WORKBOOK

Product Roadmap
Strategy Workbook
Feeling overwhelmed with your product roadmap strategy?
Not sure where to start? Here’s an actual product roadmap
strategy example.
This detailed workbook walks you through the steps for the 7 phases of
aligning your team around the product roadmap strategy and gives you key
questions and example answers for each phase. Share the final results with
your team and stakeholders for better company alignment.

7 Stages of Product Roadmap Strategy:

01 Roadmap Objectives
02 Defining Your Roadmap Configuration
03 Roadmap Settings
04 Roadmap Standardization
05 Consolidating the Roadmap
06 Other Capabilities to Consider Using
07 Capturing Details for Your Release Containers

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 Stage 1: Roadmap Objectives
What does our product roadmap represent? Example Answer

Company X’s product roadmap represents the product themes and goals
that best deliver towards the strategic objectives, as well as the sequential
order in which we plan to deliver the desired outcomes.

●Company X’s product roadmap is organized according to:

• ○Platforms
• ○Products
• ○Special projects

Company X’s product roadmap incorporates the roadmaps from product

management, software development, network and infrastructure, and
product partnerships.

●Company X’s product roadmap is used by product managers to organize,

prioritize, and present their product roadmaps to stakeholders in a visual,
non-technical manner.

●Company X’s product roadmap does not replace Jira and Confluence as
the systems for product requirements, backlogs, and user stories.

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Who are we communicating our product roadmap to? Example Answer

The following groups represent our primary audience(s) and the purpose
of the roadmap is to help these teams understand our product strategy and
plans to deliver against that strategy.
• ○Product, Development, & PMO ○• Sales
• ○Marketing ○• ExCo

How often will you be presenting your roadmaps to internal and Example Answer
external audiences?
Monthly

How often do you see your team updating their roadmaps? Example Answer

Bi-weekly minor updates (aligned with current 2-week sprints)

Monthly in preparation for a monthly roadmap review forum with exec team.

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 Stage 2: Defining Your Roadmap Configuration
Standardizing different elements of your roadmap with high-level concepts
will help deliver a clear message as you consolidate multiple roadmaps into
a portfolio view.

New roadmaps should be created with the following settings: Example Answer

Bar and font size: Condensed

Start date: Current month; End Date = Current month + 24 (2 year roadmap)

Months to display: 12

Color palette: (from the company’s design style guide). For consistency in
look & feel, be sure to always use the “additional colors” palette.

Tip: Make a copy of “reference roadmap” to jumpstart the creation

of a new roadmap following Company X standards.

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 Stage 3: Roadmap Settings

COMPONENT COMPANY X EXAMPLE

Timeline vs List View Roadmap planning: Timeline view (shows start and end dates
for each initiative)
Consolidated roadmap: List view (aligns on end dates)

Timeline 2 years

Layout Months and quarters

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How will you use the following components?

Timeline vs List View

Timeline

Layout

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 Stage 4: Roadmap Standards
All roadmaps have a hierarchy that allow you to tell your story to different
audiences. By standardizing and defining the items listed below, it helps tell
a consistent story across all roadmaps.

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COMPONENT + DESCRIPTION COMPANY X EXAMPLE

Legend Product components (front-end features, back-end features, support

The most visually impactful aspect of your roadmap. Allows the audience and ops tools, analytics, architecture and tech debt, infrastructure, etc.)
to visually identify bars/containers/milestones based on some meaning. Note that “release” is a special purpose legend.

Lanes Two lane types:

High level categories that persist throughout the roadmap (no
1. Products — to share with business
dates associated).
There must be one product-specific lane per roadmap that is

Product (will be shared with business) intended to contain items to be shared with business.

Front-End 2. Themes — for product managers to use for planning

There are multiple lanes for the product manager to use for
Back-End
planning and managing the roadmap. Standard lanes correspond
Support, Ops Tools, & Monitoring to the legends, but each product manager can also create custom
lanes as needed. Items added to theme-type lanes will not be shared
Analytics
with the business.
Architecture & Tech Debt

Infrastructure

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COMPONENT + DESCRIPTION COMPANY X EXAMPLE

Containers
Long term initiatives or themes. A collapsible element on your roadmap
that can contain bars. Finite and can be associated with dates.
User Portal 1.7.0
Releases. The business value of the release must be captured in the
description of the container along with other information related to
the release. Where applicable use the company’s semantic versioning
system so that the release planning in future can align with the planned
roadmap (this alignment will take a while).

Product XYZ 5.21.0

Bars Features in business language (for business lane).

An element on your roadmap that is finite and can be associated
with dates.

Tags Used for filtering of items to create views e.g.

Data identifiers used for sorting and view creation. • Sales visibility • Compliance
• Infrastructure • Design required
Sales Visibility
• Tech debt

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COMPONENT + DESCRIPTION COMPANY X EXAMPLE

Milestones Significant releases with target dates. These milestones are commercially
Flags that represent one defined date. significant as they indicate when the product team plans to deliver a
release that is ready to take to market.

Parked Section (on Prioritization board) We plan to use the prioritization board in the near future.
Table Layout, ability to import ‘backlog’ from an outside source. Once in
the Parked Section, can be easily moved to the planned section.

Planned Section (on Prioritization board) We plan to use the prioritization board in the near future.
Table layout, allows you to view all items planned on your roadmap.
Can easily update and move items to the prioritization board or
parked section.

Prioritization Board We plan to use the prioritization board in the near future.
Prioritize items from the planned and parked section. Ensures initiatives How will you weigh your bars/containers (ex: 1-5)?
align with goals & values. Rank based off benefit.

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How will you use the following components?

Legend Bars

Lanes Tags

Containers Milestones

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How will you use the following components?

Parked Section (on Prioritization board)

Planned Section (on Prioritization board)

Prioritization Board

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 Stage 5: Consolidating Our Product Roadmap
The consolidated company’s product roadmap is owned by the SVP of
Product and forms the foundation of discussion during monthly executive
roadmap review forums. We use ProductPlan’s portfolio view feature
to create a consolidated company product roadmap to share with the
business. For items to be visible on the consolidated roadmap the container
and the bar must include the “sales visibility” tag. Only items in the top lane
shaded in dark blue are pulled into the consolidated roadmap.
Items from the software development roadmap (owned by the SW
development team), the network and infrastructure roadmap (owned by
the N&I team), and the product partnerships roadmap (owned by product
partnerships) can be brought into relevant platform and product roadmaps
through collaborative efforts and prioritization between the respective
teams and the product team.

Consolidated Roadmap Company X Product Roadmap Example

“Published” Roadmaps Platform A User Portal Product B Product C Product D Special Projects ...

Planning Roadmaps Platform A User Portal Product B Product C Product D Special Projects ...

Prioritize Product Partnership Roadmap

Prioritize Software Development Roadmap

Prioritize Network & Infrastructure Roadmap

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How you will consolidate the roadmap? How do you use the portfolio view?

Who owns it? Any exceptions?

What’s the roadmaps purpose?

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Use the following template to write out your own consolidated roadmap:

Consolidated Roadmap

“Published” Roadmaps

Planning Roadmaps

Prioritize

Prioritize

Prioritize

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 Stage 6: Other Capabilities to Consider Using

SSO Example Answer

SSO

Yes, we need this configured before sharing outside of product

and development.

Jira Integration
Tools + Integrations
Future

MS Teams Integration

Future

Special Projects

Project A, Project B, Project C.

Special Projects

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 Stage 7: Capturing Details for Your Release Containers
Use the following guidelines to populate the details of the release
containers. Always be mindful of the fact that these details will be visible to
a non-technical audience (e.g. sales, marketing, executives) and possibly
even customers. Do not use technical jargon and never refer to a customer
by name anywhere in the roadmap.

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Example Release Containers Example Answer

Title Title
Product ABC Launch (ZA) Concise title that uniquely identifies the release. If regionally restricted,

Description
mention it in the title e.g. (NG, SA).

With infrastructure improvements and well-defined onboarding process, Company X.....

Description
Key Features:
1. Describe what the release is about in simple business language, while
2.
3. avoiding technical jargon. Mention key features of the release.

Strategic Importance
Strategic Importance
Describe why the release is important and how it supports a higher strategic
goal or objective.

Legend

Always choose “release” for a release container.

Legend

Release
Tags
Tags Tag with “sales visibility” to make the release visible on the business-facing
Sales Visibility product roadmap.

Notes
Notes

Optional notes for the product manager that are not visible on the business-
facing product roadmap.

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Example Release Containers Example Answer
Dates
Dates
2021-01-01 2021-03-05
Dates will auto-populate based on width of container.
Use Cases

Self-Service:
Use Cases
• Service registration
• Reservations Describe the primary use cases that the release will enable or support.

Acquisition:
• Customer acquisition and sign-up for services Sales Channels, Segments, Billing
• Campaign management
Describe the sales channels, segments and billing options that the
Sales Channels, Segments, Billing
release supports.
Enterprise Sales: Large/Enterprise (postpaid only)
Inside Sales: Medium/Mid-Market (postpaid only)
Product Manager | Project Manager
PM | PMO | Design Leads
Who owns the requirements and delivery of this release?
PM: John Smith
PMO: Jane Anderson
Technical Teams
Tech | Data | QA | Infra Leads Which technical teams are involved in delivery of the release?
Infra Leads: Jim Adams

Release Version(s)
Release Version(s)
Which software releases (specific versions) is the target for the release?
N/A

Links Links
Link 1 Provide links to more information about the release available on
Link 2
Confluence, Jira, SharePoint, Asana, etc.

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How will you populate the following release containers?

Title Legend

Description Tags

Strategic Importance Notes

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How will you populate the following release containers?

Dates Tech | Data | QA | Infra Leads

Use Cases Release Version(s)

Sales Channels, Segments, Billing Links

PM | PMO | Design Leads

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About ProductPlan
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.

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