Defining
Product Roadmap
A product roadmap is a strategic documentation that maps out the overall vision & direction of your offering, over time, communicating clearly the “what” & the “why” of your product. A product roadmap aligns the entire team towards a shared vision along with identifying the short & long term goals & their implementation. Product roadmap also tracks the progress made at each stage of the design process & also the priorities, ensuring all stakeholders are on the same page.
How to create a
product roadmap?
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- Have well-documented research insights & company goals + vision read
- Establish product goals, initiatives & desired outcomes
- Establish impact & success metrics
- Make a list of all the features & releases are best aligned with the UX strategy
- Roadmapping process depends on the audience – is it internal just for design teams or external including stakeholders
- Make a list of all the problems you want to solve – through customer feedback, product backlog, competitor analysis, etc.
- Set a realistic timeframe for all the tasks & decisions
- Organize problems in high-level themes based on desired outcomes, impact metrics, & user challenges
Product roadmap &
UX strategy
- Product roadmaps provide high-level strategic overview
- Helps UX team to prioritize user experience at each stage
- Fosters effective utilization of time & resources keeping all teams aligned
- Removes reworking on ideas as usability is made the top priority here
- Allows everyone to be on the same page for scope, goals, deliverables, & deadlines
- Serves as bridge between client’s UX vision & internal UX project management artifacts
- Enlists all the UX problems & challenges that need to be addressed for designing meaningful experiences
- Communicates the UX design process to the stakeholders, removing confusions & roadblocks.
Product roadmap prioritization framework
A product roadmap prioritization framework enables consistent criteria setting for product/design teams to prioritize features & functionalities according to business needs. Product roadmap frameworks foster more strategic decision-making, reduce personal biases seeping in, & remove analysis-paralysis. There are several product roadmap prioritization frameworks we use including – RICE, Kano model, Story Mapping, Moscow Method, Value v Effort, & more.
