If you oversee software development projects, you know how challenging it can be to deliver high-quality products on time and within budget. You must deal with changing requirements, competing priorities, limited resources, and complex dependencies. You also have to align your team's vision with the expectations of your stakeholders and customers. Foremost developing products in an agile way sometimes tends not to have a real plan, just a maybe even blurry goal, and Tickets are added on the fly – or they have been there for so long that nobody remembers their value.     
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That's why you need a product roadmap. A product roadmap is a strategic document that outlines a software product's vision, direction, and goals. It describes the product, why it exists, who it serves, and how it will evolve. Simply put, it’s a contract between all stakeholders, such as the development team, the business owners, and the customers, on the expectations and priorities of the product. Involving all stakeholders is essential, as there can be significant gaps in the view of the product from the different stakeholder groups. Finding the sweet spot can be difficult but assures the product's success.
 
But what makes a product roadmap good and valuable? And how can you create and maintain one effectively? This blog post will explore why it is important and what benefits it drives. We will also share some best practices for creating and keeping a roadmap vivid and alive.

Why is a product roadmap essential?

Without a product roadmap, a software development team may face various challenges that can impact project success. Three of the most happenings are:

• Lack of clarity: The lack of a clear product roadmap can lead to confusion and misunderstandings among team members, stakeholders, and customers.
• Unclear priorities: Without a product roadmap, it's challenging to determine what features are most important to deliver first. This can lead to wasted time and resources on low-priority features, causing delays in delivering key functionality.
• Forgotten or missed dependencies: While planning the tasks of a product, it happens more than once to either entirely miss a dependence on another feature or provision or forget about it.

All of those can result in various issues. The most annoying can be:

• Budget overruns: A product roadmap helps to manage the budget and resources effectively by prioritizing features based on their importance and complexity. Without a roadmap, it's easy to overspend on less critical features, which can affect the overall budget and timeline.
• Missed deadlines: Without a roadmap, it's difficult to estimate project timelines accurately, leading to missed deadlines and delays in product delivery.
• Lack of stakeholder buy-in: Stakeholders must be aligned on the project's direction and goals. Without a roadmap, getting buy-in from stakeholders is challenging, leading to confusion, disagreements, and delays.  

Often teams start with a rough roadmap or just a set of epics and stories. Soon the overarching plan is not visible anymore; goals are forgotten or questioned. Sometimes nobody remembers why some tasks or goals were set like they are – and they get changed, significantly impacting the final result and product.

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If you set up your development agilely and just start with the product (or develop a new extension), you typically want to go for an MVP. The challenges mentioned above, and issues happen here even more as you try to strip down the features from an MVP. The roadmap can narrow down the path to the MVP, and when the MVP is live, the roadmap can be used to target the next milestones. This responsively pivots the development and keeps the path to the goals clear.

MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product, a concept that refers to the simplest version of a product that can be released to the market and tested by customers. The MVP paradigm is based on the idea that it is better to launch a product with the core features and functionalities and then collect feedback from the users to improve it over time rather than spending a lot of time and resources on developing a perfect product that may not meet the customer needs or expectations. The MVP paradigm helps to validate assumptions, reduce risks, and iterate faster based on actual data and user behaviour.

• Example: Building a banking app, you first ensure that the accounting feature is working and your USP – e.g., a photo bank transfer is working. Other features, like a post-box, biometric login, etc., are postponed.

What benefits does a product roadmap drive?

A roadmap is not just a list of features or a timeline of deadlines. It is a communication tool that tells a compelling story about the product's value proposition and problem-solving potential. Imagine it like a drawing: You set the foundation with basic tasks, create the main part of the image with the core features and outline it with the small details that make a truly great picture – and product.  

• Fulfil business goals: A product roadmap aligns the product strategy with the business objectives and priorities. It helps to communicate the product's value proposition and expected outcomes to the stakeholders and customers.
• Cost & time savings efficiency: A product roadmap helps to plan and allocate resources effectively. It reduces waste and rework by avoiding feature creep and scope changes. It also enables faster feedback and validation by delivering incremental value to the users. It also helps teams track and measure their performance and return on investment (ROI).
• Long-term stability: A product roadmap provides a clear direction and a shared understanding of the product vision among the development team and the stakeholders. It helps to maintain focus and consistency throughout the product lifecycle. It also facilitates collaboration and coordination across different teams and departments.
• Team enablement: A product roadmap motivates and empowers the development team by showing them what goal will be achieved, especially in an agile way important feedback can be provided to improve the product or process even more. This gives them a sense of purpose and ownership.
• People retention: It helps to create a culture of innovation and learning by encouraging experimentation and iteration. It also fosters trust and transparency by setting clear expectations and providing regular updates.  
• Compliance demands: A product roadmap ensures that the product meets the industry's and the market's legal, regulatory, and ethical standards. It helps to identify and mitigate potential risks and issues. It also demonstrates accountability and responsibility by documenting the rationale and evidence behind the product decisions.

Based on the roadmap, creating several scenarios and staffing options is possible, mainly if you have already started working on the features and have a realistic feeling for the effort needed. Just be very clear and transparent about communication; having multiple roadmaps outweighs the advantages of having one. In the end, having a solid roadmap will provide you with a relatable release date, with everybody knowing what they can expect until that date.

How to create a strong product roadmap?

There are several ways to create a roadmap. The most important part is keeping the roadmap up to date, achievable by having a dedicated product manager looking at the product and the roadmap. When beginning with a product or initiative, you should always consider the following:

• Start with the why: Before planning the what and the how of your product development, you must define the why. What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who are you solving it for? What are their needs, pain points, goals, and motivations? How will your product address them? What are the benefits and outcomes of your product? These questions will help you craft a compelling value proposition for your product and guide your roadmap planning.
• Involve your team: Your product roadmap should not be created in isolation by one person or department. It should be a collaborative effort involving your entire development team and other key stakeholders such as customers, users, executives, sales, marketing, support, etc. You can leverage your team's insights, expertise, feedback, and buy-in by involving your team in the roadmap creation process. You can also foster a sense of ownership and accountability among your team members for delivering on the roadmap.
• Prioritize ruthlessly: Your product roadmap should include only some features or ideas that come to mind. It should only include the most important and impactful features that align with your product vision, goals, value proposition, and customer needs. To prioritize effectively, you need to use a clear and consistent framework that evaluates each feature based on criteria such as value, effort, risk, urgency, dependency, etc. You can also use techniques such as MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have), RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort), or the Kano model (Basic, Performance, Excitement) to rank your features.
• Plan realistically: Your product roadmap should not be a rigid or fixed plan that never changes. It should be a realistic and flexible plan that reflects the current state of your project. To plan realistically, you need to consider factors such as resource availability, capacity, skill level, dependencies, risks, uncertainties, etc. You must also break down your features into manageable chunks or iterations and estimate the time and effort required for each one. You can use agile methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban.

At PRODYNA, we have developed many solutions and products with customers. Based on our experience with different industries, stakeholders, and initiatives for the product, we have developed a perfectly adaptable way to build a roadmap and even an entire product.

We created an Experience-Driven Development (XDD) method, which meets the challenges of creating a product. Part of this is also the creation of the roadmap. But as PRODYNA is living the creation of digital products, we don’t just stop there. An essential part of the process is the involvement of strategy, design, development, and operations experts from the beginning of a project while creating the roadmap. PRODYNA can support this process by supplying Individual experts or interdisciplinary teams with different focuses from the Define Vison, Find Solution, Build Solution, and Manage Solution service areas.

This proven approach is agile and ensures the solution combines the best aspects in a lean and smooth process, bringing optimal value and adoption to the user and the business.

Contact us to find out more.