1

PRODUCTPLAN CHECKLISTS

THE STRATEGIC PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP CHECKLIST

Introduction
Product development refers to all stages involved in bringing a product from concept
through market release and beyond.

Product development requires continuous communication.

For this reason, organizations should maintain a product development roadmap as a
centralized resource to track and refer to everyone’s strategic role. Not to be confused with
a project plan, a product development roadmap can help you plan your initiatives, map your
release schedule, track and communicate the associated initiatives and milestones.

THE STRATEGIC
The product development roadmap should not be confused with the product roadmap.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
While both are designed to communicate an organization’s strategic thinking and planning

ROADMAP
for its product, the two are separate tools, each focusing on a different aspect of the
product’s strategy.
CHECKLIST
A product roadmap is designed to focus on the “Why?” and value and map out a product’s
strategic vision, priorities over time, and the product’s central themes. A product
development roadmap is a centralized resource to track “How?”—who is doing the work,
when, and what are the dependencies? It’s a reference to the tactical steps being taken to
bring a product to market. To be successful, it should maintain a reference to the “Why?” and
go much more into detail.

Getting the Most Out of Your Strategic Product

Development Roadmap
Preliminary Work
Hear the customer problem in their own words. Join customer calls, review interview
notes and ensure that you understand the desired outcome. If you can communicate
it out, you’re ready to get started on the roadmap.

Review relevant product discovery data and marketing trends.

Run surveys and other user research activities.

Establish the desired outcomes and how they impact the business or customer.

1
 PRODUCTPLAN CHECKLISTS

THE STRATEGIC PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP CHECKLIST

Alignment is Everything
Before making the product development roadmap and delving into the “How?” you need
to align on your product and strategy roadmap’s “Why?” Share it with all of your stakeholders
to build alignment around the desired outcomes. The outcomes are what you are trying to
achieve with the roadmap (“What does success look like?”).

Align internal stakeholders around the targeted outcomes (or value) and the external
stakeholders around the objective in terms of value. Provide as much relevant context
as reasonably possible to empower teams to move forward rather than check off tasks
confidently.
THE STRATEGIC
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Prioritize all the requests and say “no” to some.

Choose a prioritizationROADMAP
framework from user story mapping, MoSCoW, Kano,
Value vs. Cost, etc.
CHECKLIST
Put everything else in the backlog.

If you can describe the problem, know the desired outcome, and build alignment
with your stakeholders, you’re ready to create your roadmap.

Take a deep breath and be prepared to be flexible because you’re never going to
know everything.

2
 PRODUCTPLAN CHECKLISTS

THE STRATEGIC PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP CHECKLIST

Build Your Product Development Roadmap

A visually appealing roadmap helps present strategic goals and plans to all stakeholders.
Use a product roadmap tool designed to strategically, efficiently, and visually convey your
product development plan.

Organize prioritized initiatives under a layout that makes sense for how you and your
organization works.

We recommend structuring your roadmap in the following way:

THE STRATEGIC
Lanes are teams.

PRODUCT
Containers are Epics or DEVELOPMENT
organized around customer value.

ROADMAP
Subgroups of work are your Bars.
CHECKLIST
Use your Legend as status markers, such as discovery or development
launch or for strategic initiatives.

Create Tags that are helpful when filtering roadmap items for different
audiences. Tags can also represent the top three things you want to
communicate around solving the problem.

Include the strategic role of each person involved. Use the Custom Fields to capture
individuals and their roles.

Identify which themes and goals are central to develop first to solve the most
significant pain points and spark adoption.

Generate custom views of the visual product roadmap for each audience type.

Establish date-based release milestones and targets.

Create schedules, break down significant themes into sprints, and begin generating
iterations of the product.

Review by quarter in a List Layout to understand your work distribution.

3
 PRODUCTPLAN CHECKLISTS

THE STRATEGIC PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP CHECKLIST

Next Steps and Continuing Work

Over time, the product development roadmap will evolve based on learnings and the
company’s evolving objectives.

Share the first draft with high-level dates with the team in advance of meetings.

Review with engineering on the timeframe of the deliverables outlined.

Agree on the ownership of tasks, so every item on the roadmap has an owner helping it
reach its milestone.

THE STRATEGIC
Share the 2nd draft product development roadmap with team members and
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
stakeholders for transparency.

Create a feedback loop fromROADMAP

customers, the sales team, and support.
CHECKLIST
Review data and synthesize the feedback.

Reprioritize the roadmap based on new information.

Takeaways
A product development roadmap encompasses feedback from everyone involved, from idea
generation through to customer delivery. Each of these groups plays an essential role in the
process: defining, designing, building, testing, or delivering the product.

Team members need to understand how what they’re working on fits in the big picture and
why it’s the most important thing to do. This work never ends until it’s finally time to sunset a
product at the end of its lifecycle.

4
 PRODUCTPLAN CHECKLISTS

THE STRATEGIC PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP CHECKLIST

ProductPlan makes it easy for teams of all sizes to build beautiful roadmaps. Thousands
of product managers worldwide–including teams from Nike, Microsoft, and Spotify–
trust ProductPlan to help them visualize and share their strategies across their entire
organization. With our intuitive features, product managers spend less time building
roadmaps and more time shipping products.

THE STRATEGIC
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
ROADMAP
User Interface (UI)

CHECKLIST
Application Programing Interface (API)

Storage

Get started