Updated: December 2, 2024- 13 min read
Outcome-based roadmaps are changing how product teams plan and execute their strategies.
Unlike the product roadmaps (as you know them) that focus on features and timelines, outcome-based roadmaps put goals and measurable results front and center. This shift is simple yet powerful.
Rather than asking, "What are we building next? teams ask, "What impact are we trying to achieve?" For some organizations, this switch truly turns the tide. For organizations aiming to be more purpose-driven, outcome-based roadmaps offer a path to focus on meaningful results.
In this article, we'll explore how they stack against their counterparts and their advantages and potential drawbacks. Ultimately, probe how you can build an outcome-based roadmap that aligns your team's work with clear, value-driven objectives.
Product OKR Template
Use this Product OKR template to set and track your OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Align your team’s daily tasks with product and company strategy!
get free template
What Are Outcome-based Roadmaps?
“It's more fun to ship products and see the impact on customers. I think that's what we're all here to do. ”
— Daniel Danker, CPO at Instacart, on The Product Podcast
Outcome-based roadmaps are strategic planning tools that center around goals and results. The focus is not on what to build; instead, it shifts to why certain things are being built and what impact they are expected to create.
This approach grew roots in Lean and Agile methodologies, popular product management frameworks, which emphasize adaptability and customer value over rigid planning. The logic behind it is simple: by aligning efforts around outcomes, teams can make sure every feature, update, or initiative serves a greater purpose — one that is meaningful to both users and the business.
Outcome-Oriented Roadmap Through a Simple Example
Imagine a company planning to enhance its mobile app. A traditional roadmap might list out features like "add notifications" or "improve search function."
An outcome-based roadmap flips the perspective to focus on the intended results, such as "increase user engagement by 20%."
From there, the product team can explore different ways to achieve this outcome — whether it’s through notifications, a more intuitive search, or personalized recommendations. This approach encourages everyone — product leaders, managers, designers, and engineers — to think creatively, testing solutions that directly support a meaningful goal.
By making the desired outcome the primary focus teams can consider their work’s broader impact and make decisions that prioritize value-impact tradeoffs.
Pros of Outcome-Based Roadmaps
Aligns Teams with Strategic Goals: By focusing on outcomes rather than tasks, outcome-based roadmaps help prioritize product activities that directly impact the company’s bottom line. Resource use gets more efficient and it boosts ROI. It also builds cohesion, as each team understands how their work contributes to broader business objectives.
Enhances Flexibility in Fast-Changing Markets: These roadmaps are adaptable. They enable teams to pivot strategies as market conditions shift. This flexibility improves product experience by allowing teams to quickly address evolving user needs.
Provides Clearer Success Metrics: Outcome-based roadmaps define desired results upfront. This makes it easier to track and measure success. This accountability simplifies performance reviews.
Encourages a User-Centric Approach: By centering on solving real customer problems, outcome-based roadmaps help teams focus on high-value work. This often results in greater customer-centricity, as the product evolves in ways that are relevant and valuable to users.
Supports Cross-Functional Collaboration: These roadmaps facilitate cooperation across departments like marketing, sales, and customer success, as everyone aligns toward achieving specific outcomes. This breaks down silos and enhances workflow efficiency, speeding up time-to-market for new features.
Cons of Outcome-Based Roadmaps
Requires High-Level Strategy and Buy-In: Without a clear understanding of strategic objectives from leadership, teams may struggle to set outcomes. This leads to misaligned efforts and wasted time. If buy-in is lacking, teams may revert to feature-driven plans, which dilutes the roadmap’s focus on results.
Can Be Resource-Intensive to Maintain: Defining, tracking, and revising outcomes demands product analysis and feedback loops, which adds complexity. Smaller teams or those with limited resources may find it challenging to maintain this data-driven focus, especially without the support of Data Product Managers, impacting productivity.
Challenges in Breaking Down Large Goals: Translating broad outcomes into actionable tasks can be difficult, especially for teams new to outcome-based approaches. This can lead to costly delays as teams struggle to connect daily tasks with high-level objectives.
Potential Misalignment with Stakeholder Expectations: Stakeholders who expect concrete deliverables or timelines may feel uncertain if the roadmap lacks specific deadlines. This can create communication challenges for teams that need to manage stakeholder expectations, potentially impacting stakeholder trust.
May Not Suit All Project Types: Outcome-based roadmaps are less effective for projects that require a strict, feature-driven approach or predictable delivery schedules. In regulated industries or projects with fixed deadlines, this type of roadmap may lack precision.
Product Roadmap Comparisons
Feature-Based Roadmap vs. Outcome-Based Product Roadmap
Feature-based roadmaps focus primarily on delivering features. This approach is straightforward and works well for communicating specific product enhancements to stakeholders, especially in highly structured environments.
However, it can also lead to what’s called a “feature factory” mentality, where the emphasis is on building rather than solving strategic problems. Another con is that it can lead to feature creep, where irrelevant and unimpactful features find their way to production.
In contrast, outcome-based roadmaps are goal-driven. They prioritize why a feature or capability is valuable by aligning each initiative with a desired business or user outcome, such as increasing user retention or reducing churn.
While both roadmap types can work together — where feature-based roadmaps support specific outcomes — companies seeking to focus on deliberate effort will benefit from transitioning to outcome-based roadmapping. Rather than planning “new reporting features,” an outcome-based approach might target “improving reporting accuracy by 15%,” allowing teams flexibility in choosing how to achieve this goal.
Timeline-Based Roadmap vs. Outcome-Based Planning
Timeline-based roadmaps are designed around specific deadlines or project milestones. They can be helpful for aligning cross-functional collaboration and setting clear expectations on deliverables. The linear view makes tracking and accountability straightforward. However, sometimes it’s known to become rigid and challenging to adjust in fast-changing environments, especially if customer or market needs shift.
One of the benefits of outcome-based roadmaps is that they’re more adaptable. They allow teams to pivot as new information becomes available. This approach is particularly beneficial in dynamic markets, where setting rigid timelines might lead to developing features that are no longer relevant by the time they’re completed.
For companies where long-term predictability is essential, such as in heavily regulated industries, a hybrid approach that combines timeline predictability with outcome goals might work best.
Now-Next-Later Roadmap vs. Outcome-Driven Product Roadmap
The Now-Next-Later roadmap is similar to the outcome-based roadmap in its flexibility. It prioritizes initiatives by organizing them into immediate (Now), upcoming (Next), and future (Later) categories.
This approach allows for dynamic updates and can be particularly useful in organizations that need to adjust priorities frequently based on feedback or changing markets.
While Now-Next-Later roadmaps show what’s coming up in priority order, they don’t inherently focus on specific outcomes. A con of now-next-later roadmaps is that they can leave some product teams lacking outcome orientation. They want to understand why something is prioritized and what specific results they should aim to achieve.
In practice, many product teams find success by combining these two approaches. They use Now-Next-Later for broad timeframes and an outcome-based structure to clarify the desired impact of each initiative within those timeframes.
For example, an organization might list “Improve onboarding experience” in the “Now” section but add specific outcomes like “increase new user retention by 20%” to provide a clear focus on value.
Goal-Oriented Roadmap vs. Outcome-Based Roadmap
Goal-oriented roadmaps are close relatives to outcome-based roadmaps. Both focus on achieving specific, high-level business or product objectives. Goal-oriented roadmaps set specific goals like “Expand into new markets” or “Enhance user security,” often linking these to strategic company initiatives.
Where they differ is in their level of specificity around measurable outcomes.
Outcome-based roadmaps go further by defining clear, trackable product metrics for success, such as “increase retention in new markets by 15%” or “reduce security incidents by 10%.” This adds an additional layer of accountability and measurement. It ensures that every initiative serves a directly measurable business purpose.
How to Create an Outcome-Driven Roadmap?
Creating an outcome-based roadmap requires thoughtful planning, collaboration, and a structured approach. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you build one:
1. Define Clear Strategic Objectives
Identify High-Level Goals: Begin with a clear understanding of your organization’s overarching goals, such as improving customer satisfaction, increasing retention, or expanding into new markets. Work with leadership and manage key stakeholders to clarify these objectives to ensure alignment from the top down.
Connect Objectives to Outcomes: Break down each high-level goal into specific, measurable outcomes (e.g., “reduce churn by 15% within six months” or “increase engagement rate by 20%”). Clear outcomes will guide the roadmap and give teams a focused target.
Tip: Use a framework like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to organize objectives and outcomes. This will make them easier to track and measure.
2. Engage Cross-Functional Teams Early
Gather Insights from Different Teams: Invite input from marketing, sales, product management, and support teams, as each will have unique perspectives on what outcomes matter most. This collaboration ensures the roadmap reflects the needs of both users and the business.
Set Shared Priorities: Define which outcomes take priority and clarify why each is important. Having a common understanding of priorities will prevent misalignment down the road.
Tool: Proddy awarded tools like Miro or Figma, for visual collaboration can help teams brainstorm and align on key outcomes.
3. Research and Set Measurable Outcomes
Analyze Customer and Market Data: Use product adoption analytics to identify key areas for improvement. Perhaps these are features that need refinement or processes affecting customer satisfaction. Product roadmaps should be rooted in data to ensure they focus on areas with the most potential impact.
Establish Metrics for Each Outcome: Define specific product metrics (e.g., NPS, retention rate, user engagement) to measure success. Each outcome should be clear enough to track and assess its progress.
Practical Advice: Revisit customer feedback channels like surveys, support tickets, and reviews. Listening to the customer discovery can reveal pain points that your outcomes should address.
4. Map Out Milestones and Key Initiatives
Break Down Outcomes into Milestones: For each outcome, identify key milestones that will indicate progress. Milestones act as checkpoints, allowing the team to adjust course if needed.
Outline Major Initiatives: Determine the initiatives or features that will drive each outcome. Keep the focus on flexibility to allow the product team to pivot as they test different approaches.
Tip: Use “Now-Next-Later” prioritization to balance immediate actions with long-term goals. These will also allow teams to adapt to any unexpected challenges.
5. Create a Visualization of the Roadmap
Choose a Visual Format: Outcome-based roadmaps should be easy to follow and reflect priorities clearly. Popular formats include timeline-free visualizations (such as Trello boards or Gantt charts) that organize initiatives under each outcome without rigid deadlines.
Label Initiatives by Outcome: Arrange initiatives based on the specific outcome they support, and make sure it’s clear to all stakeholders how each initiative contributes to achieving a particular goal.
Tool: Roadmapping tools like Airfocus, Productboard, or Craft.io are highly effective for visualizing and sharing outcome-based roadmaps.
6. Build in Feedback Loops for Continuous Evaluation
Establish Regular Check-Ins: Schedule regular reviews and Agile Retros to evaluate progress toward each outcome. During these check-ins, assess if the initiatives are effectively moving the needle and adjust plans as necessary.
Collect Feedback from Stakeholders: Keep stakeholders updated on progress and gather feedback. Stakeholder input can provide fresh insights or bring attention to issues the team might have missed.
Tip: Leverage dashboards with real-time analytics (e.g., Google Analytics, Mixpanel) to monitor outcome metrics continuously. Schedule regular team meetings to discuss these metrics and the insights they’re giving you. This ensures your team stays informed of the impact each initiative has on the roadmap’s objectives.
7. Adjust and Iterate the Roadmap as Needed
Review Performance Metrics: Based on the data collected, refine or re-prioritize initiatives that aren’t meeting expectations. Flexibility is key in a product roadmap, as it should allow for adjustments to optimize outcomes.
Re-Engage Teams in Strategic Discussions: Revisiting strategic discussions helps ensure alignment as goals evolve. If an outcome shifts in priority or an initiative needs updating, keep all relevant teams in the loop.
Practical Advice: Avoid rigid adherence to the original roadmap — outcome-based roadmaps should evolve as your organization grows, learns, and reacts to new data.
Examples of Outcome-Based Roadmaps
Here are three examples of outcome-based roadmaps. Each illustrates a different approach to aligning product development with measurable business goals.
1. Outcome-based Roadmap Hierarchy
This roadmap is structured in a hierarchical format. It starts with high-level strategic components like Business Impacts, Product Vision, and Principles/Values. These are followed by clear Goals and Outcomes, which connect directly to opportunities in the discovery phase.
This is where potential solutions and ideas are explored. The structure then flows into delivery, where solutions are validated and developed into features and stories.
Purpose of Structure: This roadmap emphasizes aligning all activities with strategic goals. As it should, each feature or story connects to a larger business outcome. This approach guides teams from high-level strategy down to actionable tasks, keeping everyone focused on outcomes.
Source: FeedBear
2. Goal-Driven Timeline Roadmap
This timeline roadmap outlines specific goals for each quarter, with sequential stages for Research, Product Discovery, and Product Delivery.
The roadmap includes placeholders for ideas. It opens up space for flexibility and adaptability based on ongoing research and discovery. The structured approach to goals like reducing churn and enhancing security keeps the team focused on achieving measurable, outcome-based targets within a defined timeframe.
Purpose of Structure: This layout makes it easy to track progress over time and adjust delivery based on research findings. By dividing the roadmap into quarterly goals, it aligns each phase with a clear timeline. Again, this helps keep the focus on long-term outcomes while allowing for flexibility in execution.
Source: Itamar Gilad
3. Product Roadmap with Release-Specific Details
This roadmap presents specific details for each release, including Date, Name, Goal, Features, and Metrics.
Each release is named and linked to a distinct business goal (e.g., increasing customer engagement and boosting conversion rates). The metrics provide a way to measure the success of each release, ensuring that all features contribute to tangible business outcomes.
Purpose of Structure: This roadmap is highly outcome-focused. Each release is carefully designed to achieve specific, measurable results. By outlining metrics, the roadmap emphasizes accountability and continuous improvement. It allows teams to refine their approach based on quantitative feedback after each release.
Conclusion: Driving Value with Outcome-Based Roadmaps
Outcome-based roadmaps are powerful tools for aligning product development with meaningful business results. By focusing on clear goals and measurable outcomes, they allow teams to work purposefully, adapt quickly to changes, and ensure that every feature or initiative directly contributes to a larger objective.
While they may require more planning, the payoff is lucrative — a more user-centric, value-driven product strategy.
When choosing a roadmap approach, consider the needs of your organization and the type of impact you want to achieve. Embracing an outcome-based roadmap could be the key to staying competitive and delivering real value.
Product Roadmapping Micro-Certification (PRC)™️
Product School has partnered with Productboard to create a micro-certification on how to build and maintain effective Roadmaps. Enroll for free to learn how to communicate the product vision and strategy to your stakeholders and customers.
Enroll for Free
Updated: December 2, 2024
