Product Manager Roadmap

What is a roadmap?

Before starting to delve into examples of Roadmap, we will define the roadmap as the planne path that summarizes the vision of the product and its general strategy. It is the document that helps you understand what we are building and how to do it, it shows the plan to execute.

The truth is that road maps can be found by almost any profession in which we need a support that helps us project and develop. It is also true that as far as a Product Manager roadmap per se, there may be several examples to follow. We tell you some below.

1. Product Roadmap
2. Multiple Product Roadmap
3. Sprint Roadmap

Product Roadmap

The basic roadmap which is used when a Product Manager is in charge of a single product.

Within this strategic document you will find a route of what is done daily in the product strategy. For example, suppose the roadmap is about launching a product at a 1-year view, and you also know that the launch will be in January. In this roadmap you will have to consider since February or March what will be the budgets and resources that will be needed until launch in January. Not only that, also who will be the agents that intervene, perhaps you need to hire an expert that you do not have in your team, how much time do you need to find it? What documents will you have to have? All forecasts must be included in this document and also have them controlled so they are ready at launch

MAY BE INTEREST YOU TO READ THE POST OF “WHAT IS AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT?“

Multiple Product Roadmap

If, on the other hand, you are in charge of defining more than one product, you will find a multiple Product Roadmap. In which, you are going to combine several products within the same document. And although in reality it does not have much difference with the previous one, you will have an advantage and that is that, when contemplating more than one product, you will have a broader vision of the brand and when combining several products you will have the additional benefit of creating a vision long-term strategic process of your product in the broader context of the simultaneous development of its other products.

You can maintain multiple roadmaps for a single product, one for each product for which it is responsible. But this would create duplicate work, force you to crawl and review more documents, and deprive yourself of the ability to view each product in the context of other initiatives. Sometimes, the more closely we have everything, the better the final value proposition will be.

Sprint Roadmap

When we talk about Product Manager Roadmap this is often related to the well-known Sprint or Agile methodologies. And so it is. The difference from the previous two is that, while single or multiple product roadmaps often focus on communicating the strategy to executive stakeholders, the Sprint roadmap will be used primarily to establish your strategy with your development team, the same document. that you will use to carry out the Sprint or Agile work methodology.

Although this methodology focuses primarily on short-term details, the Sprint Roadmap continues to present a strategic vision, bringing the disparate features and stories together in a sprint to show how each of these individual projects is working toward a unifying goal. This is important because developers need to understand the overall strategic direction of the product.

A Sprint Roadmap can be invaluable when it comes to scheduling. Because these are short-term task-oriented roadmaps, they’re a great way to set, and then keep a close eye on a product’s planned release dates.

For example, If you set up a product launch within a few months, you can use the Sprint Roadmap to prioritize the essential initiatives you must complete before that market launch date. This can greatly assist the team to stay focused and prevent team members or individuals from being distracted by lower priority tasks.

KNOW MORE WITH ROBIN WENINGER, PROFESSOR OF THE DIGITAL PRODUCT MANAGEMENT MASTER PROGRAM