Roadmap Storytelling:

A Product Survival Kit

Bring your product vision to life by telling
the best roadmap story possible.

You have Arrived

at an Excellent
Roadmap

Copyright © Productboard Inc. 2022 – All Rights Reserved

 Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Roadmap storytelling: Where to begin 4

Chapter 2

How to tell the best roadmap story 6

Chapter 3

Learn from the experts: The dos 


and don’ts of roadmap storytelling 9

Chapter 4

Your roadmap storytelling journey starts here 12

2
Introduction
What’s in a product story? When 73% of product teams do not
have a clear strategy for achieving their vision, the short
answer is: a great deal. Conveying the best roadmap narrative
possible has several benefits, including:

Aligning your team around a shared goa

Securing buy-in to the steps you’ll take to get ther
Improving organizational efficiency and preventing costly delays

When you pair the visual of a roadmap with a strong narrative,

it can feel like magic. This combination is stronger than the
sum of its parts — visualizations build shared understanding
and stories foster emotional connections.

Tailoring your roadmap communications to multiple audiences

(whether internal or external) is a critical part of making your
product vision come to life in less time. In contrast, poor
communication can lead to slower handoffs and
overpromising and under-delivering features to customers.

In this guide, we’ll show you why roadmap storytelling is so

important to your product development process. From there,
we’ll help you determine how best to both strategize and craft
effective roadmap narratives for a variety of key audiences.
Let’s get started.

“ Telling great stories about a product creates evangelists: people 


who believe in your idea or product and promote its value to others.”

– Petra Wille, Product Leader & Author

3
Chapter 1

Roadmap storytelling:
Where to begin
To kick off your roadmap storytelling journey, there are a few guidelines that
will help you get started.

4
Take cues from your product vision
Your company’s product vision serves as a foundation for achieving business goals. Ideally,
every new feature or initiative should contribute to that vision, and ultimately realized through
the product roadmap. After you’ve explained the vision initially, refer back to it as you go
through the roadmap. This will keep everyone grounded in the “why” behind what you’re
building and how you’re helping your company achieve its goals.

“ People don’t buy a product, service, or idea; they buy the story that’s
attached to it.”

– Michael Margolis, CEO and Founder at Storied

Focus on impact and value

As you’ve been building out your roadmap and prioritizing features, you’ve likely gone through
several activities like the “five whys” to really nail down the outcomes you’re trying to achieve,
both for your customers and your business. Make sure you clearly define and communicate
these outcomes when you share your roadmap.

Context is key
Good storytellers naturally adapt their approach to their audience, and this is a skill you’ll want
to hone as well. Consider how much background information your audience needs, how much
technical detail they’ll expect (or tolerate), and which aspects of the story they’re likely to care
about most.

5
Chapter 2

How to tell the best 


roadmap story
Now that you’ve got the basics down, you can start to polish and perfect your
roadmap storytelling. Here are a few practical applications.

6
Articulate core themes in a digestible way
As a product person, you have deep knowledge of the products and features you’re building,
but remember your audience won’t always have that same level of familiarity. Try to avoid using
technical jargon and instead provide simple explanations of what you are doing and the
positive impact it will have on your customers.

Answer the “why”

The key to good storytelling is to include a narrative arc. There’s a clear beginning—what the
world looks like now and what problems and pain points your customers are experiencing. And
there’s a solid end—what will the world look like once everything has come to fruition and what
does that mean for your customers? This approach creates an aspirational feeling of
accomplishing a goal and establishing why you’re taking the steps you’ve outlined.

“ What would happen if a company didn’t have a product strategy 


or roadmap? I think they would still deliver some features, but they
would never contribute to a higher goal. They would never go in the
same direction. It would be chaotic.
– Adam Krbusek, Senior Product Manager at GoodData

Outline when it will happen (without getting too specific)

Your audience is going to be curious (if not demanding) about the timeline of your roadmap, so
you need to be prepared to provide an overview of when things will happen. Your goal is to
avoid overpromising and under-delivering. One of the keys is to organize your roadmap and
your narrative in general terms such as “now, next, and later” rather than committing to specific
release dates.

7
Prospecta’s roadmap to telling
a compelling product story

Prospecta’s enterprise platform empowers teams to teams struggled to share information, set expectations,

set data strategies, remediate data concerns, and and communicate about roadblocks. Ultimately, these

automate processes.

challenges affected the speed of product

development, straining business efficiency.

Determined to improve efficiency, collaboration, and

Product lost time solving new user problems
customer relationships, Product Manager Alex Yehorov
while responding to roadmap questions and
decided it would be best to find a new, purpose-built
asking Engineering for updates about the status
platform to visualize how everything connects across of features in development
the product life cycle.

Prospecta saw delays in shipping product, as

engineers based remotely often lacked the context

Alex says Prospecta struggled using a task-oriented they needed per feature to stay on deadline

system to manage the scope of what they were

building across the product life cycle. This led to Alex says time zone differences made collaboration

visibility and communication difficulties between even more difficult without a comprehensive system to

product and engineering.

bridge gaps asynchronously: “We have huge gaps in

distance and timing with our developers based in a

Without a single source of truth linking users’ needs to different country, which can create difficulties in

a real-time roadmap highlighting the status of features communication that we had to overcome.”

in development, Prospecta’s Product and Engineering

Productboard has helped teams

across Prospecta:

Secure stakeholder buy-in faster, with cross- “ Just being able to put in place a structure, to
functional teams easily accessing and aligning
visually communicate that product structure to the
around the company’s product vision and
entire business—was so valuable. It worked really
direction in a central place; Product no longer
needs to hold roadmap walk-through sessions, well for us because we had three traditional parties
as cross-functional teams can quickly find involved—a developer, business analyst, and
information themselves
product designer—who each needed a view of the
Reduce feature delays by improving collaboration roadmap configured for their needs.”
from discovery to development
– Alex Yehorov, Product Manager at Prospecta
Improve organizational efficiency with visibility
into the product life cycle through enhanced
reporting for leaders

“ The visibility and ease of use Productboard offers have been so helpful for

our cross-functional teams to quickly find information they need without

having any technical background. This is where the platform works brilliantly,

because we have a clear roadmap story that’s easy to grasp for anyone

looking at it.”

– Alex Yehorov, Product Manager at Prospecta

Read the full Prospecta story here.

8
Chapter 3

Learn from the experts:

The dos and don’ts of

roadmap storytelling

Still looking for some guidance to help you build confidence in your roadmap

storytelling skills? Here, we’ve gathered tips and tricks from experienced

product leaders and practitioners.

9
Do :
Showcase your progress as well as 

your plans.
We tend to associate roadmaps with the future— “ Great roadmaps don’t just show
they show us the things we want to do. But Janna what’s to come. They show
suggests also including a “completed” section so progress made as well.” 

you can see what you’ve already accomplished Janna Bastow, Co-founder &
and remind yourself of the big problem you’re trying CEO of ProdPad and originator
to solve.
of the now/next/later roadmap

Focus on outcomes and business impact.

Yes, it’s helpful for roadmaps to include the outputs, “ Don’t focus on the features.

such as new features and products. But we want to Focus on the outcomes—and 

avoid turning our roadmap into a giant to-do list at the how you can enable the priorities
expense of innovation. And this is why John suggests of your business.” 

looking for ways to account for your business John Knific, 

outcomes and objectives on your roadmap. Want to Managing Director of Product, EAB
explore this topic in more depth? Read more about
aligning your roadmap to your business strategy here.

Recognize the relationship between

timeline and accuracy.
A lot can change in a year when it comes to “ The farther a roadmap goes out—
business, technology, and the world at large. 
 the less precision it will have… and
Rather than overlooking this fact, it’s important 
 this should be communicated.”
to take it into account when creating your product Kent McDonald,

roadmap. Your priorities, business objectives, and Founder KBP Media

even the capabilities of your team are likely to

change when you’re looking beyond the next 

few quarters. Make sure your roadmap is flexible,
reflecting the fact that the items that are further 

out are less precise and subject to change.

10
Don’t:
Put specific dates on your roadmap.
Rather than committing to specific dates on your “ Don’t put dates on a roadmap 

roadmap, share broader timeframes like “now/next/ as dates give the impression 

later” or the fiscal quarter your team is aiming for that things are set in stone, and
release. This accounts for a lot of the unpredictability product roadmaps are almost
related to market forces, investors, competition, etc. never set in stone.” 

Unless you’re at the very end stage, your roadmap Danie Karaplis, 

should be a fluid, living document.
Product Leader and Speaker

Expect all stakeholders to receive the

roadmap the same way.
Everyone brings their own perspective and “ Don’t expect all stakeholders
priorities into their interactions with a roadmap. (internal and external) to digest
Customers care about which of their problems are the roadmap the same way as
being solved; engineers are looking for granular each has different motivations.” 

detail of exactly what they’re expected to build Ben Foster, 

when; or executives are looking for the impact you Former CPO of Whoop
intend to have on the business. Read more about
how to present your roadmap to different
audiences here.

11
 Excellent Roadmap

Up Ahead

Chapter 4

Your roadmap storytelling 


journey starts here
Like any new skill, roadmap storytelling isn’t something you can master
immediately—it improves and evolves over time. In addition to the strategies
and steps we’ve outlined in this guide, here are ways you can continue
building your storytelling skills.

12
 1. Get your reps in a low-stakes setting
You don’t necessarily need to start with a room full of executives or customers. Practice your
storytelling with peers, cross-functional coworkers, or leaders who can offer constructive feedback.

2. Gather feedback and iterate

Make your own observations about what went well and where there’s room for improvement.
Where did people seem to get lost? Which parts of your presentation generated the most
confusion or questions? Get feedback from your audience as well. What resonated with them
or what do they wish you’d done differently? Take all that feedback and incorporate it into
future sessions.

3. Go retro (when it makes sense to do so)

It may not be the best use of everyone’s time to run a retrospective after every roadmap
storytelling session, but you might find it beneficial to hold retros as a means to gather formal
feedback. Your goal is to connect your roadmap to your product vision and tailor your story to
your specific audience. Any information that will help you tell the most effective (and
compelling) story possible will ultimately have a major positive impact.

Using roadmaps to effectively tell

stories to different audiences is
impossible w/ Productboard —

Try it out

About Productboard

Productboard is the customer-centric product management platform that helps organizations

get the right products to market, faster. Over 6,000 companies, including Toyota, Microsoft,
Zoom, 1-800-Contacts, and UiPath, use Productboard to understand what customers need,
prioritize what to build next, and align everyone around their roadmap. With offices in San
Francisco, Prague, and Vancouver, Productboard is backed by leading investors like Dragoneer
Investment Group, Tiger Global Management, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital,
Bessemer Venture Partners, and Credo Ventures.

Learn more at productboard.com