Updated: January 1, 2025- 20 min read
Let us take a guess. Your stakeholders are eager for clarity, your team craves direction, and your CPO wants results yesterday. As you stare at the blank canvas of your product roadmap, you're overwhelmed by the sheer number of decisions — what features to prioritize, how to balance long-term goals with short-term wins, and how not to drown in endless revisions.
Navigating a product roadmap is about bridging the gap between strategy and execution. It’s about inspiring confidence and ensuring every team member knows exactly how their work contributes to the bigger picture. It’s no small feat, and you have every right to feel the friction.
This is why we’ll walk you through how to create a product roadmap. Our aim is to cut through the chaos so you don’t have to do as much. From actionable steps to best practices and templates, you’ll have everything you need to turn your vision into a roadmap. Let’s get started.
Product Roadmap Template
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What Are Product Roadmaps?
A product roadmap is a compass and a plan for your product's journey. It outlines where your product is headed, the steps to get there, and the “why” behind each decision. Think of it as a communication tool that keeps everyone — from your development team to stakeholders — aligned on priorities, timelines, and goals.
Product roadmaps come in all shapes and sizes as there are many types.
For instance, there are continual, yearly, and even quarterly roadmaps that break down plans into actionable chunks over certain periods. In recent times, AI-driven roadmaps have grown in popularity. These leverage data and machine learning to predict trends, prioritize features, and even suggest the best order of execution — perfect for fast-moving industries.
Another type of roadmap gaining traction is the outcome-based roadmap. Instead of focusing on features or timelines, outcome-based roadmaps center on achieving results, like improving user retention or boosting user engagement. This approach ensures that every effort is tied to measurable success which is the reason why it’s so popular among modern product teams.
No matter the type, a great product roadmap is more than just a list of features or deadlines — it’s a narrative. It tells the story of your product’s vision and inspires everyone involved to move in the same direction.
How to Build a Product Roadmap in 10 Steps
In this guide, we’ll walk you through 10 actionable steps to creating a product roadmap that aligns your team, prioritizes the right goals, and drives results. From setting a clear vision to adapting to market changes, you’ll get the tools, tips, and best practices on how to make a product roadmap that just works.
1. Start with a Clear Product Vision
Your product vision is the North Star that guides every decision you make. It’s a concise, compelling description of what you’re building, who it’s for, and the ultimate value it will deliver. Without this foundation, you risk spinning your wheels on features that simply don’t work.
Start by asking: What problem are you solving, and why does it matter? Your vision should answer this in one or two sentences.
Here are two examples of strong product visions that we list in our Product Positioning 101 guide:
Slack: "Make work life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive." This vision emphasizes solving fragmented team communication while showcasing the impact on collaboration and productivity.
Airbnb: "Create a world where anyone can belong anywhere." It captures the goal of making unique accommodations and authentic travel experiences accessible, fostering a sense of global belonging.
Once you settle on a product vision, share it with your team to ensure it’s clear and aligned with business objectives. If it’s not, refine it until it does.
Without a clear product vision, teams may work hard, but they often end up focusing on conflicting priorities or chasing short-term wins. Misaligned priorities can also create friction with stakeholders which leads to wasted time and resources.
Quick tip:
Pin your product vision where everyone can see it — on dashboards, Slack channels, or even a whiteboard in the office. Keeping it front and center ensures it remains the driving force behind your roadmap.
“We all know that roadmaps change all the time so you can’t commit to everything on the top of your roadmap, but it’s a great way for people to know what you’re thinking. And at the current state and time, what is your future plan? So it helps to build the trigger. So anybody at any point in time on a different part of the business can take a look at your roadmap or your strategic plans and see how aligned they are and raise questions with you when they’re uncertain. ”
— Agatha Krajewski, Director of Product at Shopify, on The Product Podcast
2. Define Strategic Goals
Strategic goals transform your product vision into a clear, actionable plan. They act as a bridge between the high-level "why" of your product vision and the tactical "what" of your roadmap. By defining these goals, you ensure your team focuses on outcomes that align with both user needs and business objectives.
One powerful way to define these goals is by using the OKR framework (Objectives and Key Results):
Objective: Define an ambitious, inspiring goal that aligns with your product vision and business priorities.
Key Results: Establish measurable outcomes that indicate progress toward the objective. These should be specific, time-bound, and challenging yet realistic.
Imagine you’re working on an app. An OKR might look like this:
Objective: Enhance user engagement by creating a more interactive experience.
Key Results:
Launch a new social sharing feature by Q2.
Achieve a 20% increase in weekly active users sharing content.
Improve retention rate for socially engaged users by 15%.
This OKR ties directly into improving engagement, aligns with your vision, and offers clear, measurable results to guide focused action.
It’s important to avoid setting vague or unrealistic objectives, like “Be the most popular app ever” or “Grow the user base tenfold in one quarter.”
Ambiguous objectives lead to confusion and misaligned efforts, while overly ambitious key results can demoralize teams and erode trust in leadership. Instead, OKRs strike a balance between ambition and achievability, ensuring your team has clear direction and motivation to succeed.
Quick tip:
Write your product strategy at the top of your roadmap, so it’s always visible. This keeps everyone aligned and ensures every feature or milestone you add ties back to an overarching strategy.
3. Gather and Prioritize Ideas
Gathering ideas for your product roadmap often feels like drinking from a firehose. Stakeholders have requests, customers share feedback, and your team generates a steady flow of feature ideas.
Also, team members often feel their ideas are underappreciated for all sorts of reasons — they don’t get picked, data tells a contrasting story or the “idea giver’s” position within the hierarchy doesn’t move the needle enough.
The challenge isn’t just collecting these ideas during Product Discovery— it’s deciding which ones will make the roadmap. To create a roadmap that delivers value, you need a structured approach to prioritize effectively.
Here are some tips to help you prioritize ideas effectively:
Use the MoSCoW Method: Classify each idea as Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, or Won’t-have based on its importance and urgency.
Apply an Impact vs. Effort Matrix: Focus on ideas that offer high value with low effort. This will strike a balance between quick wins and impactful features.
Score Ideas with Weighted Criteria: Assign scores to ideas based on factors like alignment with strategic goals, customer demand, Cost of Delay, and revenue potential.
Engage Stakeholders: Gather input from stakeholders but keep customer needs and business objectives at the forefront.
Validate with Product-growth Data: Use product analytics, A/B testing, or prototypes to confirm the impact of an idea before committing resources.
Be cautious of prioritizing ideas based solely on who requests them or how urgent they seem. This can lead to a roadmap filled with low-impact features that distract from your long-term vision.
Quick tip:
Keep your prioritized ideas visible and review them regularly. Business goals and customer needs evolve, and your roadmap should stay adaptable to reflect these changes.
4. Choose the Right Roadmap Type
Selecting the right type of product roadmap is critical to ensuring your team and stakeholders are aligned. The roadmap format you choose should fit your product goals, company size, and product team structure.
The wrong type can cause confusion and misalignment, while the right one can streamline collaboration and decision-making.
Here are some commonly used product roadmap types:
A visually clear format that plots initiatives or features against specific timeframes.
Best for: Larger teams or companies needing clear deadlines and structured plans.
Watch out for: Overly rigid timelines that don’t allow flexibility in agile environments.
Focuses on a prioritized list of features to be developed, without specific timeframes.
Best for: Startups or smaller teams that need flexibility and want to focus on delivering value quickly.
Watch out for: Lack of time-based structure, which can lead to stakeholder misalignment.
Outcome-Based Roadmap Centered on achieving specific results, such as increased engagement or reduced churn, rather than just shipping features.
Best for: Teams that emphasize user impact and measurable results.
Watch out for: Ensuring outcomes are clear and measurable, or the roadmap loses focus.
Kanban-Style Roadmap Uses columns like “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done” to show the status of various tasks.
Best for: Teams using agile workflows who want a visual overview of ongoing work.
Watch out for: Overcomplicating the board with too many categories.
Product Portfolio Roadmap Provides a high-level overview of multiple products in a company’s portfolio, showing how they align with overall business strategy.
Best for: Companies managing multiple products or departments.
Watch out for: Oversimplification that doesn’t capture the unique details of each product.
To determine the best roadmap for your needs, consider the following questions:
What’s the size of your team or company? Smaller teams may benefit from simpler formats like feature-based or Kanban-style roadmaps, while larger organizations might need a timeline or portfolio roadmap to coordinate across multiple stakeholders.
Who are your primary stakeholders? Choose a format that resonates with your audience. Executives often prefer timeline or portfolio roadmaps, while development teams might lean toward Kanban or outcome-based roadmaps.
How important is flexibility? If priorities shift frequently, a Kanban-style or feature-based roadmap provides the adaptability you need. If deadlines are crucial, a timeline-based roadmap might work better.
What’s your main focus—features or results? If delivering specific features is key, a feature-based roadmap is ideal. If you’re focused on measurable outcomes, an outcome-based roadmap will align better with your goals.
Do you manage multiple products? If so, a portfolio roadmap helps you visualize how each product aligns with the overall business strategy.
Start by assessing your team’s workflow and the level of detail stakeholders expect. Experiment with a few roadmap formats using tools like our Free Product Roadmap Template Pack to find one that feels intuitive and effective. Once you choose a format, ensure it’s visible and accessible to everyone, and revisit it regularly to adapt to any changes in your product strategy.
Quick tip:
Avoid locking yourself into one type of product roadmap. As your team or company evolves, your roadmap format as well as your product roadmap planning process should adapt to meet new needs and challenges.
5. Use Interactive and Visual Elements in Your New Product Roadmap
Interactive and visual elements can elevate your product roadmap, making it more engaging and easier to understand. A roadmap that’s just text-heavy often fails to capture attention or align teams effectively. By incorporating visuals and interactivity, you can ensure your roadmap communicates your strategy clearly while encouraging collaboration.
Here are a few tried-and-true ways to add interactive elements in your new product roadmap:
Embed Visual Roadmap Templates
Create visually appealing templates that your product team can use. It’s best if these tools offer drag-and-drop functionality to make editing easy and allow teams to customize roadmaps for their specific needs.Incorporate Comparison Tables
Use tables to compare roadmap types or prioritize features based on key metrics like value and effort. For example, create a grid to show stakeholders how each feature aligns with business goals or strategic initiatives.Add Progress Indicators
Show the status of features or milestones (e.g., "In Progress," "Completed," "Blocked") using Kanban boards or visual status trackers. These help teams quickly understand progress without needing to sift through details.Leverage Multimedia Elements
Embed videos, such as product roadmap discussions or relevant podcast clips, directly into your roadmap tool or presentation. Videos can provide context and help stakeholders grasp your strategy more intuitively.Use Color Coding and Icons
Assign colors to features or outcomes based on priority or team responsibility. Icons can also be used to represent milestones, risks, or dependencies, making it easier to digest at a glance.
When designing your roadmap, aim for simplicity. A cluttered roadmap can overwhelm stakeholders and defeat the purpose of making your strategy clear. Start with a basic product management framework and gradually enhance it with visuals like charts or icons as needed.
6. Emphasizing Outcome-Based Roadmaps
“Caring deeply about outcomes rather than personal comfort is fundamental to effective leadership. In high-stakes scenarios, such as decision-making or managing team dynamics, this mindset encourages a focus on collective goals and organizational success. ”
— Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer at Amplitude, on The Product Podcast
Outcome-based roadmaps are becoming a cornerstone of modern product strategy for a good reason. Unlike traditional roadmaps that focus on timelines or feature delivery, outcome-based roadmaps prioritize achieving measurable results. They align teams around the "why" behind each initiative.
Outcome-based roadmaps shift the focus from “What features are we building?” to “What are we trying to achieve?”
For example, instead of planning to release a new onboarding flow, the outcome-based roadmap would target increasing new user retention by 15% in the next quarter. This way teams remain flexible and adapt their work to achieve the desired results rather than sticking rigidly to pre-defined features or timelines.
To write a product roadmap plan of this type, you would:
Define Clear Outcomes: Identify the specific results you want to achieve, such as improving customer satisfaction, user retention, or increasing daily active users. Use measurable metrics to ensure the outcome is trackable.
Align Outcomes with Strategic Goals: Connect each outcome to a broader business objective. For instance, if your company aims to expand into new markets, an outcome might focus on increasing signups in a specific region.
Identify Key Initiatives: Outline the major projects or efforts required to achieve each outcome. These initiatives should be flexible, allowing teams to experiment and iterate as they work toward the desired result.
Track Progress with OKRs: Use OKRs to measure whether you're on track to achieve your outcomes. For example, if your outcome is to improve retention, track product adoption metrics like churn rate or the percentage of users returning after 30 days.
Outcome-based roadmaps require a mindset shift. Teams must focus on problem-solving and experimentation rather than rigidly following a plan. Encourage regular check-ins and retrospectives to assess progress and adjust initiatives if needed. This ensures that the team remains focused on achieving the intended outcomes, even if the path to get there changes.
Quick tip:
Regularly revisit your outcomes to ensure they’re still relevant as market conditions and business priorities evolve. This flexibility is what makes outcome-based roadmaps so effective in dynamic environments.
7. Align with Stakeholders
Getting stakeholder alignment is essential for the success of your product roadmap. Stakeholders, whether they’re executives, team leads, or customers, each have their own priorities and expectations. Misalignment can lead to confusion, delays, or resistance, so it’s crucial to bring everyone onto the same page from the start.
Here is how you align with all of your stakeholders:
Understand Stakeholder Needs: Schedule one-on-one or group meetings with key stakeholders to understand their priorities and concerns. Ask targeted questions like, “What does success look like for you?” and “What challenges are most pressing right now?”
Communicate the Strategy, Vision, and Goals: Present your product vision and strategic goals clearly. Use simple, outcome-focused language that highlights how the roadmap supports the broader business strategy.
Tailor the Roadmap for Your Audience: Executives often want a high-level view focused on outcomes and timelines, while team leads might prefer a more detailed breakdown of features or initiatives. Adjust the level of detail depending on who you’re presenting to.
Provide Transparency: Share the process you used to prioritize ideas, whether it’s based on customer feedback, business value, or resource availability. Showing stakeholders how decisions were made can build trust and reduce pushback.
Encourage Feedback and Collaboration: Create opportunities for stakeholders to weigh in. Use tools like interactive presentations or collaborative platforms to gather input in real-time. Address their concerns and incorporate valid suggestions into your roadmap when possible.
Now, let’s say your roadmap includes an initiative to improve onboarding for new users.
While your development team is excited about building a feature tour, marketing stakeholders might be more concerned about how improvements will drive trial-to-paid conversions. By aligning these perspectives, you can highlight shared goals (e.g., increasing retention) and adjust the roadmap to reflect both needs.
Also, don’t forget to schedule regular roadmap reviews with stakeholders. During these meetings, reinforce how the roadmap is delivering on agreed goals. Be open to revisiting certain decisions as new data or challenges arise.
Quick tip:
Use a stakeholder map to identify key players, their interests, and their level of influence. This ensures you focus on the right people when aligning priorities and expectations.
8. Incorporate Feedback Loops
Incorporating feedback loops ensures that your roadmap stays relevant and responsive to user needs, team insights, and market changes. By creating opportunities for feedback, you can refine your priorities, validate assumptions, and build better alignment across your team and stakeholders.
Let’s see how you can build effective feedback loops:
Leverage User Feedback: Regularly collect feedback from your users through user research, surveys, interviews, or analytics. For example, you might ask users to rank their most desired features or identify pain points they encounter frequently.
Engage Your Team: Encourage cross-functional teams like customer support, sales, and product marketing team, to share insights they’ve gathered from their interactions with users. These insights can uncover trends or problems that might not surface in other ways.
Use Beta Testing: Roll out features to a subset of users to gather direct feedback before committing to a full product launch. Beta tests help validate assumptions and uncover unexpected issues early.
Hold Retrospectives: After completing major milestones, conduct team retrospectives to assess what worked, what didn’t, and what can be improved. Following a Product Retro Template here would ensure lessons learned are applied to future roadmap decisions.
Iterate Based on Data: Use growth metrics and product analysis to measure the performance of released features. If a feature doesn’t meet its intended goals, review the data to understand why and adjust the roadmap accordingly.
Imagine you’ve added a new feature aimed at improving user engagement. Product adoption metrics show that while engagement has improved slightly, churn has increased. A follow-up survey reveals that users find the feature confusing. By incorporating this feedback into your roadmap, you can prioritize simplifying the feature or offering better onboarding materials.
Therefore, schedule regular feedback checkpoints to review input from users, teams, and stakeholders. Dedicate time to discuss what the feedback means for your roadmap and adjust as needed. Making feedback a continuous part of your process ensures your product stays aligned with user and business needs.
Quick tip:
Establish a "feedback day" once a month where your team focuses solely on reviewing user insights, analyzing data, and brainstorming adjustments. Dedicate this time to digging deep into feedback, identifying patterns, and translating them into actionable roadmap updates.
9. Review and Adapt Regularly
Regular reviews ensure your roadmap reflects current priorities, adapts to market changes, and incorporates new insights. Without consistent adaptation, you risk pursuing outdated goals, building a slacking culture, or missing new opportunities.
If you want to review and adapt effectively, here’s what you should consider:
Set a Review Cadence: Schedule roadmap reviews at regular intervals — monthly, quarterly, or after major milestones. This allows you to evaluate progress and adjust priorities as needed.
Analyze Key Metrics: Use performance data, such as customer retention, feature adoption, or revenue impact, to evaluate whether your roadmap is achieving its intended outcomes. If a goal isn’t being met, revisit the initiatives tied to it.
Stick With Agile Product Management: Build flexibility into your roadmap. If a competitor launches a game-changing feature or market dynamics shift, be prepared to pivot and update your priorities.
Gather Team and Stakeholder Input: Regularly involve your team and stakeholders in reviews. Fresh perspectives can reveal blind spots or highlight emerging opportunities.
Document Changes Clearly: Track what changes were made, why they were made, and who approved them. This provides transparency and ensures everyone understands the direction moving forward.
Integrate roadmap reviews into your team’s workflow, such as aligning them with sprint retrospectives or launch planning sessions. Use these reviews to not only assess progress but also refine how your team collaborates and communicates around roadmap decisions.
Quick tip:
Assign a “roadmap historian” within your team — someone responsible for tracking roadmap changes, decisions, and their rationale. This role not only improves transparency but also helps you learn from past iterations so your roadmap evolves smarter over time.
Examples of Product Roadmaps in Action
Product roadmap examples provide valuable insights into how different approaches can be tailored to meet various team and business needs. Below, we explore three roadmap types to help you decide which format best aligns with your goals.
Feature Roadmap
A Feature Roadmap focuses on the development and release schedule of specific features. It provides a clear timeline for when each feature will be delivered.
This roadmap is especially useful for teams that need to communicate feature rollouts to stakeholders and ensure alignment across departments. For example, breaking down features into quarterly milestones can help manage expectations while keeping the team focused on progress.
Agile Roadmap
An Agile Roadmap offers a flexible structure. It emphasizes iterative development and adaptability over rigid timelines.
This roadmap type allows teams to adjust priorities based on changing customer needs or market conditions. It works well for companies with dynamic workflows or those implementing agile methodologies, as it focuses on maintaining alignment between short-term iterations and long-term goals without sacrificing flexibility.
Outcome-Based Roadmap
An Outcome-Based Roadmap prioritizes results over deliverables, such as increasing user engagement or reducing churn.
This approach is ideal for organizations focused on measurable impact and ensures that every action contributes to the broader objectives of the business. For instance, targeting a 20% increase in retention can guide product decisions more effectively than simply planning to release new features.
Developing a Product Roadmap That Inspires Action and Drives Results
Whether you choose a feature-based, agile, or outcome-driven approach, the key lies in building a roadmap that serves as a dynamic tool, not a static document.
Start with a clear vision, set measurable goals, and stay open to feedback as you refine your path forward.
Remember, a great roadmap isn’t just something you check. It’s a living and breathing organism that steers the path forward. Take the time to create one that aligns with your product’s journey and transform your strategy into impact.
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Updated: January 1, 2025
