How to Build and Run a SaaS Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that maps out the vision and direction of your product offering over time. A product roadmap illustrates major features and their release schedule. It is a guiding strategic document as well as a plan for executing the strategy.

The goal: Create a product roadmap to guide the direction and timeline of your product development process.

How can Golden Section Assist?

Background

A roadmap is a high-level strategic document that contains overall information on the project. Strategic roadmaps usually state a vision and long-term goals. The Product Manager is responsible for creating and maintaining the roadmap.

In the case of agile product development, a roadmap can be arranged in themes. Themes are multiple tasks that a team must complete and are somehow connected. For instance, a theme may sound like "enhance page-loading speed," which entails a handful of actions. Grouping the information around the themes makes a roadmap highly flexible and updatable, which is a great fit for sprint-based development.

The best advice concerning strategic road mapping is to include only important information. Otherwise, you risk turning your roadmap into a clumsy scheme, difficult to understand and maintain.

Example Product Roadmap:

It is important to realize your roadmap will change over time. It is a flexible document that needs to be kept up-to-date in order to be effective. Golden Section also recommends creating a routine Product Management meeting (likely, quarterly) to update and publish the roadmap companywide.

Steps

1. Given the background and best practices listed above, what aspects of your Product Roadmap management need to be improved?
   • Do you have an up-to-date Product Roadmap?
   • Is there a specific person in charge of maintaining and updating it?
   • Is it published company-wide?
   • Is the roadmap used? If not, what can be improved to make the roadmap effective and useful for your dev team and company?
   • Do you have a regular Product Management meeting cadence?
2. Using the PDCA methodology discussed in Play: Quality Management Systems, codify a process for creating (if applicable), updating and using a product roadmap to maintain a company-wide vision and direction for your product.