes and new information from all teams and stakeholders

Ensuring all stakeholders document their work correctly

Troubleshooting obstacles and bottlenecks in the product development process

Product managers will probably have to interact with other departments throughout the company to build a roadmap that aligns with greater company goals. Once a roadmap is created, it applies to everyone with a role to play in its execution. For example, marketing teams might reference it to align their publicity deliverable timelines, and customer service teams may need to plan for an influx of support tickets around the release date.

How to create a product roadmap

Product roadmaps can vary widely in complexity, from shorter-term timelines (like a now/next/later roadmap) to complex ones that span years (like a detailed capacity roadmap). And when a product manager is plotting out a full development cycle, they'll often use a combination of roadmap styles for different aspects of the process.

A comprehensive, full-scale product roadmap is a beast of a document, so the best way to build one is the same way you would eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

2. Gather stakeholder perspectives: Working closely with your teams and stakeholders, collect firsthand information about the work, what it requires, and common problems.

4. Define feature priorities: Once you've accumulated a general list of potential features, it's a good idea to prioritize them, so you can schedule gradual releases or delegate resources to high-priority features first. Consider common frameworks like Cost/Benefit, Value/Complexity, Story Mapping, MoSCoW Analysis, or Kano Analysis.

5. Match goals with releases: Once you've determined the parameters of your MVP, you can map the steps and milestones necessary to produce the earliest version of the product and schedule your first (beta) release.

6. Set a timeline: Tie your features, goals, and releases to scheduled milestones, consulting directly with stakeholders before setting deadlines to make sure they're feasible.

7 types of product roadmaps (with templates)

Starting a product roadmap from scratch? These templates each provide a structure for different facets or views depending on the scope of your particular roadmap. 

You can use just one to focus on a particular aspect of your process, or you can combine multiple templates to create a more comprehensive plan for your product's development. Don't let our preset labels limit you, either—we've also included blanks for you to modify and use however works best for you.

1. Theme roadmaps

It's essential for a project manager to start the roadmapping process with an understanding of the company's larger product strategy and business goals. 

A Themes x Features roadmap can help keep your thoughts organized as you start to determine where your planned features fit into these broader initiatives or "themes."

When you begin to break your features down into smaller goals and the projects dedicated to achieving those goals, a Themes x Projects roadmap can help keep all of the decisions you make about smaller processes and milestones in alignment with broader business goals.

2. Product portfolio roadmap

When first starting to map out the basics of your product roadmap, the four main items you need to determine are the product's goals, features, projected releases, and the teams that will be involved in the product development project. This high-level view gives you a framework to start with before filling in more details, and it also allows you to keep track of multiple products you may be managing at once.

3. Releases x Features roadmap

This roadmap zooms in to organize one very specific aspect of your project planning: which features will be grouped into each release. With a Release x Features roadmap in hand, you can run your plans by developers to ensure each group of features isn't too large to be feasible, and you can get more accurate estimates as to how much time will need to go into each release.

4. Capacity roadmap

Once you know what your product features and goals will be—but before you tie product milestones to a timeline—you need to determine who will be responsible for the different tasks involved in the product's development. A capacity roadmap aligns different tasks with the departments responsible for them and the period of time in which that team will be working on those tasks. Our version also allows you to assign tasks to different teams within a department. 

5. Task management roadmap

Different types of roadmaps allow you to view the same issue from different frames. With a task management roadmap, you're focusing on tasks and teams—just like in the capacity map—but the focus here is on determining when, generally speaking, those teams will tackle those tasks. You can also fill in what other things each team has on its plate, so you can see when they have the most availability to work on your product.

6. Now/next/later roadmap

Most product roadmaps are laid out across several months, fiscal quarters, or even years. A now/next/later roadmap takes the opposite approach and zooms in for a "snapshot" of the product development process in its current state. Now/next/later roadmaps can be especially useful for getting a project or process back on track after an obstacle or delay.

7. Product vision roadmap

It's a product manager's job to always know what's coming next, and that includes which development projects and new goals are lined up after the completion of the current product. A product vision roadmap is a strategic way to simultaneously brainstorm future opportunities and begin to plan what projects are on the horizon for your product team.

Bonus: Blank horizontal, vertical, and matrix roadmap templates

The templates above offer just a small selection of the different tasks, processes, and goals that can be organized using a roadmap. If you want to start a more custom roadmap from a truly blank template, you can download the basic structure of these by layout to fill in your own labels and titles:

How to present a product roadmap to stakeholders

Even a perfectly executed roadmap doesn't mean much if it doesn't get buy-in. And to get buy-in, you need to be able to present it effectively to both executive stakeholders and the development teams responsible for executing (cue the nail-biting). Here's how to position your roadmap to give it the best possible chance for adoption (while keeping your vision and nail beds intact).

Tailor it to your audience: Since you may be presenting to multiple audiences with different roles in the organization, it's important to tailor your roadmap presentation to them. Implementation teams may be concerned with scoping and having long enough timelines, while executives may be more interested in implementation costs and time to value.

Map back to company goals: Ultimately, your roadmap should advance the broader company goals. Show your audience how successful execution will connect to what the company as a whole values and strives for.

Tell a story: The best way to get people invested in your roadmap is to take them along its journey. Frame it with a beginning, middle, and end, just like any story, so you can walk stakeholders through the process and make it less abstract.

Show proof: It's not enough to say what you want to do—you need to also be able to prove the accuracy of your estimates for timelines, resources, and outcomes as much as possible. Back your claims up with real data to make the presentation believable.

Make it airtight: If there's an element of your roadmap that still feels a little rocky, the last thing you want is for someone to ask questions about it. If you feel any hesitation about any part of your roadmap, iron it out first, so you don't end up scrambling during the presentation. If you can't, acknowledge the gap straight on.

Be realistic, not optimistic: This is basically the old "under-promise, over-deliver" adage. Stakeholders want to know your roadmap is viable, not that it's going to be finished in record time. Resist the temptation to strive for impressive promises and instead lean on real data and unbiased projections.

Tips for creating a product roadmap

In the end, everyone wants to prioritize the most impactful projects. A well-designed product roadmap will communicate value, give all teams a single source of truth for timelines and expectations, and help keep everyone focused on goal-centric work. 

Here are a few key takeaways to help you get the most out of yours:

Cater your roadmap presentations to your audience.

Be as realistic as possible about timelines, deliverables, and values.

Keep your roadmap concise.

Always relate features, stories, epics, and other tasks to agreed-upon product goals.

Align the roadmap to the greater company goals.

Make the roadmap accessible to every stakeholder, but limit editing permission.

Related reading:

This post was originally published in May 2022 and was most recently updated win contributions from Bryce Emley in June 2023.

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Amanda Pell

Amanda is a writer and content strategist who built her career writing on campaigns for brands like Nature Valley, Disney, and the NFL. When she's not knee-deep in research, you'll likely find her hiking with her dog or with her nose in a good book.

• Software & web development
• Product management

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13 Product Roadmap Examples to Help You Manage Your Projects

Written by: Garima Khatri

Product roadmaps aren’t just a list of features or tasks; they serve as strategic plans that chart the course of a product's journey. It guides product managers and owners with high-level vision and step-by-step plans for current and future developments.

Whether you're launching a new feature, entering a different market, or aligning interdepartmental teams toward common goals, product roadmaps are a shared source of truth.

However, creating a descriptive, actionable and flexible roadmap from the ground up can feel like a stretch.

In this article, we’ll share ready-to-use product roadmap examples and templates to help you manage your team and projects.

No matter your team size, industry, or stage in the product life cycle, you'll find valuable product map examples to use.

Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

What is a product roadmap, types of product roadmaps.

• 13 Product Roadmap Examples

4 Public Product Roadmap Examples

Product roadmap faqs.

• A product roadmap is a strategic plan that shows a product's vision, direction, priorities and development over time.
• Besides being a clear and brief guide for stakeholders, product roadmaps detail the sequence of work. It ensures that the product team's efforts are in sync with overall business goals and establishes clear expectations for product releases and deadlines.
• Types of roadmaps include timeline-based, goal-based and feature-based. Each type meets different needs and might be better suited depending on your company's strategy and planning processes.
• Take inspiration from real-world examples of product roadmaps from leading companies like Buffer, Mozilla, GitHub and Slack.
• Tap into Visme's roadmap maker and a rich library of product roadmap templates to improve your planning process and supercharge your project implementation.

A product roadmap is a visual guide that outlines a product's vision, direction, purpose, priorities and progress over time. It acts as a blueprint for the team and stakeholders, clarifying what is coming next and ensuring everyone is aligned with the product’s short and long-term strategy.

Product roadmaps can differ drastically between companies due to size, product complexity and industry. Generally, they ‌include vision, direction, key deliverables, milestones, deadlines, resource allocations as well as risk assessments.

Product roadmaps are living documents, meaning they can be modified as market conditions change or new insights emerge.

Product roadmaps come in three types: timeline-based, feature-based and goal-based.

Timeline-based Roadmaps

As the name suggests, timeline-based roadmaps organize items on a given timeline. This can include when new features will be released, certain business goals will be reached, or specific tasks have been completed.

Timeline-based roadmaps are suitable for teams that have a clear picture of their deadlines and want to communicate estimated dates for product deliverables.

Here’s a general project timeline Gantt chart template to create your timeline-based roadmap easily.

Creating product roadmaps typically involves the input of multiple stakeholders,` such as product managers, designers, developers, and executives.

With our real-time collaboration feature , multiple project team members can tag other, leave feedback, and resolve or delete comments when the review process is complete. You can also decide who gets to view, comment, or edit your content while getting the vital feedback you need

Feature-based Roadmaps

Apps, websites and tech products benefit from feature-based roadmaps, which prioritize and display the roll-out of new features or enhancements to existing ones.

Instead of setting strict dates, features are plotted sequentially to indicate the next development focus.

Product launch roadmap examples are also feature-based roadmaps. For example, this learning app feature launch roadmap infographic template allows teams to visualize the pre-launch, launch and after-launch phases, making it simple to communicate the process to stakeholders.

Make this template yours with Visme’s drag-and-drop editor to customize the timeline and add details specific to your project.

Goal-based Roadmaps

Unlike timeline or feature-focused roadmaps, goal-based roadmaps are oriented toward achieving specific objectives within a company. These can relate to broad business aims or specific end goals around the user experience or technical performance.

Each goal is linked with a set of features or tasks that contribute towards its achievement, helping teams to understand not just the "what" and "when" but the "why" behind every initiative.

This kind of roadmap is ideal for organizations prioritizing outcomes over outputs.

Use this quarterly goal app roadmap whiteboard template to define goals, high-level features and metrics to measure success across each quarter.

13 Product Roadmap Examples and Templates

Let’s take a look at some product roadmap examples and templates you can use across various scenarios.

Whether you are an experienced project manager or just diving into the field of product management, Visme has a diverse array of features that enable you to create product roadmaps with utmost ease.

With Visme Whiteboard, you get a dynamic canvas for envisioning and evolving your product roadmap. It aids product managers in crafting comprehensive roadmaps that adapt and grow effortlessly as your needs shift.

In Visme, you can create a visually stunning roadmap and seamlessly integrate live data from other platforms or via manual import and easily shareable roadmap for the entire team.

With Dynamic Fields, you can create variables that will enable you to swiftly make updates across multiple projects from one place in seconds.

With Visme, your roadmap isn’t static; it’s a living, evolving plan that fosters collaboration and clarity at every stage of your product journey.

-  Olya, Product Marketing at Visme

Browse a variety of product roadmap examples and templates assembled specially for different use cases.

1. Feature Release Roadmap Plan

Marketing roadmaps act as a guide when outlining promotional strategies, timelines and release dates of product features or services.

This flexible marketing roadmap plan highlights a strategic roll-out of various marketing initiatives over a period of time—in this case, quarterly feature releases. It has objectives divided into intuitive sections for month, week, goal and activities. This feature encourages clear communication between marketing managers and product managers. The lively color palette and distinct icons make this roadmap visualization a breeze.

Visme's Brand Wizard ensures your business documents maintain a consistent image by automatically incorporating your specific fonts, colors and logo. Just input your website URL, and Visme will pull these branding elements directly from your site and save them in your brand kit.

2. Strategic Expansion Roadmap Plan

Expansion roadmap plans are essential for businesses eyeing new markets or increasing their product's reach. This template is one of the best agile product roadmap examples you can use.

It helps product teams set targets for each quarter and month and section them into specific business needs. These can range from customer experience and business model to product development. Personalize your roadmap and make it engaging with icons , stock photos and videos from the extensive Visme library.

Color-code the sections to emphasize different priorities or stages in the roadmap. This level of customization allows teams to grasp complex strategies at a glance.

3. Technology Product Improvement Roadmap

Without continual product refinement, businesses grind to a halt. Spotting innovations and improving existing features is a must for maintaining a competitive edge. This product improvement roadmap template helps with that.

Whether bug fixes, enhancements, or feature upgrades, it's designed to streamline the planning and execution process for software engineers and product teams.

This template is divided into month-wise sections and contains:

• Milestones (e.g., UI refinement, user feedback analysis, as well as analytics and insights) and
• Where each milestone falls, i.e., enhancing core functionality, user experience refinement, or feature expansion and integration.

Teams can also use it for internal discussions, aligning cross-departmental objectives and tracking the progress of each initiative throughout the software development cycle.

Have data stored in online survey tools like Typeform, Jotform, SurveyMonkey, or Formstack? Visme’s integration feature lets you embed them directly onto any Visme project—or pull in data from existing content.

4. Multiple Product Roadmap

Product updates are necessary to improve and keep the user base engaged continuously.

This practical roadmap template lets you manage and showcase a diverse range of updates across multiple products.

It includes detailed timelines, categorized update types and priority levels, helping product teams concentrate on high-impact improvements while keeping all team members up-to-date.

Have too many product updates across different products and you must manually edit each roadmap? Hop onto the data tab and easily add custom fields using the dynamic field tool .

5. Customer Journey Product Roadmap

Each set of target audiences is unique, so you need to tailor your product to address their frustrations. This stunning customer journey roadmap splits the customer journey into four stages: awareness, discovery, application, offer and acceptance. It is packed with amazing visuals, a neat layout and a professional yet bright color palette.

For product teams, this roadmap template highlights critical touchpoints where customer interaction might tip the balance toward a successful sale or further engagement with the product.

Marketing teams can gather insights to design campaigns that connect with potential customers at just the right moment.

Not sure how to draft campaigns that align with the customer journey? Visme’s AI writer can generate killer copy or proofread existing content. When you have the first draft ready, you can then refine it further.

6. Feature based Release Roadmap

Whether in beta testing or full production, this feature-based release roadmap is one of the top software product roadmap examples. It allows teams to organize and know exactly when each feature is slated for launch. This design is easy to understand with clear visuals and readable font for everyone involved.

Give priority to urgent fixes, security patches, or new enhancements with clear labels for a seamless update process. Or use a specific label for each team, be it development, product, or marketing—the choice is yours.

The best part? You can share this roadmap online with your user community and set clear expectations regarding new features. Opt for an online link or download it in PDF, PPTX, MP4, JPG or PNG formats. Take it a notch higher and track who has opened the roadmap, how much of it was viewed and where they spent the most time with our robust analytics tool .

7. UI/UX Upgrade Roadmap

Design upgrades can feel overwhelming, but not with this structured UX/UI upgrade roadmap template. It offers a visual timeline for rolling out design improvements every quarter. Efficient for product designers and stakeholders, this roadmap has sections for:

• Research phases,
• UX testing,
• Prototyping,
• Final design implementation.

For instance, in Q1, the focus might be on user interviews and empathy mapping. Later, the focus may shift to prototyping various user interfaces before the final deployment in Q4.

It includes precise timestamps and a soothing color palette to streamline communication and execution across the board.

8. Product Release Roadmap

Mapping out every release phase —f rom market analysis to the official launch—ensures a successful product launch.

This weekly product release roadmap template is designed to outline all necessary steps with a clear weekly timeline. It's ideal for keeping track of benchmarks, such as:

• Feature development
• Beta testing
• Marketing strategies
• Launch events

It helps coordinate activities between departments—be it product development, quality assurance or sales. In addition, it facilitates a quick response to unforeseen challenges and opportunities during the sprint.

Make your roadmap engaging using Visme's animation and interactive features . Add dropdown menus, clickable icons, pop-ups and hover effects to provide additional information. Better yet, incorporate hyperlinks to external sources or internal documents to help users access relevant information quickly.

9. Creative Roadmap Infographic

As a product manager or owner, it can be helpful to create a visual plan of your daily activities. This roadmap template allows you to do that in style.

With lively colors, innovative shapes, and vivid content blocks, this creative roadmap infographic makes strategy and personal planning engaging.

Use this as a guide to schedule your day, week, or month. You can also adapt it to outline the phases of your next project and share it with colleagues and teams.

If you’re collaborating with your team on the design, you can manage roles, tasks, progress, deadlines and corrections all in one place with Visme’s workflow feature .

10. Steps To Launching A Startup Roadmap Infographic

Got a startup idea in mind? This detailed infographic template outlines key phases to focus on, from concept development to marketing strategies. The layout guides future entrepreneurs through the essential steps for a successful launch, covering areas like:

• Market research
• Business plan drafting
• Funding and budget allocation
• Product development milestones
• Branding and identity
• Testing and iterations
• Official launch measures
• Post-launch evaluation and scaling

With vivid graphics and an intuitive design, streamlining the journey from idea to market becomes more manageable for aspiring founders and their teams.

Check out our extensive list of product roadmap templates for more new product roadmap examples.

11. Interactive Road Map Timeline Template

Perfect for project leaders, this template provides an immersive and interactive timeline of a project’s lifecycle. It allows for seamless tracking of both minor and major milestones, overall progress, and risk assessments.

When it comes to aesthetics, this template boasts eye-catching colors with visuals that pop, guiding the viewer's gaze across various project stages.

Make it more interactive using Visme's various features like dropdowns, popups and hover effects.

12. Employee Training Roadmap Infographic Template

Employee training is critical, and having a timeline to guide you can ease the whole process.

Designed for HR professionals, instructional designers, and training facilitators, this infographic lays out a visual syllabus. The roadmap is divided into four phases and covers everything from entry-level assessment to certification.

Share with higher management or department heads to coordinate skilled learning efforts company-wide.

You can also make use of Visme's customization features to enhance the template's efficacy. For example, allow trainers to hyperlink learning resources or incorporate pop-up windows for elaborative text.

13. Software Development Timeline Template

This software development timeline template is useful for product developers to track key phases from ideation to launch.

Packed with crisp visuals and amazing colors, each block in the template represents a month of work where you can denote activities and milestones. This can help to prevent scope creep or development delays.

For example, you could develop APIs in June, while instrumental bug fixes may be scheduled for August. This helps ensure transparency and proper communication among teams about their distinct roles and deadlines.

Download this roadmap as a PDF and in your weekly email circulars, internal reports, or company presentations for quick reference.

Now that we've looked at various roadmaps and customer journey map templates, we must explore best practices for product roadmaps.

This section explores real-life, public examples to better understand the strategic application of roadmaps in different scenarios.

Buffer is a social media management tool that helps users schedule posts, analyze performance, and manage all their accounts from a centralized platform.

They maintain a public product roadmap that outlines planned features, enhancements, and bug fixes, showing a dedication to transparency and open communication with their customers.

The roadmap promises what’s to come while offering users the opportunity to give feedback and understand how their needs are being addressed. Importantly, Buffer's open approach underpins building trust within their community.

The key takeaway here is that embracing customer input and enabling productive dialogue helps you create a roadmap that's dynamic and aligned with user expectations. It also boosts user loyalty and leads to a better product that resonates with your user base.

Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind Firefox, shared its roadmap publicly in an effort to increase competitiveness and relevance.

For example, Mozilla outlined broad areas such as improved security features and novel browser functionalities. With this clear roadmap, users could follow along and witness the evolution of the product.

This visibility has multiple advantages, including the ability to crowdsource ideas, identify issues early and mobilize the community to help test new features.

The roadmap served as a developmental guide and platform to engage and drive user participation. Mozilla was able to draw on its extensive user community for testing and ideas.

This fantastic initiative also enabled Mozilla to get feedback and suggestions from its users, making sure that they are always providing the best possible experience to their community.

GitHub is a cloud-based hosting service that revamps the way teams build software.

GitHub mentions , “Our product roadmap is where you can learn about what features we're working on, what stage they're in, and when we expect to bring them to you.”

Its transparent approach to sharing future updates and plans makes it unique.

Every item on the roadmap is an issue, with a label that indicates the release phase, feature area, feature, product SKU, deployment models and shipping status.

Labels provide clarifications about the roadmap’s direction and details. This helps users get informed about every development stage for a more inclusive decision-making process.

Back in 2016, Slack—a communication platform used across businesses—adopted a transparent approach to its product roadmap.

Slack used a public Trello board to share its product roadmap. It included items like new product features, improvements, and bug fixes.

Each card represented a planned update, with details about its status, type, and expected release date. Slack users were then able to follow the progress in real-time.

This transparency in roadmap planning sets a forward-thinking example for other tech companies.

Let's take a look at frequently asked questions related to product roadmaps.

Q. What Is Included in a Product Roadmap?

A product roadmap is a strategic plan that details a product's vision, direction, deliverables, and progress over time.

It includes critical milestones, feature releases, priorities, resource allocation, timelines and market and customer requirements.

This document helps everyone—from team members to stakeholders—understand the why and how behind a product and its expected evolution.

Roadmaps are customer-driven and often evolve based on user feedback and competitive research.

Q. What Does a Great Product Roadmap Look Like?

An excellent product roadmap is transparent, flexible and up-to-date, communicating the strategy to all involved parties. It outlines what the team is working on and aligns with the organization's overarching goals.

A good product roadmap should have these characteristics

• Be accessible to team members and stakeholders.
• Have defined features and marked timelines.
• Prioritize features based on strategic objectives.
• Allow for revisions and updates in response to market changes or feedback.
• Assign responsibilities for deliverables to specific team members.
• Set quantifiable objectives and key results to track progress and success.

Q. Is a Product Roadmap a Gantt Chart?

A product roadmap and a Gantt chart depict project timelines and details, but a product roadmap is broader in scope and more strategic. It provides a higher-level visual snapshot of a product’s trajectory rather than the fine-grained information of task-by-task progress.

A Gantt chart is more tactical and is often used for managing the project's day-to-day execution, showing the start and finish dates of individual tasks.

Q. What Is Not a Product Roadmap?

While a product roadmap provides a strategic overview of product development, it is not an exhaustive list of tasks, a detailed project plan, or a substitute for real-time project tracking tools. It is also not a technical specification document or a feature backlog.

A roadmap is a living document subject to change and should not be confused with a fixed contract or set of unchangeable rules.

Q. What Is the Difference Between a Roadmap and a Strategy?

A strategy is a high-level plan that outlines the objectives and goals of a product. In contrast, the roadmap is the document that lays out the steps and timeline required to realize that strategic vision or bring the product to life.

Q. What Is the Difference Between Product Strategy and Product Roadmap?

While product strategy details the target audience, value proposition, competitive advantages, and business goals, a product roadmap visualizes the timeline and actionable steps required to execute that strategy.

While both are complementary, the strategy informs decisions and direction, whereas the roadmap communicates the specific actions needed to implement that direction.

For example, a product strategy might identify the need to penetrate a new market by offering a unique product experience. At the same time, the roadmap would outline the feature development, testing phases, and launch timeline necessary to enter that market.

Create, Plan & Execute Your Product Roadmap with Visme

Think of a well-structured product roadmap as a vehicle's GPS. It provides clear directions on your journey towards building a successful product.

Without a clear journey and defined milestones, you risk driving in circles or even crashing.

From interdepartmental team coordination to C-suite approval and finally arriving at a desirable user experience, Visme empowers you to create a dynamic product roadmap with several intuitive tools and customizations.

Whatever your roadmap demands—agility, clarity, or detailed timelines—Visme has everything you need. Use this article as a guide; choose a product roadmap template from the curated list above; or explore more new product roadmap templates in Visme’s library and customize them to fit your needs.

Take Visme’s free roadmap maker for a spin and boost your product workflow with ready-to-use product roadmap templates.

Easily create winning product roadmaps using Visme

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7 examples of excellent product roadmaps

“What are we doing next?”

“What’s the actual plan?”

“Why are we doing this now?”

It can be easy to get lost in the backwoods of roadmaps, and these are all questions that, as a product manager , you might hear from anyone in your organization, from sales and engineering to customer success and marketing. And yes, it can be frustrating. As Braden Kowitz points out, these questions can cause a great deal of anxiety .

One tried, and true way to get ahead is to create a product roadmap that communicates the product plan and aligns your whole organization around it. Useful product roadmaps can take time to create, but they also give stakeholders on different teams the insights they need and ultimately boosts confidence in your product leadership.

But the challenge is often building a roadmap that will align your company around your product vision , providing both the level of detail each function needs while also staying connected to higher-level objectives.

Often, companies will go about building a product roadmap the wrong way. They’ll focus on hitting deadlines above all else, which can cause a lot of anxiety for the team.  Other times you’ll see companies build a roadmap once and then never look at it again or rarely update it. 

A vast majority of roadmaps miss the why behind what they are building and just focus on features — they are disconnected from the product strategy and have no clear goals or themes.

Instead, excellent roadmaps should be a product of collaboration and include the input of many stakeholders and cross-functional teams. They should always be-up-to-date, not one-time documents that are outdated once you hit the save button. And, they should reflect the outcomes your organization wants to achieve, not simply outputs. 

Essential pieces of a product roadmap

The importance of tailoring your roadmap to the right audience, 7 examples of effective product roadmaps, timeline roadmaps , getting to where you’re going.

Your product roadmap should articulate your product strategy so everyone, including different audiences with unique needs, understands it. Before diving into specifics, remember that what works for you may be unique to you and your organization. That’s why it’s critical to talk to everyone across your teams and ensure alignment on the best way to present this information .

We know rethinking how you approach the product roadmaps can be daunting. That’s why we’ve consolidated the best roadmap types that can help you communicate the why of your plan and the what and provide the right level of detail for your stakeholders.

““I think of roadmaps as communication vehicles rather than decision vehicles. A lot of folks say their goal is to have a roadmap. And I say no, our goal is to have a good product strategy where we make hard choices and prioritize the right things. The roadmap is simply a reflection of this.” ” Rich Mironov Product consultant & thought leader

You don’t need to list specific dates on your roadmap. But you do need a way to clearly outline and prioritize short-term features, medium-term features, and features you’re planning for in the long term.

Example timelines:

• March, April, May
• Now, Next, Later

What features are you releasing along the timeline above? You can categorize these based on what you’re looking to communicate and what tools you use for project management. These can be simply stated as the feature you’re building, or you can create a hierarchy of broad feature themes down to more specific subfeatures.

Examples (from high-level to detailed):

• New user onboarding, Team collaboration, Video messaging
• Create user signup flow, Share files between teammates, Record video calls
• Implement SSO, Integrate Dropbox, Share saved video files

What are you looking to accomplish with your products and features? You’re not doing work for the sake of doing work. You’re moving the needle on your business. Goals (or objectives) lets your organization know where the product is headed. These may be product-specific goals or business goals.

• Improve team communication platform
• Launch dashboard analytics
• Increase monthly active users by 5%

Different types of roadmaps work best with different stakeholders. You can choose which views best support how you want to communicate and rally your organization around your product vision.

• Use leadership roadmaps , such as a r elease plan roadmap or an objectives timeline roadmap, to give senior executives and stakeholders a 1000-foot view of the product team’s work. These high-level roadmaps provide quick summaries of your product direction. They can include information such as the market opportunity and profit and loss details with the ability to dive in deeper if needed.
• Use company roadmaps, such as release plan or release timeline roadmaps, to share more details with cross-functional teams like sales and customer success. These roadmaps allow other teams to set appropriate expectations with prospects and customers and contribute comments and relevant customer feedback.
• Use delivery-focused roadmaps, such as Kanban, sprint plan, or features timeline roadmap with granular timelines for development teams that want to know the details. Communicate objectives, status/stage of development, areas of your product, and account for other work they need to support. Leverage dependencies and capture risks.
• Use customer-focused roadmaps, such as a release plan or a now-next-later roadmap, to customize a roadmap that zeroes in on features customers care about most. These roadmaps also communicate what’s coming up next for your product to internal customer-facing audiences such as sales, customer success, and marketing . 

Let’s look at some common types of product roadmaps to help you figure out which one will work best for you. At a high-level, you can differentiate between two overall types: column and timeline roadmaps with relevant examples described. 

Example 1. Release plan

Release plans are the execution-level plan of how you’ll deliver the work that you’ve decided to do and the timeframe when you’ll complete that work. A release plan communicates a high-level overview of upcoming product releases to senior executives, stakeholders, cross-functional teams, and even customers. It’s ideal for planning milestones not time-bound, but with a fixed scope or new versions of your product on a regular release schedule (e.g., mobile app). It lets other teams know features are coming soon without committing your team to a specific launch date.

Example 2. Sprint plan roadmap

Sprint plan roadmaps are delivery-focused and, of course, useful for sprint planning. Products teams use sprint plans to align their development teams with upcoming work so they’re always up-to-date and in sync. You can plan your delivery over multiple sprints and show each feature’s effort and owners to monitor your team’s workload. You can even use swimlanes for additional context or grouping. You can make your sprint plan as granular as you need. This roadmap is only for your product and development team’s eyes.

Example 3. Now-next-later roadmap

Now-next-later roadmaps communicate your priorities over broad time frames with an emphasis on the near-term. Features in the ‘Now’ slot have more detail as you work on them, while features in the “later” bucket will be more high-level and reflect your long-term strategy. They are perfect for teams operating in fast-changing environments where release dates may change and allow you to communicate comprehensive plans to customers without committing to specific deadlines. Now-next later roadmaps are great for sharing your product strategy and priorities with large audiences (e.g., at an All-Hands or Town Hall meeting)

While this view is great for organizations that move quickly, you’ll want to keep things on track with a rigorous prioritization process. Otherwise, you risk having things in “later” stay there indefinitely, and ideas not aligned with your long-term strategy may make their way into the “now” or “next” buckets.

Example 4. Kanban roadmap

A Kanban roadmap is another delivery-focused roadmap for development teams. It helps product teams clearly group initiatives into buckets such as what is in the backlog , what you’re planning, what is in progress, and what you’ve completed.

One of the most significant advantages of a Kanban roadmap is that it allows product teams to communicate their near-term plans without committing to exact dates. You can showcase when you’re working on specific features and keep your delivery team motivated by reminding them what they’re building towards.

Product managers most commonly use timeline roadmaps to ensure alignment with stakeholders and cross-functional teams. Stakeholders can visually see key initiatives’ goals and duration, while cross-functional teams easily organize launch activities with clear timelines. Be wary about using tight timeframes as this can set burdensome expectations. Consider using a timeframe that works best to communicate your plans broadly. This may be monthly, quarterly, or any bucket of time you think works best for your needs or stakeholders’ needs.

Example 5. Features timeline roadmap

A Features timeline roadmap is an output-driven roadmap that allows you to set the time frame for an individual feature. Planning features and tracking progress with a timeline roadmap is ideal if you want to get a 1000-foot view of how work is progressing toward a deadline or time-bound milestone. You can track feature progress against specific deadlines and milestones and align internally with development teams on concrete dates. You can also allocate resources when and where they’re needed.

Example 6. Objectives timeline roadmap

For larger organizations and those working in more complex environments, there comes a time when senior executives and stakeholders want a more zoomed-out approach. An objectives timeline roadmap is an example of an outcome, not output-driven roadmap. This roadmap provides broad organization alignment on product direction. It’s easy for anyone to understand when you’ll work towards each of our business goals and where that sits relative to your most significant milestones.

Objectives timeline roadmaps are great to communicate your product strategy and goals across teams for the next 2-3 quarters. When using business-level objectives, this offers a clear connection between your product and business strategies and end deliverables, such as features.

When we decide which objectives to tackle next, we backward-plan from milestones in time (Gartner analyst briefings, industry conferences, marketing launches, commitments to strategic partners or major customers, etc.) and consider what would be most important to accomplish by then.

Example 7. Release timeline roadmap

When you’re planning objectives in time, you can remain high-level. But as you prepare for sprints and launch activities, you’ll want to decide which features to release together and when. Using a release timeline roadmap allows you to plan and communicate when you’ll work on releases in the near future with clear timeframes to cross-functional teams, like sales and customer success. Stakeholders can see what’s slated for the next app version, quarterly release, monthly bug fix, etc. With product management software, like Productboard, larger product organizations with multiple teams releasing features on different cadences can create multiple release groups to organize these and keep cross-functional teams in the know.

Plus, release timeline roadmaps are useful for creating a low-maintenance tactical roadmap to track progress against essential deadlines. If you’re working in an Agile environment, you may resist planning releases much more than 4-6 weeks in advance for the reasons cited earlier. A release timeline roadmap allows you to keep using your specific release objects, while also conveying a time horizon with any essential milestones or company deadlines.

Product roadmaps are critical for your success. Creating a great product without a roadmap is like going on a road trip without a map: if you’re lucky, you might eventually get to your destination, but you’ll likely end up in some run-down motel. You’ll also probably have to stop a bunch of times to ask for directions from people who had no idea what kind of trip you initially planned. Unlike road trips, product roadmaps are all about the destination, not the journey.

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Home Blog Business Product Roadmap: A Complete Guide for Product Managers

Product Roadmap: A Complete Guide for Product Managers

Product Roadmaps are an essential tool for any organization looking to clarify its product development process. Much is being said about how they can help teams visualize and keep an effective product development agenda over a specific period, but what does it truly bring to business professionals rather than a working standard in many industries?

In this article, we will cover in detail what a Product Roadmap is. Its story and application in Agile environments, such as the SCRUM methodology. We’ll navigate each step of the road, from ideation to how to successfully present a Product Roadmap. As an extra, stay tuned for common pitfalls in Product Roadmap creation and how to prevent them, as well as our recommendation for Product Roadmap PowerPoint templates. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is a Product Roadmap

Who owns the product roadmap in scrum, who is responsible for managing the product roadmap, who uses product roadmaps, why should you create a product roadmap, types of product roadmaps, which content to include in a product roadmap, 4-step process to build a product roadmap, how to plan technical debt in a product roadmap, how to prioritize items in a product roadmap, how to define metrics of success in a product roadmap, how to add multiple products to a single product roadmap file, design suggestions for product roadmaps, microsoft excel, microsoft powerpoint, microsoft project, google slides, zoho sprints, interactions with microsoft planner, how to present a product roadmap, updating a product roadmap.

• Reasons why your Product Roadmaps may fail

Best PowerPoint Templates for Product Roadmaps

Closing thoughts.

Whenever we mention a Product Roadmap, we refer to a high-level action plan of how a product or service will develop, laying out the goals to achieve over a time period. It is a versatile tool that can be adapted to showcase the evolution of a product/service to be released, as well as to upgrade an existing product or service with new functionalities. 

We can say a product roadmap is a shared document between different stakeholders that outlines a product’s vision, priorities, future outlook, and evolution over time. It serves the role of aligning the organization toward a fixed set of short and long-term goals that are strictly relevant to the product’s performance, whilst at the same time defining how these goals shall be achieved and by whom. Much like other types of roadmaps, a product roadmap is the execution plan of a product strategy.

What is a Roadmap in Agile

If you browse product roadmaps, their definition, or tools to create one, you are likely to come across mentions of roadmaps in Agile. For what refers to Agile practices , an Agile roadmap is a critical tool to understand the context in which daily work unfolds, as it is the guidance by which all efforts should be focused – hence the importance of sharing an agile roadmap with the entire group of people involved in the product development.

However, we must clarify that any product roadmap is not where to-do(s) tasks from individual projects are laid out. The product roadmap is a reference document where vision and strategy align; therefore, tasks required to complete an evolution stage in the roadmap have to be previously defined, with a timeframe for completion, and dependencies established (i.e., which tasks have to be completed in order for the upcoming ones to start).

SCRUM frameworks are the common application of product management roadmapping tools, and it is a common question to ask who owns these product roadmaps. The Product Manager is the owner of any product roadmap and the solely responsible for involving stakeholders and keeping them accountable to fulfill the tasks in time. 

Sometimes, Product Owners overlap in their role functions, transitioning into product managers, which is why people tend to confuse who is the actual owner of a product roadmap.

To be on the safe side, we would like to make this clarification. 

A Product Owner is a person that builds the vision for a product, meaning they handle the business side of the project.

The Project Manager is the person that handles the technical decisions of the product development. 

If the Product Owner and the Product Manager roles aren’t fulfilled by the same person, we highly encourage involving the Product Owner at each stage of the product development.

The product manager is the person in charge of the entire product lifecycle. Among the responsibilities of the product manager, we can find:

• Work as the strategic leader for the technical aspects of the product development.
• Gather ideas, relevant data, and strategic insights for any planning session.
• Coordinate the roadmap planning meetings.
• Communicate the strategic vision for the product clearly, so all team players are aligned with it.
• Organize and moderate the scoring discussion (meeting in which the team agrees on feature ideas for the product development).

At a corporate level, executives, customers, teams, and other relevant stakeholders are the audience of any product roadmap. Depending on whom shall see the document, is where you need to tailor the “vision” of this document to their interests. Let’s put some examples.

The Production Team of your organization will focus on the technical aspects of the product implementation and the deadlines to meet. The value of this document is linked to communicating, as detailed as possible, the information relevant to product features, their stage of development, or any upcoming change that may alter future tasks in the original plan.

In contrast, an Executive Team will focus on the strategic part of the product roadmap, how the vision for this product is aligned across all stages, which are the expected market numbers, deadlines, etc. And that’s just a side-by-side comparison of two Internal Roadmaps – we will expose the different types of product roadmaps later on in this guide.

As we mentioned earlier, product roadmaps are tools for strategic vision alignment . They bring clarity about a project’s outcome and help stakeholders to stay in touch with different areas and the impact of their work. 

Depending on the hierarchy level, the influence of product roadmaps may vary in daily work. For the leadership, this tool provides updates on pending and completed work, like a snapshot of what’s happening and what’s bound to happen. It reduces the unrequired technical jargon so leadership can focus on what boosts the team’s performance.

On the side of a product owner or a product manager, counting with a product road map, this tool helps unify teams, improving internal communication and putting the focus into effective task completion. 

For the team, learning how to define a product roadmap is the first step toward identifying dependencies in your product and sorting out which tasks should take priority. Teams should document the backlog of each sprint, which, in turn, helps to address where a revision of the original strategy happened, why it was triggered, and which was the outcome of such a resolution.

Alternatively, check our tutorial about how to create a roadmap in PowerPoint .

Internal Product Roadmaps

Internal roadmaps guide the efforts of any organization, and they can be tailored depending on the team reviewing the product development work. We can find internal roadmaps for sales, internal roadmaps for executives , and internal roadmaps for developers .

Internal roadmaps for executives highlight how to boost customer satisfaction, reach new markets, and drive growth through the new product. The vision is focused on terms of the company’s growth, and it must reflect the metrics that prove a good criterion. 

Internal roadmaps for sales have a bit of a hybrid purpose since they can also be used as external roadmaps. This implies that it’s not uncommon for sales representatives to show insights into the sales product roadmap with customers to boost the chances of closing a deal. In such cases, the internal roadmaps have to trim the expected launch dates in the sales presentation to avoid any potential compromise that cannot be fulfilled in time.

External Product Roadmaps

External roadmaps are documents shared with customers and prospects. Its relevance is to showcase the product’s benefits in their lives, hence why it is critical for these documents to be visually appealing and easy to understand. 

Any internal process is trimmed out of the external roadmap and has to offer realistic expectations. Do not list features you already know your team won’t be able to fulfill for the release stage.

Epic Roadmap

Epic roadmaps are mostly used in Jira software, and their purpose is to help Agile and DevOps methodologies to organize their work. We must understand three core concepts to comprehend the purpose of an Epic roadmap.

• Epics are cumulative workloads that can be broken down into smaller, simpler tasks.
• Stories are the sub-tasks that build one epic. If you break down an epic, you get a number of stories.

Initiatives can be defined as a collection of epics aligned toward the same vision.

Features Roadmap

This is one of the most commonly used roadmaps and is typically used externally. They help to communicate when new features will be released, and to which area they are focused (i.e., Consumer, Scalability, Performance, etc.)

Portfolio Roadmap

Whenever we need to display multiple products on a single view, portfolio roadmaps make this task an easy feat. They are tools used mostly by the leadership level, as they allow us to take the full dimension of projects running in parallel and how are HR and technology efforts allocated for each section.

Release Roadmap

Marketing and sales teams are the main users of this type of product roadmap since it is a tool to communicate all the activities linked with the release of a product. It is an outline in a timeline format of the dependency tasks to fulfill before the release, who is in charge of each task, and how they correlate between departments.

One clear example is to coordinate training sessions involving sales representatives and customer support about a new feature to be introduced in a product. Both departments must be aware of the ins and outs of this new functionality to attend to the customer’s demands properly. Still, the training course must be completed before the estimated release date.

Strategy Roadmap

A strategy roadmap is a high-level document used by the leadership to outline the areas in which an organization’s focus must change and why those changes are required concerning the organization’s vision. It is the step prior to a Strategy Plan as it implies the sequence in which changes ought to happen; in contrast, the strategic plan focuses on how to accomplish each stage and by which timeframe they should be completed.

Theme Roadmap

The term themes in product management refer to high-level goals to be completed in a specific timeframe. In Agile terms, themes are made of Initiatives, Epics, and Stories, as they cover significant areas of interest in a company. 

To clarify this point even further, let’s we will illustrate a typical Theme-based Roadmap example:

A technology giant wants to increase customer loyalty by improving their existing features according to customer feedback ( Theme ). They identify three pillars in which their efforts can take action: smartwatches, mobile phones, and tablets ( Initiatives ). The company proceeds to introduce an upgrade to its upcoming smartwatch model to enhance GPS tracking for outdoor swimming ( Epic ). To accomplish such a goal, they previously had to improve the time span of water resistance, water resistance depth, introduce weather forecasts and sync no-swim area warnings from information retrieved by the coast guards ( Stories ).

Technology Roadmap

Technology roadmaps are low-level documents that aim to organize and prioritize tasks for the production team. It is an internal document, and product managers can instantly address tasks that demand more human capital and monetary resources. It can be used in conjunction with the Capacity Roadmap for inter-department collaboration.

A software roadmap, a crucial component within the broader technology roadmap, specifically outlines the development lifecycle, key milestones, and updates for software projects. This distinction is vital for clarifying the roadmap’s scope, as it allows for the detailed planning and execution of software-related tasks while maintaining an overview of all technological advancements within the organization. Agile methodologies, commonly employed in both hardware and software development, highlight the roadmap’s flexibility and adaptability. An example of an agile-based technology roadmap, which might include a dedicated software roadmap section, can be visualized using our Agile Product Release PowerPoint Roadmap Template . This approach ensures a holistic view of technological progress while giving special attention to the nuances of software development.

Now-Next-Later Roadmap

This product management tool is ideal for prioritizing tasks, as we get the three-time dimensions each organization constantly moves in between: Now (present tasks), Next (upcoming, immediate tasks), and Later (planned tasks, either mid-term or long-term).

Tasks must be strictly linked to the product’s vision and serve a quantifiable business objective. Some software solutions like Jira offer native functions to create this kind of roadmap. If you prefer to count on a visually-appealing solution, you can check the Now Next Later slides for PowerPoint. 

Opportunity Roadmap

Sales departments use an Opportunity Roadmap as a  tool to align future initiatives with problems their potential customers currently experience. It serves as a backlog of ideas that help build feature roadmaps, giving enough time to test and experiment with results before defining them as features to be added to the product.

Customer feedback, market research , business goals, insights from I&D teams, etc., feed the information to build an opportunity roadmap. 

Capacity Roadmap

It has multiple aspects similar to the release roadmap. Still, it helps departments to communicate by acknowledging when the right resources for each stage will be available and how much time they consume per task. They are critical for management and leadership to acknowledge if production resources are properly allocated per task and if budget adjustments ought to be made.

How to build a Product Roadmap

In this section, we will explain how to create a product roadmap. Let’s get started by analyzing which content to include in a product roadmap and then we present a 4-step process to create your product roadmap.

The first step you have to take on how to build a product roadmap is to define its type, as content requirements are different from each other. A technology roadmap will list the number of technology-related tasks the development team must complete and by which timeframe, as well as indicate to which area they belong (infrastructure, UX/UI, mobile app, web, etc.) 

It is critical to trim the information to only list the key points that make the document understandable at first glance. Overindulging in information results in dense documents that look intimidating to read or take an immense amount of time to update. Both outcomes are failures in product roadmap design.

Step 1 – Tailor the product strategy

Acknowledging the strategy goal and initiatives for the product development is the starting point of any product roadmap. Stakeholders must understand the “why” behind a product and align decisions to support that strategy course. This can also be reinforced if your product strategy gears around your potential/actual customers, their needs, and your market strategy. All those elements should be informed in your product roadmap.

Step 2 – Organizing ideas

As previously mentioned, the influx of ideas retrieved from customers’ insights plays a key role in a product’s success. Internal teams must approach ideas from a multi-disciplinary view and sort them according to how they shall serve the product regarding scalability, performance, brand growth, etc.

How do we then prioritize ideas? It is undoubtedly a problem, especially if two different departments (i.e., development and sales) have contrasting views about features or conflicts in terms of technology. Sort out this brainstorming process by scoring these ideas based on the KPIs that back up your product strategy. You can represent this process by using bar charts or percentages and culling them according to this criterion:

• Pending Review
• Already Implemented
• Future Iteration

Step 3 – Listing Features and Requirements

Organizations can use a feature product roadmap to align their efforts and proceed to develop new features by their priority level. An ideal classification would be:

• Key Feature
• Marketplace

Then, we can cross-reference the features with the technology roadmap and the opportunities roadmap. This three-tier process helps teams pinpoint which features are critical for the product performance and which are merely design-based decisions that won’t result in losing customers or exposing sensitive data.

After the features are sorted by category and priority, product development teams must update their technology roadmap to meet the deadlines for introducing new features.

Step 4 – Work with releases

We don’t have to associate the term “release” with a fully-completed product. Much like what happens in software development, with beta versions being released for users to test new functionalities, your product can have a similar process that also drives flow into development.

These release dates must be realistic, with backup plans that don’t compromise the release of another feature (to avoid triggering a chain reaction that hinders the final release date). Be sure to cross-reference these release dates with the capacity roadmap, so you have an overview of when your resources can meet the estimated deadlines. 

Addressing the impact of technical debt is one of the critical responsibilities of the product manager. This accumulation of work is natural in product development. Still, it is not a direct consequence of taking shortcuts – sometimes deadlines must be met, and product developers must secure functionality with short-term solutions. 

Our recommendation is to work with a factor of safety for milestones, which implies giving an extra margin of time that can help fix the low-effort technical debt. At the same time, you can list a technical debt swim lane in your product roadmaps, identifying the individual technical debts by area or relating them with an internal code that references the features roadmap. 

This technical debt roadmap must be placed inside the technological roadmap, which is relevant to the product developers. Ideally, teams should review technical debt after sprints to avoid delaying tasks when the project reaches its final stages. Such practice helps teams to address the importance of efficiency in workflows.

Defining which tasks should take priority or become part of a critical path is challenging if we’re not in touch with the product’s vision. For this reason, we invite you to follow these suggestions to speed up the process and know when a task should be prioritized over others.

User’s insights

Working with user feedback is a way in which product managers can locate what’s strictly required to improve for a better UX performance. For example, if an application crashes when the user tries to access a specific function, that situation doesn’t appear in the testing environment. It is a top priority for the development team to go over that problem.

Users can also suggest features they would like to see in future updates. Still, we can learn much about consumer behavior by implementing tools like website heatmaps .

Respecting the critical path

There is a compendium of co-dependent functions to ensure our product’s functionality. That’s known as the Critical Path , and we can speak in terms of a general critical path or a function-dependent critical path (meaning the items required to make a feature work). If improving or troubleshooting some of those features is a pending task, be sure to prioritize this kind of work over adding new functions.

Value vs. Complexity

We don’t have to assume that all critical tasks bear the same complexity level. In the same line of thought, not all complex tasks bring product value, but in some cases, complex tasks are required to ensure the functionality of our product.

To preserve a non-biased approach to this dilemma, we can create a 2×2 matrix in which we can organize pending tasks according to this criterion:

• Tasks that bring value and have low complexity.
• Tasks that bring value and have high complexity.
• Tasks that do not bring value and have low complexity.
• Tasks that do not bring value and have high complexity.

Start with the tasks that bring value and have low complexity, followed by the ones that meet the no-value/low complexity criteria. Why? Because it is a good way to keep technical debt at bay. If a task that brings value and has high complexity is also part of the critical path, then that said task should be the top priority. For the tasks that don’t bring value and have high complexity, organize them according to the closest value reference they may bring; otherwise, ditch them altogether or opt for value-worth alternatives.

Scoring model

This approach works similarly to the 2nd step on how to build a roadmap. Your team should implement a scoring model by which stakeholders assign a score to each task by category, cross-referenced with their expected business value. Variables such as complexity, implementation costs, risks, and operational costs must be considered; then, you can rank tasks by that scoring model.

The main advantage of using a system like this is that you give voice to your team members rather than blindly assigning tasks without considering their insights.

Gathering ideas from an Opportunity Roadmap

After all vital tasks were prioritized, it is worth checking what our Opportunity Roadmap may bring in terms of innovation. Remember, this tool is crafted after I&D research and market research, among other actors.

Quality ideas may be neglected as other tasks take higher priority in the task queue. Give your team 10 extra minutes to discuss potential ideas to extract from the opportunity roadmap, then classify the approved ideas using another of the methods discussed in this guide.

We can name countless KPIs or OKRs for product management , but the reality is you need to ask yourself these questions to define which metrics of success your project requires.

Which metrics are compatible with my product

E-Commerce products have their own set of metrics, such as impressions, CTR, bounce rate, etc. These metrics are by no means applicable to the manufacturing industry, where OEE, throughput rate, capacity utilization, and many others are the values we ought to track for an efficient product development process. 

Which are the stakeholders for the metrics I track

Depending on the audience of the product roadmap, you need to tailor the metrics to present to show improvement from the last iteration or signal potential production problems. For the leadership level, production costs, time spent per product, market value, etc., can be metrics that guide decisions or impact release dates. On the other hand, the development team will focus on metrics relevant to the technical area, as it is the method by which they benchmark the team’s performance.

Listing multiple products on a single product roadmap is commonly done by the leadership level. It gives us an instant overview of parallel production, particularly emphasizing teams’ performance. It is, however, a challenge on its own due to these potential hazards:

• If you work with multiple products, the detail to showcase per product is limited. You cannot compact information and expect the same level of understanding as with individual product roadmaps.
• Updating is a complex task for product managers, and it can lead to delays or overlapping content.
• If you present multiple products, the leadership can have different views on your prioritization system, inducing delays on individual projects to speed up other flagship products for the company. 

To create a quality multi-item product roadmap, please follow these steps.

Step 1 – Define the goals for the roadmap

Place yourself in the shoes of the audience. Which items will pique their interest? What is it that they intend to learn from the roadmap? Then, look to align the goals of each product to the overall objective to present: innovation results, performance improvement, technical problems, etc.

Bear in mind the organization’s vision and work your way to make each product highlight how they fit into it. You can also hire a product management consulting firm that can help you plan and create a multi-product roadmap.

Step 2 – Select the products to list in the roadmap

The placement of each product in the roadmap document is not a random sorting. They should be listed according to their priority level in alignment with the company’s goals. If two products share the same priority tier, put first the one with a more completion rate or a shorter timespan for its development, then list down the second option. 

Step 3 – Designing the product roadmap

Work your way to present the document by using a product roadmap template . As a tool, it simplifies the design-related options and gives you a framework by which each product has the same number of goals and key initiatives to showcase. 

It is vital to offer a clear picture of each product’s goals, which are the metrics of success used to determine evolution over time, and the value they deliver to the organization. 

We advise restricting the color palette to no more than 3 contrasting colors, as otherwise, it would distract the interest from the content to design decisions. As a plus, include the resources deployed per project and which are strictly required for each project to continue advancing. It is a good practice to prevent resource reassignment when you expect it the least.

Step 4 – Create cross-references between the general product roadmap and each product roadmap

In some cases, the leadership may lose focus on vital aspects of a product, hence requesting a more “detailed” view. If you were cautious enough, by assigning a code system to each product, you could present the documentation linked to each product professionally. This can mean the individual product roadmap for that project, reports, analyses, etc. 

The first design element you must take into consideration is that product roadmaps can be represented in two formats: timeline or swimlane (similar to a Gantt chart), which are used for time-bound tasks, and cards (their implementation resembles a deck aligned on a board – they are not time dependant).

Work with color as a friend to easily identify tags, categories, statuses, or priorities. Don’t focus on creating beautiful color schemes – sometimes clearly contrasting colors are what the roadmap needs to visualize the information quickly. 

For timeline diagrams, implementing a bar fill helps to instantly visualize an epic or story’s completion percentage. Depending on the software you use, updating these bars can be a nightmare for complex projects, so we recommend using this design technique on low-scale projects that will be updated constantly. From a psychological side, it is a gamification tactic that helps workers feel inspired to keep completing tasks as the bar gets filled.

It is important to understand dependencies on product roadmaps, and much like flowcharts , lines, and arrows are visual aids that help us understand the relationship between tasks. You can use a color scheme to differentiate between critical and common dependencies. As a practice, that helps to prioritize upcoming tasks. Remember to highlight the critical path with a unique color or line weight, especially if the document is shared across departments. 

Tools to build a Product Roadmap

Jira is the option preferred by Agile projects. It provides an easy-to-use user interface with powerful tools such as Kanban boards, reporting templates, DevOps tools, dependency & capacity tracking, etc. 

Timelines are entirely customizable to the user’s preference, not altering the document for all members in the organization, which helps users to feel more comfortable with the method used to understand the information. Another fantastic feature is that we can create tasks from the roadmap view, so there’s transparency across all levels of the organization and accountability. All users can see who is in charge of the task and when it’s expected to be delivered.

We can find integrations for the Adobe suite, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 & legacy versions, Slack, Zendesk, Zoom, Dropbox, etc.

As part of the Microsoft Office (now Microsoft 365) suite, MS Excel offers plenty of tools to create any product roadmap from scratch. The problem lies in one variable: Excel’s lack of a user-friendly approach when managing formulas. 

If your document is to be managed by several users, be cautious about restricting functions that only the product manager should alter and preserve a backup copy to prevent disaster. Documents linked by reference from other documents are susceptible to experiencing bugs because one person mismanaged a data input, creating a trail of errors across all related documents. 

Unlike what happens with PowerPoint, design-based choices in Excel are restricted, so if graphics are a priority for your team, opt for PowerPoint.

If you intend to work with professional product roadmap templates, PowerPoint is the option. Saving time with design decisions is a life-changer. You can tailor the document to your branding style, import tables from Excel, and do many other productivity tasks due to its integration with the Office ecosystem, add-ins, and third-party tools.

We recommend you check our detailed guide on creating a roadmap in PowerPoint and our selection of roadmap PPT templates .

Regarding roadmaps, Microsoft Project is the tool for the task. Although ideally, you can work your way only with MS Project, the usual method business professionals use is a collaboration between Project and PowerPoint: you create the required assets in Project, using all the tools offered to design a product roadmap. You export Microsoft Project files into PowerPoint to give the design aesthetic to your presentation or report.

An important feature to highlight is that you can alter the information inside PowerPoint itself or in the original Project file, then update the imported data in PowerPoint.

Google Slides is the free alternative to creating a product roadmap in PowerPoint. You can work with product roadmap templates for Google Slides – which offer almost the same functionality as PowerPoint ones – or start from scratch. Regarding integrations, you can import data from other Google Slides documents, Google Sheets, or third-party extensions.

All the information is preserved in a cloud-based format, meaning multiple users can access and edit the document in real-time.

Zoho Sprints is preferred when working in Scrum teams as it provides easy in-depth collaboration between parties. You can work with native roadmapping tools, task scheduling & tracking, among other project management tools. The UI is friendly to approach, with a drag-and-drop system that helps team members visualize each task.

You can work with the integrations provided for Microsoft 365, Google Drive, Zapier, Zendesk, and more. 

Microsoft Planner is a web-based application offered by Microsoft in their Microsoft 365 subscription plan. This project planning application is also compatible with Android and iOS, but its versatile use allows business professionals to speed up processes. You can run your product management meeting in Microsoft Teams, bring up tasks from Microsoft Planner, or even create them ireal-timeme. Such tasks are then available for all members across the organization.

This Kanban solution allows you to export data directly into applications like MS Excel or PowerBI. You can visualize your team’s progress on each task or initiative; therefore, it is an ideal application to align your team’s effort without requiring extra expensive software solutions.

After defining your goals, selecting your tools, and designing your product roadmap presentation, it is time to deliver it to an audience. Here are some insights from our expertise on how to make a successful product roadmap presentation. We also invite you to check this video that summarizes the process of creating a roadmap presentation.

Consider the context

You need to be mindful of where you are presenting your roadmap and the stakeholders involved in the meeting. Your approach has to be crystal-clear about your expectations from the meeting, the precision with which you showcase the information, and how to command instructions from your team at the end of the meeting.

Technical groups expect proof-based results from what you consider progress or a delay and why they should work on a new feature instead of prioritizing another. In turn, the marketing team doesn’t want to know the technical reasons why a feature cannot be implemented if they need it as a key strategic element in their sales propaganda. They will understand monetary/capacity-related reasons but lose themselves in lengthy technical jargon.

Consider the commitments you made

This is related to keeping your product roadmap as realistic as possible. The document is shared across different levels of your organization, with them using the information to fit the needs of their working area. For example, you cannot list a feature you know is impossible to deliver on the expected date or, worse, impossible to build. Why? Because different departments may be reaching out to potential buyers or investors promoting such features, to find out later it was a ruse. 

Keep a backlog of the interactions you made with all stakeholders involved. Then, check the changes made in the process and see how they align with your prior commitments. If you face breaking a previously-accorded commitment, gather fact-based information to expose the case as clearly as possible, offering actionable alternatives as compensation. In this regard, keeping product roadmap documents updated is vital to prevent last-minute surprises during product roadmap presentations.

Acknowledge the interests of different stakeholders

Product roadmap presentations are not an event that happens in one instance only; they are ongoing meetings in which you have to discuss the advancement of your project. But what if said progress may be controversial for some parts?

Planning stakeholder interviews at the initial stages of the product roadmap creation serves to comprehend those interests and build trust. It can bring insights into which modifications to the project may suit a group of stakeholders and how to prepare your arguments to defend the project when positions don’t align. 

Stick to a presentation agenda

Product roadmap presentations can turn into nightmare-length events if you don’t lay out the objectives of the meeting on the first slide. You need to consider the required time to introduce the milestones completed before the meeting, your observations regarding the process flow, what could be improved, and your expectations for the upcoming meeting, plus give extra time for a Q&A session.

Depending on the audience for your presentation, you can repurpose the agenda slide for presentations with different teams. During the Q&A session, practice active listening, and note down or record (if allowed) the comments made by stakeholders. That information can be used as a reference for new action courses.

Deliver a distributable

It is a good practice to allow stakeholders to analyze the contents of the product roadmap some minutes prior to the meeting, so they focus on what you have to mention rather than analyzing graphs and charts while you speak. You can work with these formats to distribute the document:

• Physical (printed format)
• Cloud-based (Notion, Google Slides)
• Internal platform access

Just as important as defining priorities and building a roadmap, updating that product roadmap is one of the core responsibilities of product managers. 

The product roadmap update ratio depends on how often meetings are hosted. Once a month is a good practice, but complex, large-scale projects can work with bi-monthly or quarterly revisions. 

What should you include in a Product Roadmap update

There are 4 critical points to address in a product roadmap update:

• Customer/Team Feedback: Grab insights from internal and external resources to your project for an accurate picture of where the project stands. This information should feed the technology and features roadmap with changes to be made.
• Technical Debt: Don’t wait until the last minute to address technical debt. During your product roadmap revision, give enough time to each department to report their technical debt, then devise a plan for how you can reduce it during the next sprint.
• Progress : It is time to see the full picture, so compare your progress metrics to the success metrics you initially established. Discuss with your team the highlights and how to fix whatever issue affected optimal performance or progress rate. 
• Changes backlog : Since you are updating the roadmap, it would be wise to keep a backlog of all the important decisions that led to the roadmap update and the reasons behind them. Although a bit tedious, this practice can save an insane amount of hours when contrasting opinions put work to a halt. And yes, going back 2 or 3 updates to check why you made a certain decision is a scenario that happens far too often. 

Reasons why your Product Roadmap may fail

#1 – limiting autonomy at the team level.

When the product roadmap deadlines are too restrictive, teams feel they are losing their autonomy and usual workflow to serve the needs of other departments. This harms the company’s culture, the innovation potential and builds resentment between coworkers as some teams may feel others have more time to perform the required tasks. 

The best approach to prevent this problem is to have an open mind about updating the product roadmap due to suggestions from different teams and having useful feedback after each sprint is completed. Agile methodologies focus on constant improvement, not a fixed mindset, which your team should embrace as a core value.

#2 – Losing perspective of your customers

How often do we delay deadlines because we feel the current project stage is not “perfect” or that another iteration may solve extra, unsolicited problems? Product developers often fall prey to focusing too much on individual features rather than seeing the full picture. Perhaps your customer doesn’t care if your application’s loading time is reduced by 2.4 seconds, but they shall certainly care if they cannot go through the checkout stage.

First, base your working methodology on fulfilling epics, not picking random stories because “they look important.” Keep an eye on the hierarchy of processes, then opt between tasks of the same level by priority. Measure your progress by contrasting the performance of this new iteration with the feedback received by your customers. Fix crucial items that don’t allow a quality user experience, then move on to the accessory items.

#3 – Working with a faulty tech stack/team

If your product management workflow still depends on pen & paper, it’s time to address whether your organization’s processes are outdated. Archaic work methodologies consume vital time for the product development cycle and demand a higher budget. Instead, put the investment into automating tasks and how to enhance existing processes.

Acquiring new tools for crafting a product roadmap is only one step on the ladder. Your personnel has to master a variety of functions in those tools to perform their daily tasks. They need to work on communication techniques that drive value, not attend meetings to fulfill a task. Using the “constant improvement” mindset, set time aside for your team to attend continuing education programs, which can be hosted in-company, so the content aligns with your organization’s needs.  

#4 – Messy or difficult-to-understand information

Suppose the product roadmap goes in the “too detailed” direction; the information may seem misleading since the strategy is cluttered with unnecessary pieces of information for the target audience they have. For example, providing a technology roadmap to the sales team, filled with technical jargon, when they need a clear external product roadmap to show potential customers.

Focus on two core items: the strategy and the target audience for the roadmap view. 

In this section, we will list what we consider the best PPT templates to use in product roadmap presentations.

1. Agile Product Release PowerPoint Roadmap Template

This editable product release template can be used to help to visualize deadlines and requirements for agile product release sprints. In a two-background format, this roadmap template signals stages in contrasting color schemes, allowing us to allocate three different releases per slide. Each stage is subdivided into segments containing the sprints.

Presenters can alter the length of each segment according to their needs and list brief information in the provided placeholder text area.

Use This Template

2. Now Next Later Slide Template for PowerPoint

If you are looking for a visual method for how to sort tasks according to priority, then this template can be the answer to implementing a Now Next Later product roadmap into your project. With catchy 3D graphics, this product roadmap presentation template brings multiple formats to list tasks and then sort them according to the period in which they will take action.

This tactic PowerPoint diagram helps to break down different stages of a product development life cycle and allocate tasks conveniently.

3. Swimlane Timeline Templates

The swimlane model is a graphic method in which we can showcase parallel processes and get an instant overview of their progression rate. This product roadmap PPT template helps to communicate the status of a project in different dimensions (i.e., marketing, UX, infrastructure, etc.), as well as to create a multi-product product roadmap presentation due to its easy-to-understand timeline format.

This presentation file contains 4 editable phases of a project, contrasted with a 5-Quarter timeline, with an indication mark for the current presentation date. Use this high-level product roadmap tool to provide detailed information on your project’s status.

4. Product Roadmap Gantt Chart Template

There are multiple methods to approach the design of a product roadmap, and using the Gantt Chart format is a classic. This Gantt Chart template offers a first slide with a layout organized around a timeline. That timeline template can be interpreted as the time required for product development and is contrasted with the 4-Quarter time organization. Presenters can add milestones by editing the dots included in the timeline and listing information in the text placeholder areas.

The second slide is a multi-project approach with individual timelines. To preserve a decluttered design, the text placeholder areas do not contain boxes but rather fully editable one-line legends. Its grayscale color scheme makes it adaptable to any corporate presentation file.

5. Product Roadmap Cards PowerPoint Template

Not all product roadmap presentations have to follow the timeline format. Using a card layout for feature product roadmaps usually helps visualize more information or easily sort out tasks by category.

Each card on this PowerPoint template lists a title placeholder area, subtitle, brief description, and two optional button-format text sections, in which presenters can include relevant information such as internal codes for the parent initiative or epic and category. The colors used in the card titles can serve as a visual cue to reference either category or initiatives.

6. Folded Product Roadmap Timeline Template

Using a 3D product roadmap presentation template is a great method to catch the interest of stakeholders at the initial product development meetings. With a folded 3D format, this product roadmap slide can represent the “Now Next Later” metaphor, visualizing horizons from the past, present, immediate future, and long-term vision.

7. Free Roadmap Slides for PowerPoint

If you desire to introduce the roadmap metaphor as visually clear as possible, then this free roadmap PowerPoint template should participate in your presentations.

Fully editable placeholder text areas. We list a selection of road signs to explain detours in your plan or how to face opposing paths.

8. 7 Arrows Milestones PowerPoint Roadmap Template

Working with arrow diagrams is an effective solution to indicate the path a project is taking from inception to its release. With the 7 Arrows Milestone template for PowerPoint, you can introduce the different phases of your product development with professionally-designed PowerPoint shapes.

The main slide contains the full path, which is later highlighted per slide to discuss each of the seven phases the project will transit.

9. 4 Steps Technology Roadmap PowerPoint Template

For those seeking a classic corporate aesthetic, this technology roadmap template is ideal for any product development presentation. The bottom part features a placeholder text area to indicate the strategy to which this technology roadmap serves. Next, we have an arrow diagram to list the different stages the roadmap has to transit, with a blue to green gradient in the direction of completion. Finally, we have the top section where we can introduce up to 4 different technologies for this product roadmap.

10. Curved Roadmap with Poles Milestones PowerPoint Timeline

We complete this list with a visual metaphor template of a roadmap, listing a selection of milestones across a path. The yearly indication can serve to bring a historical background on how the ideas that led to the product development took shape and which related initiatives can be referenced.

Product roadmaps are vital for product development teams to track progress and align the organization’s vision across short-term and long-term goals on each project. Their usage is the first step in crafting a product strategy as they help transparently convey information, outlining the vision, direction, and priorities for a specific period.

This product management tool isn’t restricted to the usage of new products; as we have seen, it is an essential tool for outlining product upgrades or revisions. Their value in agile practices is widely known, so we must acknowledge their potential for daily work and strive for excellence in multi-disciplinary team collaborations. For more information, check our article about product management best practices .

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• Product management
• Types of roadmaps
• Product roadmap

How to create a product roadmap

Last updated: March 2024

A lot goes into a product roadmap. Customer ideas, feature requests, internal input, and backlogs of work all inform the various components . What gets included in your roadmap should be closely aligned with the product strategy that you have already defined — helping the broader product team focus on the work that matters most.

These choices are made after careful review and consideration from a cross-functional product team with the product manager at the helm — steering the rudder so that any roadmap decisions support your overall vision.

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is a tool for communicating your product vision and putting product plans in action. It outlines your high-level goals and initiatives , releases and features that support them, and a timeline for implementing all of the work.

Create your product roadmap in Aha! Roadmaps. Try it now .

If you are ready to see your product plans come to life, read on to discover why product roadmaps matter, the five steps to building one, and tips for getting started.

Jump ahead to any section:

Why are product roadmaps important?

Who is responsible for the product roadmap, types of product roadmaps, product roadmap templates.

How to approach roadmapping

5 essential steps for building your roadmap

How product roadmaps are used by other teams.

It can also help to see real product roadmaps in action before you dive into creating your own. In this video tutorial , Aha! product experts Mark and Rose walk through how to build roadmaps with the right details for the right audience. This will help you understand how product managers present product roadmaps to customers, teammates, and leadership.

Editor's note: Although the video below still shows core functionality within Aha! software, some of the interface might be out of date. View our knowledge base for the most updated insights into Aha! software.

• Roadmapping: Your starter guide

How do product roadmap tools work?

How do product managers build the right roadmap?

Roadmap best practices: How to build a brilliant roadmap

Excellent product roadmap examples

Downloadable product roadmap templates

Roadmap types and uses

When there are many paths you can take, you need guardrails to keep you focused on the destination. Brian de Haaff Aha! co-founder and CEO

Product managers depend on roadmaps for all kinds of scenarios. You could use a product roadmap to manage the launch of a new product , major enhancements to an existing one, or even updates to an internal application for the organization. If you need a reliable tool to help see your product plans through and reach your goals, a product roadmap is the way to go.

Creating and delivering a product is a herculean effort. It takes a serious commitment to your goals across the organization to pull it off well — from product management and product marketing to engineering. Your product roadmap is the best representation of this commitment. It is a promise to your team and your customers that you will be accountable to the most meaningful work.

The time to build your roadmap is when strategic product planning is done and the groundwork is laid for what you want to deliver and when. This is a big moment — you are at the start of a thrilling journey to deliver new value to your customers. Now you can build a product roadmap to chart your path forward.

Introduction to product strategy

Roadmap best practices

• The Aha! Framework for product development

The exercise of building a roadmap can be the impetus for conversations about where you will invest your efforts and why. When you connect your product strategy to implementation, you will always be able to trace the impact of your work with clarity.

Product managers own the product roadmap. As a product manager, you lead the charge in collecting research, ideas, and feedback, translating and prioritizing these materials into features, and ultimately building the roadmap itself. Once it is built, you will share the roadmap and any progress with stakeholders. You also identify the right roadmaps to build for your team and when .

That said, the best product roadmaps involve cross-functional collaboration. Your work as a product manager impacts other groups, and you need their input and participation to deliver a Complete Product Experience (CPE). The roadmap is a central place to come together around your CPE — the visibility into what is coming next helps the entire organization prioritize and plan for the new experience you will deliver.

And the more inclusive your roadmapping process is, the greater organizational alignment and support you will have when you release that new experience. When you rally other teams around your product roadmap along the way, your product's success is a collective celebration.

Product roadmaps evolve. You should continuously adjust your roadmap throughout the lifecycle of your product based on shifting customer needs and market demand. Forward-thinking product managers see a product roadmap as a dynamic compass.

Because different teams will look for different things on your roadmap, you will like want to create different views of it. Depending on your audience, you may choose from a few types of product roadmaps to clearly present the most relevant view. Each roadmap type shows similar information presented in a slightly different way — usually with varying degrees of specificity.

Here are six common types of product roadmaps and what makes each of them useful:

Related: Examples of compelling roadmaps

Difference between product roadmaps and other terms

What is the difference between a product roadmap and the product vision? How does it compare to a release plan? If you are new to product development, it might sound as though these terms are referencing similar things. In reality each has a distinct definition and purpose. The table below will help you understand some of this commonly confused terminology:

Product development teams vary in terms of sophistication and needs. You might be able to get going with static Excel roadmaps , especially early on. But when you are ready, you can use purpose-built tools to quickly create, customize, and share your roadmaps.

Many product teams use the product roadmap templates that are available in roadmapping software like Aha! Roadmaps — this is the best way to keep everyone aligned and your product roadmap automatically updated.

We also offer lightweight roadmaps as whiteboard templates . It can be useful to start your roadmap on a whiteboard and later convert elements from the board directly to features on your roadmap .

Start with the whiteboard template below — with a free trial .

Start using this template now

We have also put together downloadable roadmap templates for you below. Adjust these to meet your needs.

Goals product roadmap Excel template

Use this product roadmap template to visualize high-level product goals. This view is helpful when you need to align the team on your product strategy and provide status updates to leadership.

Portfolio product roadmap Excel template

If you are managing multiple products, portfolio roadmaps display your planned releases for multiple products in a single view. This will give you a full picture of progress and help internal teams understand how their plans relate to one another.

Product release roadmap template

Product release roadmaps are convenient for displaying the key activities, like phases and milestones, that need to happen to deliver your product update to customers. For example, the release roadmap template below gives the team an easy way to visualize release plans as you prepare to launch a new experience to customers. You can show all the cross-functional activities the team needs to complete, along with the timeline for delivery — all in a single view.

Product feature roadmap template

A product feature roadmap shows your timeline for delivering new functionality to customers. This template is helpful for communicating a deeper level of detail than you will see on a release roadmap, including individual feature statuses.

Agile product roadmap template

In this agile product roadmap, swimlanes show how epics align with strategic themes . This roadmap view lets the engineering team see how their daily work relates to the big-picture plan.

Building a roadmap is a commendable stride toward product greatness. Moving forward, your product roadmap will be the best reflection of your progress and impact. Keep planning , collaborating, and updating your roadmap so that your work is always in motion and up-to-date.

How to approach creating a product roadmap

Building a product roadmap is complex and dynamic work . The process starts with strategy — you must establish the product goals and initiatives that your efforts will support. Once those are defined, you can decide which releases and features are best aligned with your strategy and then visualize it all on a timeline.

A few considerations will shape your roadmapping process. One is your audience — what you show on your roadmap depends on your intended viewers. In the table above, you saw how different types of roadmaps help to highlight different elements. As you build and customize your product roadmap , you can make additional decisions about which details to include (and which to leave out) so that the information portrayed is relevant to whoever is viewing it.

For example, the leadership team will want to understand the strategic importance of what you will deliver, conveyed through roll-up relationships between major releases and associated goals and initiatives . Your product marketing team, on the other hand, will be more concerned with the details and dependencies — so they can track and visualize moving pieces leading up to a product launch and coordinate all go-to-market plans accordingly.

You might share a version of your roadmap with customers too. Customers will want to see what is upcoming — especially any critical functionality they need. On a customer-facing roadmap, you might choose to show a broader release time frame instead of an exact date so that you have flexibility to shift if necessary.

Your product roadmap will also reflect the development methodology that your organization follows. For example, an agile team will create a product roadmap that is incremental and flexible to accommodate changes in customer needs and the market. But product roadmaps for organizations following a traditional waterfall approach will be more fixed — conveying a long-term commitment to building specific features within a given time frame.

Components of a product roadmap

The details and context may vary, but all product roadmaps should include a few key elements . Here is a quick overview of the main components you need:

Goals: Measurable, time-bound objectives with clearly defined success metrics. Goals represent the critical accomplishments needed to deliver your product.

Initiatives: High-level themes of work describing how your efforts will contribute to your goals. On a roadmap, initiatives show how specific releases and features relate to your strategy.

Releases: A launch of new product functionality represented on a timeline. Releases often contain multiple features that get delivered at the same time.

Epics: Larger bodies of work (like categories) that typically span multiple releases. Epics break down into smaller features that are delivered incrementally.

Features: A specific piece of new or improved functionality that results in value to users. Features can be related to capabilities, components, appearance, and performance.

Timeline: A visualization of when product releases will occur over time. The time scale can range anywhere from days to quarters or years depending on the amount of work and level of detail involved in a particular release.

With these components and considerations in mind, here are the five main steps to building an excellent product roadmap:

1. Define your product strategy

As mentioned above, setting strategic product goals and initiatives is an important first step in building a roadmap. Strategy is the "why" behind your product — it explains how your efforts will support the overall business. You will also need a strong product vision — capturing who your customers are, what they need, and how you will go to market with your offering. Together, the elements of your product strategy will inform everything that goes on your roadmap.

This is an example of strategic product goals in Aha! Roadmaps .

2. Review and manage ideas

Most product teams have a constant influx of product ideas from customers and customer-facing internal teams. When these ideas are organized and prioritized , they are valuable input for deciding what to put on your roadmap. For an objective method of idea evaluation, try scoring ideas based on metrics that reflect your strategy.

This is a real-time summary of customer ideas, as featured in Aha! Ideas .

3. Define features and requirements

This is when your product roadmap starts to take shape. With your goals, initiatives, and prioritized ideas to guide you, identify the specific product features that you want to deliver. Use a template or tool to put your features into words, add the necessary details in the requirements, and group related ones into epics (if needed). Anything valuable that does not fit on the first iteration of your product roadmap can be saved for later in your product backlog.

At this stage, you can also translate your features into user stories to describe the benefit from the customer's perspective. User stories give your engineering team the context they need to implement the best solutions.

You can easily organize and categorize features Aha! Roadmaps .

Related: User stories vs. requirements

4. Organize into releases

Up to this point, you have focused on defining the "why" and the "what" for your product roadmap — next, you will think about the "when." Once your features are prioritized and sorted, you can plot out your delivery timeline with releases . Releases are often organized by product launch but some teams prefer to arrange their roadmaps based on development capacity.

These are product releases organized in a Gantt chart view in Aha! Roadmaps.

5. Choose roadmap views

To get your product roadmap up and running, the final step is to visualize everything you have defined up to this point. Try roadmap templates or a roadmapping software tool to experiment with different roadmap views. Consider the following questions to help you decide what to include:

Who needs to see this product roadmap?

What is the most important information I want to convey?

Does my audience care more about the big picture or details?

Does my audience need to know general timing or exact dates?

Build this product roadmap using Aha! Roadmaps .

Related guide: How to build a brilliant product roadmap

Additional product roadmap resources

Now that you know the basics, here are some extra tips and tools to help you build your best product roadmap.

Start by looking at some excellent examples for inspiration.

Explore best practices for product roadmapping to help frame your approach and make your roadmap visually appealing.

Experiment with different product roadmap styles using PowerPoint and Excel templates.

Try purpose-built product roadmapping software to build a custom roadmap that is dynamic and collaborative.

When your roadmap is ready, show it off. Create a product roadmap presentation to keep your stakeholders in the loop on progress and timing.

Outside of product management, other teams rely on product roadmaps for transparency, visualization, and communication. Here are a few examples of what different internal teams need to know about your product plans:

• The activities in The Aha! Framework
• What is a business model?
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• Introduction to marketing strategy
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• Understanding the buyer's journey
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• Decision log
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• How to do market research
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• Asking the right questions to drive innovation
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• How to brainstorm product ideas
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• How to use an online whiteboard in product management
• What is idea management?
• 4 steps for product ideation
• How to estimate the value of new product ideas
• How to prioritize product ideas
• What is idea management software?
• Introduction to marketing idea management
• How to gather marketing feedback from teammates
• Brainstorming new marketing ideas
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• Brainstorming meeting
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• How to choose a product roadmap tool
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• What to include on your product roadmap
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• How often should roadmap planning happen?
• How to build a roadmap for a new product
• How to build an annual product roadmap
• How to customize the right roadmap for your audience
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• How to report on progress against your roadmap
• How to communicate your product roadmap to customers
• What is a content marketing roadmap?
• What is a digital marketing roadmap?
• What is an integrated marketing roadmap?
• What is a go-to-market roadmap?
• What is a portfolio marketing roadmap?
• How to choose a marketing roadmap tool
• Epics roadmap
• Now, Next, Later roadmap
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• Collections: Product roadmap
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• What is product planning?
• How to diagram product use cases
• How product managers use Gantt charts
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• How to plan product releases across teams
• What is a product backlog?
• Product backlog vs. release backlog vs. sprint backlog
• How to refine the product backlog
• Capacity planning for product managers
• What is requirements management?
• What is a market requirements document (MRD)?
• How to manage your product requirements document (PRD)
• What is a product feature?
• What is user story mapping?
• How to prioritize product features
• Common product prioritization frameworks
• JTBD prioritization framework
• Introduction to marketing plans
• What is a marketing plan?
• How to create a marketing plan
• What is a digital marketing plan?
• What is a content marketing plan?
• Why is content marketing important?
• What is a social media plan?
• How to create a marketing budget
• 2023 monthly calendar
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• Feature requirement
• Kanban board
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• How to use a wireframe in product management
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• 18 expert tips for wireframing
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• Collections: Creative brief
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• What is agile product management?
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• What is agile project management?
• What is the role of a software engineer?
• What is waterfall product management?
• What is agile transformation?
• Agile vs. lean
• Agile vs. waterfall
• What is an agile roadmap?
• What is an agile retrospective?
• Best practices of agile development teams
• What is a burndown chart?
• What is issue tracking?
• What is unit testing?
• Introduction to agile metrics
• Agile dictionary
• What is kanban?
• How development teams implement kanban
• How is kanban used by product managers?
• How to set up a kanban board
• Kanban vs. scrum
• What is scrum?
• What are scrum roles?
• What is a scrum master?
• What is the role of a product manager in scrum?
• What is a sprint?
• What is a sprint planning meeting?
• What is a daily standup?
• What is a sprint review?
• Product release vs. sprint in scrum
• Themes, epics, stories, and tasks
• How to implement scrum
• How to choose a scrum certification
• What is the Scaled Agile Framework®?
• What is the role of a SAFe® product manager?
• What is PI planning?
• How to run a PI planning event
• SAFe® PI planning
• SAFe® PI retrospective
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• UML class diagram
• Collections: Sprint retrospective
• How to test your product before launch
• What is a go-to-market strategy?
• How to write excellent release notes
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• Knowledge base article
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• Collections: Product launch checklist
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• How to build a customer support knowledge base
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How to Nail Your Product Roadmap Presentation

The product roadmap presentation might be one of the most important meetings that a product manager has with internal stakeholders. This is, after all, often the go/no-go meeting in which the product manager either comes away with the green light from her executive management team, or is told she’ll have to improve the strategy before receiving approval to move forward.

But because they miss a fundamental yet counterintuitive truth about what these presentations are really about, many product managers prepare for and deliver their product roadmap presentations the wrong way. Worse, it is often this poor presentation — and not an inherent flaw in the product strategy itself — that leads to a thumbs down from the team.

Here’s that fundamental truth. At its essence, a product roadmap presentation is not primarily about sharing information. It’s about evangelizing your product strategy and persuading the stakeholders in the room that the plan and objectives you’ve laid out are the right ones to pursue.

Tweet This: “Although a roadmap presentation covers a lot, it’s less about sharing info than about evangelizing your strategy.”

This might sound counter to much of what you’ve seen, heard and learned about from other product managers. A product roadmap presentation will obviously cover a lot of information. And on the surface, it can certainly look like a meeting that is meant to share information. If you’ve developed your product roadmap in the right way, your presentation will likely cover the major epics of your planned development, strategic objectives for the product, the timelines involved, probably some detail about your targeted customer personas, and the metrics you will be looking for to determine success — such as revenue targets and market share.

And yet, even if you’ve done all of the work in strategically thinking through these details, and even if you’ve put them together in such a way that gives your product the best chances of success, that is no guarantee your product roadmap presentation will earn you the buy-in you need from your stakeholders.

You can still come away from your presentation with a big fat no from your executive team — or a big fat “Huh?” from your developers, if the presentation is to them — if you don’t follow that fundamental truth and craft your product roadmap presentation just as strategically as you’ve crafted the plan for the product itself.

Common Product Roadmap Presentation Pitfalls

1. presenting your plan without showing confidence and enthusiasm..

If this were simply an information session, it might not matter so much how you presented your product’s strategic plan. (Of course, any information session will be bolstered if it is presented enthusiastically and in a persuasive way, but this is particularly important when it comes to your product roadmap presentation.)

But remember, your primary goal with a product roadmap presentation is to evangelize for your product’s plan.

With that in mind, the worst thing you can do is dryly recite the facts, no matter how compelling those facts are, and simply rattle off a list of features you’ll be developing and what timelines and resources the project will require.

What to do Instead

Don’t hold back your enthusiasm! You obviously arrived at this plan, this set of strategic objectives, after diligent research and some serious thinking and brainstorming. This is the plan that you believe gives your product and your company the best shot at success. That’s exciting news, isn’t it? Share that excitement with the room. As long as you can back it up with logic and data, that enthusiasm will spread to your audience as well.

2. Simply standing in front of the screen and talking to your product roadmap.

Remember the last PowerPoint presentation you sat through where the speaker simply read the text on the slide? You don’t? That’s probably because you slept right through it. And because you weren’t awake, here’s a little tidbit you missed: Everyone else in the room slept through it, too.

That’s how your product roadmap presentation comes across to your audience when you simply project your roadmap onto a wall and then talk through the document, detail by detail. Nobody in the room gets a sense of your larger strategic vision, so you lose any ability to persuade them of your plan’s merit. And the people in the room probably won’t remember most of the details anyway.

So when you present this way, you take a strategically vital meeting — the product roadmap presentation — and turn it into a snooze-fest that accomplishes almost nothing.

Talk about your strategic vision! When sharing your product roadmap , explain the ‘why’ behind your decisions. Better yet: Persuade your audience of the merit behind that ‘why.’ Refer to your product roadmap document — the epics, the timelines, etc. — only after you’ve oriented everyone in the room to your big-picture thinking. Only then will those details start to make sense anyway. (And only then will the audience still be awake.)

3. Burying the lede in the details.

Because they come so well prepared for these meetings, many diligent product managers can’t wait to share all of the information they’ve gathered with their audience. They have a long list of interesting features they’re planning to build. They’ve developed a complex but workable plan for deploying the right resources on the right parts of the product’s development, and they want to walk the audience through that as well. And they probably also have many useful pieces of data relating to total addressable market or average sale sizes for comparable products.

But in rattling off all of these details, these product managers forget the lede — the headline, the overarching strategic objective or best-case scenario for their product if it has a successful market launch. And remember, that lede is precisely the reason you’re calling this product roadmap presentation in the first place. So it needs to come first in your presentation.

Don’t just jump in and overwhelm your audience with ground-level details about the day-to-day operational plan for your product, or all of the individual data points and metrics that led to your decision to prioritize one feature over another. These details, almost by definition, cannot inspire anyone in your meeting to enthusiastically sign on to your project, let alone to want to dive right in and help you make it happen.

Tell a story! Explain to your audience that you’ve identified an important strategic problem to solve for your market — a way to help your target user personas avoid or minimize a real challenge they face, or a way to wow them and make their lives better. Then show them how your product — not every feature, but a high-level elevator pitch of the product — can solve that problem. And then show the room what solving that problem, and building the product the way you’re envisioning it, will mean for your company — more revenue, more market share, a competitive advantage, whatever.

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The 7 Stages of the Product Management Process

Carlos González De Villaumbrosia

Updated: August 21, 2024 - 17 min read

The pressures to focus on multiple ‘critical components’ of product development can be overwhelming. Honing in on your primary products is essential — of course. But, it’s also ‘crucial’ to ensure strategic alignment, use resources efficiently, stay nimble to market changes, mitigate risks, and whatnot. 

In this insightful and practical piece, we explore how to be ‘holistic’ without applying direct pressure. This approach provides a deep understanding of the product management steps, from market research to roadmapping and prioritization. By examining the product management process flow, we reveal how each phase of product management contributes to all ‘critical segments’ of company’s success.

Let's explore the software product management process with clear examples and visual aids. We'll cover how to optimize each stage—market research, product specifications, roadmapping, prioritization, and more—to ensure you're maximizing opportunities for growth and innovation.

Creating a successful product involves several important steps. Each stage plays a crucial role in bringing innovative solutions to the market:

In this guide, we'll walk you through the key stages of product development, breaking down complex processes into easy-to-understand concepts. Whether you're a newcomer or an experienced professional, this overview will provide you with practical cues to navigate each phase effectively. 

1. Idea Generation

The Idea Generation stage is the first step in the product development process. This is, of course, where new product ideas are brainstormed and ‘put on paper’. Unrestrained creativity and innovative thinking are the vital constituents in this phase — they encourage the collection of a wide range of ideas without immediate evaluation or criticism.

How to capture ideas? 

To effectively harvest creative concepts, it’s essential to create an environment where creativity can flourish. Here are some methods to help capture innovative product ideas:

Brainstorming Sessions : Organize regular brainstorming meetings where team members can freely share their thoughts. Use techniques like mind mapping and free writing to stimulate creative thinking.

Market Research : Gather insights from market trends, key metrics , product analysis , and industry reports. Understanding market needs and gaps can spark new product ideas.

Customer Feedback : Engage with customers through surveys, interviews, and feedback forms. Customers can provide valuable insights into their needs and pain points.

Internal Suggestion Programs : Encourage all employees, not just those in product development, to contribute ideas. Create a suggestion box or an internal digital platform where ideas can be submitted.

How to make sure everyone’s in the loop?

Once ideas are generated, it’s crucial to document them in a centralized location to ensure they are accessible and not overlooked. This can be done using:

Idea Management Software : Your everyday product management tools or dedicated idea management platforms can help track and organize ideas.

Shared Documents : Use cloud-based documents (e.g., Google Docs, Microsoft OneNote) where team members can add and edit ideas in real time.

Idea Boards : Physical or digital idea boards can be used to visualize and categorize ideas.

Don’t judge, collect!

During the Idea Generation stage, the emphasis should be on quantity rather than quality. This is not the time for screening or criticism. The goal is to gather as many ideas as possible, which increases the likelihood of finding innovative solutions. Encourage team members to think outside the box and not fear sharing unconventional ideas.

Lay down the law.

To ensure ideas are well-developed and actionable, establish a set of guidelines for idea submission. These guidelines can include:

Elaboration : Ideas should be detailed enough to understand their core concept. Include descriptions of what the idea entails and how it functions.

Impact Potency : Assess the potential impact of the idea. How significant is the problem it addresses, and what benefits will the solution provide?

Channels Encompassed : Identify which channels (e.g., digital, retail, B2B) the idea affects or leverages.

Problem-Solving : Clearly state the problem the idea aims to solve. Define the target audience and their specific pain points.

Complexity : Evaluate the complexity of developing the idea. Consider the technical feasibility, required resources, and time to market.

By following these guidelines and fostering a creative, inclusive environment, the Idea Generation stage can produce a wealth of innovative ideas that serve as the foundation for successful product development. 

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2. Idea Screening

The Idea Screening stage is the second step in the product development process. Here, the initial pool of ideas is evaluated to weed out the less promising ones. This phase ensures that only the most viable and valuable ideas move forward. This is where you get to be critical! 

Remember though, all ideas are created equal.

It's crucial to treat all ideas equally during the screening process. Every idea, regardless of its source, should undergo the same evaluation scrutiny. This prevents bias and ensures that only the best ideas are selected based on their merit, not credit.

Product teams often make the mistake of allowing ideas from top management to bypass the screening process. This practice can lead to suboptimal decisions and missed opportunities. It is best if all ideas, whether from top management or entry-level employees, are evaluated using the same criteria.

Speaking of criteria…

Here are some key criteria to use when screening ideas:

Market Potential : Assess the potential demand for the idea. Does it address a significant need or gap in the market?

Feasibility : Evaluate whether the idea is technically and financially feasible. Do you have the resources and capabilities to develop it?

Alignment with Business Goals : Ensure the idea aligns with the company’s strategic objectives and long-term vision.

Competitive Advantage : Consider whether the idea offers a unique advantage over competitors. What sets it apart in the market?

Customer Value : Determine the value the idea provides to customers. Will it enhance their experience or solve a critical problem?

The Screening Process

Initial Review : Conduct an initial review of all ideas to filter out those that clearly do not meet the basic criteria.

Scoring System : Use a scoring system to evaluate each idea against the established criteria. Assign scores based on factors like market potential, feasibility, and alignment with business goals.

Group Discussion : Involve a cross-functional team in the screening process. Discuss each idea to gather diverse perspectives and insights.

Prioritization : Rank the ideas based on their scores and discussions. Focus on the top-ranked ideas for further development.

Feature Prioritization Template

Use this feature prioritization template to get clear direction on which features to include and which to leave out.

Tools for Screening Ideas

Evaluation Matrices : Use matrices to compare ideas against each other based on the screening criteria.

Scoring Sheets : Develop scoring sheets to systematically assess each idea's strengths and weaknesses.

Collaborative Platforms : Utilize collaborative tools to enable team discussions and input on each idea.

3. Concept Development and Testing

The Concept Development and Testing phase comes after Idea Screening and involves transforming selected ideas into detailed concepts. These concepts are then tested with target audiences to gather feedback and refine the product vision . This phase is crucial for ensuring that the product idea is viable and resonates with the intended users.

Concepts need to be detailed.

To develop detailed concepts, follow these steps:

Expand on the Idea : Take the selected idea and expand it into a full-fledged concept. This includes defining the product’s core functionality, features, and user experience.

Create Concept Prototypes : Develop prototypes or mockups to visualize the concept. These can be low-fidelity sketches or high-fidelity digital prototypes, depending on the stage of development.

Describe the Value Proposition : Clearly articulate the value proposition of the prototype or MVP . What problem does it solve? What benefits does it offer to users?

Outline the User Journey : Map out the user journey, detailing how users will interact with the product from start to finish. Identify key touchpoints and potential pain points.

Testing with target audiences

Once the concepts are developed, they need to be tested with target audiences to validate their feasibility and appeal. Here’s how to conduct effective concept testing:

Identify Test Participants : Select a representative sample of your target audience for testing. Ensure diversity to gather a wide range of feedback.

Conduct User Research : Use surveys and one-on-one interviews to gather qualitative and quantitative feedback. Ask participants about their first impressions, perceived value, and any concerns or suggestions.

Utilize Usability Testing : Conduct usability tests where participants interact with the prototypes. Observe their behavior and gather feedback on the user experience.

Analyze Feedback : Collect and analyze the feedback to identify common themes, preferences, and areas for improvement. Look for patterns that indicate the concept’s strengths and weaknesses.

Refining the Product Vision

Based on the feedback gathered, refine the product vision and concept. This iterative process ensures that the product meets user needs and expectations. Key steps include:

Incorporate Feedback : Adjust the concept to address the feedback received. This might involve adding new features, improving usability, or altering the design.

Re-evaluate Feasibility : Ensure that the refined concept is still feasible within the project’s constraints, including budget, timeline, and technical capabilities.

Iterate on Prototypes : Develop new prototypes based on the refined concept and conduct additional testing if necessary. Continue refining until the concept is well-received by the target audience.

Align with Business Goals : Make sure the refined concept aligns with the overall business goals and product strategy. Ensure it contributes to achieving the desired market position and business objectives.

4. Product Specifications

The Specification phase follows the conceptualization phase in the product development process. This phase involves detailing the selected ideas into comprehensive product specifications , which serve as a blueprint for the development team. Detailed product specs provide clear guidance, ensure alignment and communication, reduce risks, and establish quality assurance criteria.

What are Product Specifications?

Product specifications, or product specs, are detailed documents that outline the features, functionalities, design, and requirements of a product. They provide a clear and concise description of what the product is, what it will do, and how it will be built.

Questions to answer in Product Specifications

To create thorough product specifications, answer the following key questions:

What is the product? Describe the product in detail. What is its purpose? What problem does it solve?

Who is the target audience? Identify the end users. Who will use this product? What are their needs and pain points?

What are the key features and functionalities? List the primary features and functionalities of the product. What must the product be able to do?

What are the design requirements? Specify the design aspects, including user interface, aesthetics, and user experience considerations.

What are the technical requirements? Outline the technical specifications, such as platform compatibility, performance criteria, and security requirements.

What are the constraints and limitations? Identify any constraints, such as budget, timeline, regulatory requirements, and technical limitations.

How will success be measured? Define the metrics and criteria for success. How will you know if the product meets its objectives?

Know how to write product specifications

When writing product specifications, follow these guidelines to ensure clarity and completeness:

Be Detailed and Specific : Include all necessary details to avoid ambiguity. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for the development team to understand and implement the requirements.

Follow a template : Start with a template that covers all basis in order for the products specs to be detailed and digestible. 

Organize Logically : Structure the document in a logical order. Start with an overview and business case then dive into specifics like features, design, and technical requirements.

Include Visuals : Use diagrams, flowcharts, and sketches to illustrate complex concepts and designs. Visuals can help communicate ideas more effectively.

Collaborate with Stakeholders : Involve key stakeholders in the specification process to ensure that all perspectives are considered and that the specs align with business goals and user needs.

By following these steps, you ensure that your product specifications provide a solid foundation for the development stages that follow. This leads to more efficient development, higher quality products, and greater success in the market.

5. Product Strategy and Roadmapping

The Product Strategy and roadmapping phase involves creating a strategic plan and a detailed roadmap that guides the product from development to launch and beyond. The strategy and roadmap ensure that the product aligns with business goals, meets market demands, and is delivered on time.

Define Product Strategy

Product Strategy is the high-level plan that outlines what the product aims to achieve and how it will do so. It provides direction and sets priorities for the product team. Aside from knowing essential frameworks and using templates , you should know the key components of a product strategy:

Vision and Mission : Define the long-term vision for the product and its mission. What is the ultimate goal of the product? What problem does it aim to solve?

Market Analysis : Conduct a thorough market analysis to understand the competitive landscape, market trends, and customer needs. This helps identify opportunities and threats.

Target Audience : Clearly define the target audience for the product. Who are the primary users? What are their characteristics, needs, and pain points?

Unique Value Proposition : Identify what makes the product unique and valuable compared to competitors. Why should customers choose your product?

Business Objectives : Set clear business objectives that the product aims to achieve. These could include revenue targets, market share goals, or customer satisfaction metrics.

Product Positioning and Messaging : Develop a positioning statement and key messages that communicate the product's value to the target audience.

Creating a Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is a visual, detailed representation of the product strategy. It outlines the planned features, milestones, and timelines for the product’s development and launch. Here’s how to create an effective product roadmap:

Set Goals and Objectives : Start by setting clear goals and objectives for the product. These should be aligned with the overall product strategy and business objectives.

Prioritize Features : Based on the product specifications, prioritize the features and functionalities to be developed. Consider factors like customer needs, business value, and technical feasibility.

Define Milestones : Break down the development process into key milestones. These are significant points in the project timeline that indicate progress, such as completing a prototype or reaching beta testing.

Establish Timelines : Set realistic timelines for each milestone and feature. Consider the resources available and potential risks that could impact the schedule.

Visualize the Roadmap : Use a visual tool to create the roadmap. This can be a Gantt chart, a timeline, or a Kanban board. Ensure it is clear and easy to understand for all stakeholders.

Communicate and Collaborate : Share the roadmap with all relevant stakeholders, including the development team, marketing, sales, and upper management. Gather feedback and make adjustments as needed.

Review and Adjust : Regularly review the roadmap to track progress and make necessary adjustments. The roadmap should be a living document that evolves with the project and market conditions.

Creating a product strategy and roadmap ensures alignment and focus among team members and stakeholders, providing clear direction on what needs to be built and when. It facilitates efficient resource allocation by prioritizing features and setting realistic timelines, while also identifying potential risks early for proactive mitigation. Additionally, it enhances communication and collaboration, offering a shared understanding of the product’s progress and goals.

Product Roadmap Template

Download our easy-to-use template to help you create your Product Roadmap.

6. Agile Product Development

The Agile Product Development phase focuses on iterative and incremental development, ensuring that the product evolves through continuous collaboration, feedback, and improvement. Agile methodologies prioritize flexibility, customer satisfaction, and delivering working software frequently.

Adopting Agile methodologies

Agile product development relies on specific methodologies to manage and execute the process effectively. The most common methodologies include Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP).

Scrum : Scrum divides the development process into time-boxed iterations called sprints. Each sprint typically lasts two to four weeks and involves planning, execution, review, and retrospective phases.

Kanban : Kanban focuses on visualizing the workflow, limiting work in progress (WIP), and improving efficiency. It uses a column-based board to track tasks and progress.

Extreme Programming (XP) : XP emphasizes technical excellence and good programming practices, such as pair programming, test-driven development (TDD), and continuous integration.

Key Principles of Agile Product Development

Customer Collaboration : Agile development emphasizes close collaboration with customers and stakeholders to gather feedback and ensure the product meets their needs.

Iterative Development : Development occurs in small, manageable increments. Each iteration results in a potentially shippable product increment.

Responding to Change : Agile methodologies embrace changes in requirements, even late in the development process. This flexibility allows the product to adapt to evolving market needs and customer feedback.

Agile product development keeps customers satisfied by involving them throughout the process. It's flexible and adapts easily to new information and market changes. 

Agile also speeds up delivery with incremental development and frequent releases. It promotes better collaboration among developers, stakeholders, and customers. Regular feedback and retrospectives help continuously improve the product and team performance.

7. Product Launch 

The Product Launch phase is the culmination of all the hard work put into developing your product. This stage involves introducing the product to the market and ensuring that everything is in place for a successful launch. A well-executed product launch plan can generate excitement, drive sales, and establish a strong market presence.

Product Launch Checklist

Launch is a critical time that can make the difference between product success and failure. Use this checklist to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Preparing for the launch

Before launching your product, thorough preparation is crucial. This ensures that all aspects of the product and its marketing are ready for the big day.

Finalize the Product : Ensure that the product is fully developed, tested, and ready for use. Address any final bugs or issues and confirm that the product meets all quality standards.

Develop Marketing Materials : Create compelling promotional materials , including brochures, videos, blog posts, and social media content. These materials should clearly communicate the product’s value and benefits to the target audience.

Train the Sales Team : Equip your sales team with the necessary knowledge about the product. Provide them with detailed information, including key features, benefits, and how to address common customer questions.

Set Up Customer Support : Ensure that your customer support team is prepared to handle inquiries and issues. Provide them with training and resources to effectively support new users.

Executing the launch

On launch day, it’s important to execute on your strategy to maximize impact and reach.

Launch Event : Consider hosting a launch event, either in-person or virtual, to create buzz and excitement. Invite key stakeholders, influencers, and the press to attend.

Press Releases : Distribute press releases to major media outlets to announce the product. Highlight the unique features and benefits that set your product apart from competitors.

Social Media Campaign : Leverage social media platforms to spread the word about your product. Use engaging content, hashtags, and collaborations with influencers to reach a wider audience.

Email Marketing : Send out emails to your subscriber list, announcing the product launch. Include special offers or incentives to encourage immediate purchases.

Post-Launch activities

After the initial launch, it’s essential to maintain momentum and address any issues that arise.

Monitor Performance : Track the product’s performance using analytics tools. Monitor sales, website traffic, and user engagement to gauge the success of the launch.

Gather Feedback : Collect feedback from early users to identify any problems or areas for improvement. Use this feedback to make necessary adjustments and enhancements.

Customer Engagement : Continue engaging with your customers through follow-up emails, social media interactions, and community forums. Keep them informed about updates and new features.

Evaluate and Learn : Assess the overall success of the product launch. Analyze what worked well and what didn’t, and apply these lessons to future product launches.

By carefully preparing, executing, and following up on your product launch, you can maximize its impact and set the stage for ongoing success. A successful product launch not only drives initial sales but also builds a strong foundation for your product’s growth and market presence.

Product Retrospective Template

Experience continuous growth, learn from failure faster, and identify issues early with our Retrospective template.

Follow the Product Management Process!

Without a process, a team would feel like they're trying to navigate a maze in the dark. It's chaos — people are guessing the next steps, priorities are all over the place, and everyone’s just winging it. 

Having a clear process helps teams stay organized, ensures all important aspects are covered, and allows for efficient use of resources. 

Product management is complex enough, and there too much at stake. This structured approach not only helps in achieving business goals but also ensures that the final product meets customer needs and stands out in the market. With a solid plan and clear steps to follow, your team can handle every aspect of product management with confidence and precision.

Enroll in Product School's Product Strategy Micro-Certification (PSC)™️

The difference between a good and a great product lies in your Product Strategy, answering vital questions like: Who's the product for? What benefits does it offer? How does it further company objectives?

Updated: August 21, 2024

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