An ultimate guide on how to create a product roadmap for software development

Before you plunge into the software product development process, you spend a great deal of time creating a roadmap. It isn’t a spur-of-the-moment plan, that you instantly come up with. You’ve got to analyze each move, ponder how it fits into your grand product vision, and sort out the must-haves from the nice-to-haves. That’s what our article describes in detail, clarifying what the roadmap is and how to craft a perfect one for your product.

What is a roadmap in software development?

A roadmap is a strategic blueprint or all-in-one document that gives an outline of goals, major deadlines, resources, and technical aspects for a specific software project. Throughout development, you rather focus on narrow tasks with different priorities, but you also need to keep a global picture to ensure your smaller goals comply with bigger ones. This is only one step in your roadmap, as it serves as a directional document for teams, stakeholders, and developers to keep everyone on track. You will find there all the project-related details like:

• Goals. This is the starting point of any roadmap. They can be derived from dire user needs, overall business objectives, or customer feedback.
• Functionality. It enlists the key components of features and enhancements that are planned out as a part of the software. These may have a priority defined for them based on the significance and impact each might have.
• Timeline. Each project has a roughly estimated timeframe that indicates when each feature or milestone is expected to be completed. The big line can be said in quarters, months, or with the precise date of the release. 
• Prioritizing. Normally features and tasks are prioritized in accordance with what is demanded by the customers, business values, technical complexities, and dependencies among others. This will make the team focus on what is more important.
• Dependencies. These are relations where one task or component relies on the successful completion of another. Developers count on them to understand how things should be built more precisely and set more accurate cut-off dates.
• Resource allocation. The roadmap may also identify the allocation of resources such as development, designers, testers, and other required personnel.
• Risks. The project contains a standard section that describes potential risks or challenges, along with the mitigations.
• KPIs. Those are measurable and quantifiable metrics that teams use to assess their performance, success, and progress toward specific goals. KPIs often have a defined reporting period, such as monthly, quarterly, or annually.
• Iterations. In Agile software development the roadmap may be broken down into iterations or sprints, each with its own sets of features and goals. In other more traditional development approaches it could be framed around major releases.
• The Communication Plan. It is a critical component of project management that helps ensure that the right information is communicated to the right people at the right time, be it an internal or external team. 

A software development roadmap aims to give a clear visual guide that will align the team of developers and all stakeholders with their objectives. It makes it easier to manage expectations on both sides and can be effective in setting up the return areas and effectively managing the choice of what rise areas to focus on. As the course of the project is subject to change, roadmaps can sometimes be updated with new software development requirements or features. In this way, you can get insights into how the shifts will reflect in other areas.

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Anatolii Fesuik

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Why do we need a product roadmap?

Product roadmaps sit among the central strategic tools that provide a focus to all stakeholders involved. Not only do they ensure close alignment of development efforts with broad product and company goals but also foster teamwork to deliver great products in an environment wherein many teams work under one roof. 

The roadmap is a vehicle that keeps everyone ‘on track’ for organizational leaders to monitor the progress of planned features and enhancements for an upcoming period of time in a format that directly ties back to company goals making it easily understandable.

Roadmaps benefit the owners of products and managers by cultivating greater team cohesion around product improvement. They can make sure effective communication is the priority area regardless of what type of team they are working with.

On the side of developers, roadmaps give an abstract view of the “big picture.” Thus, team members are equipped with the insight needed to concentrate on the most critical tasks, prevent scope creep, and make quick, autonomous decisions.

If you want to craft your product roadmap, check out our software development roadmap template for property tech product from scratch on our website. You will learn how to outline your project journey from square one to the launch phase, not skipping a single step on the way.

Technology Roadmap Example & Template

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How to create a roadmap for software development: a step-by-step guide

Developing a software development roadmap is an essential process that requires multiple stages with key players successfully leading the process to success. The following walk-through guide describes each stage from start to finish.

1. Strategic Goal Definition:

• Roles: product manager, CTO, or CEO.
• Process: right from the get-go you need to determine strategic goals that will shape your product scope later on. Hence, narrow down areas that need enhancements by both qualitative and quantitative research. Focus on a cyclic approach and negotiation with teams across different functions to understand the most pressing needs and strive to cover them in your project first.
• Value: clear understanding of what your software ought to achieve.

2. Elicit Stakeholder Input:

• Roles: product manager.
• Process: get feedback from all stakeholders i.e., customers, end-users as well as internal teams. This would arm the roadmap with dimensions rooted in real needs and expectations. You and your team need to dig deep and understand the purpose behind building this product. Don’t forget to figure out what unique value your product is bringing to the table. Based on that information craft a solid business model to set the course for your journey, keep your project afloat, and also give you a clear path for prioritizing.
• Value: User requirements and priorities understood for business.

3. Task Prioritization:

• Roles: product manager, development team.
• Process: agree upon what the most important and achievable features or substantial improvements to the product would be. Primarily consider the impacts of technical difficulty, demand level across the market, and intersection resource avails. One effective way to do this is to identify one “golden feature” that represents the top priority and also the introductory element that should be present in a specific release. This golden feature has to achieve the right balance: it needs to be simple enough to communicate yet also capable of addressing the current user struggles.
• Value: the list of prioritized features or enhancements with an order of implementation.

4. High-Level Timeline Estimation:

• Roles: project manager, product owner.
• Process: Develop an ultimate schedule depicting the development of each feature or enhancement, taking into account dependencies and resource constraints. The use of dates can be rather controversial. It mostly applies to the internal product roadmaps that regulate team progress and timely task completion. When it comes to client-centric, those need more room for flexibility as the change is inevitable. Therefore, the best way is to keep them plain and stepwise rather than stick to fixed dates. 
• Value: high-level estimates for features that overlap in their development.

5. Design Roadmap:

• Roles: product manager, UX/UI designer.
• Process: a product roadmap should not just list, but picture your vision and how it relates to your company’s goals. Some managers still use old-school software like Google presentation tools and Excel spreadsheets to visualize their roadmaps, but there are more modern tools like Craft, OneDesk, ProductPlan, Aha, and Roadmunk with features of swimlanes, drag-and-drop editors, and movable cards to makes the process more interactive.
• Result: a roadmap document that is easy to understand and work with.

6. Communicate Your Roadmap:

• Roles: product manager, development team, product owner.
• Process: Roadmap misunderstanding via appropriate communication to all pertinent stakeholders of the product including the development team, sales, marketing, and customer support. Clearly rationalize for prioritizing particular features over others for a better acquaintance at the stakeholder’s end. Unveil adequate details on internal roadmaps shared with the customer without disclosing special strategies.
• Value: connection with each of the touchpoints required in executing a software development lifecycle that aligns with your expectations.

7. Clear Task Breakdown:

• Roles: development team, product owner, Scrum master (if using Agile).
• Process: The first thing in this whole process of task breakdown is to clearly identify the project at hand to get a strong clarification of its objectives and scope. You then proceed to list down the high-level deliverables that would represent major milestones in the project. From this point, each high-level deliverable is decomposed into smaller sub-deliverables or components. This is essential to build more specific time estimations and avoid miscalculations. Discover effective methods for accurately estimating the cost of your software development project and avoid costly surprises.
• Value: each item on the roadmap will have a well-supported task list.

8. Implement and Monitor Progress:

• Roles: development team, project manager, UI/UX designers.
• Process: initiate implementation of tasks as stated on the roadmap with a development team. Continuously track your progress while implementing changes to the roadmap if there are unforeseen challenges or changes in priorities. Once the changes occur, you will be able to adjust your strategy, but it will take more time eventually. Changes will affect the deadlines as you will have to shift forward to other task completion. Either way, raise PO’s awareness of the consequences of change.
• Value: regular tracking of continuous progress in development, greater flexibility.

9. Review and Iteration:

• Roles: product manager, development team, DevOps, QA specialists.
• Process: review the roadmap at regular intervals in order to keep track of features’ progress in development and make necessary adjustments based on user feedback, changes in the prioritization, or any emerging unexpected situations.
• Value: an evolving roadmap still on track with the software’s strategic goals.

10. Launch and Gather Feedback:

• Roles: product manager, product owner, development team.
• Process: here comes the final stage – launching the product. After the trial period, you can get feedback from users regarding user experience, usability issues, bugs that need to be fixed, and possible improvements they would like. Consider adjusting the course of the roadmap in future iterations based on it.
• Value: valuable insights for continuous improvement and refinement.

The participants in software development roadmap creation should be adaptable to a variety of needs as well as changing conditions. It is a collaborative, ongoing process that doesn’t stop after the launch but continues to fit with strategic goals across time.

Conclusion

To sum up, roadmap development is a meticulous process that involves all links. You start at strategic goals, get the input, prioritize then design the road map, and finally task breakdown and development. Go forward, review, and iterate by tracking what you have accomplished so far. The final goal is the developed MVP, where you will consider user feedback in the end. This way, your software development remains aligned with your strategic goals so that later on, they can be fully matched with the client’s vision.