Creating an impact-driven product roadmap

Look, I know.

Not everyone's a big fan of product roadmaps. Lord knows I'm not. 

Unfortunately, the reality is, as a PM, you often have to create one; regardless of your feelings.

If you find yourself in this unenvious situation, here's a simple format I put together to ensure I focus on business impact (while delivering a roadmap):

Example of a business impact-driven product roadmap

Let's break it down.

Timeframe

Roadmaps are not delivery timelines (which is part of the confusion when using roadmaps with any non-product teams as let's be honest, that's exactly what they look like). 

The further in the future the roadmap, the less certain anything is.

As such, I tend to organise my roadmaps in quarters.

I slap the months at the top rather than Q1, Q2, etc. Different departments might refer to quarters differently. It's a small tweak but I find it removes some of the confusion.

The roadmap

A roadmap should not be a list of features. Instead, I focus on the following: 

Challenges

The challenge is a short narrative on what's missing (or, sometimes, wrong) for our customers. 

What are they trying to do but can't? What do they expect that we're not delivering? What's a blatantly obvious internal product issue we're having that's slowing us down/costing us money?

For example: "Our product is extremely complex and customers get confused early on. They give up a few minutes after signing up and barely take any action."

Solution

The solution is not a feature (or a list of features). 

Similar to the challenge section, I use a narrative approach here to describe how we intend to solve the challenge.

For example: "We will create an onboarding experience that focuses on our customers' first few minutes in the app. Our goal is to get them from signing up to having XYZ set up".

Business impact

What impact do we expect this solution to have on the business?

Typically, this section will revolve around money. You're usually hoping it'll increase revenue or save money by removing inefficiencies. 

Again, I use a narrative style of writing here. It's good to be more specific than 'Generate revenue' or 'Reduce downtime'.

For example: “Increase revenue by opening up a new market dealing with XYZ challenge.”

Key customers

I like to tie a few real customers to the challenges we're trying to fix.

It's a helpful reminder that product work is not done in a vacuum. We don't build stuff because they're cool (although sometimes!). We don't just help faceless "IT teams". There are real people and real businesses who we help succeed.

This section (and the previous one) resonates with the senior leadership team. Abstract features and innovative solutions matter less to them than business impact. And business impact is more tangible when real opportunities are attached to the initiatives.

Bets and deals

I like to split my big roadmap items into two buckets: deals and bets.

Deals are challenges customers have paid us to solve. If, like me, you work on a sales-led product, these happen quite frequently (for better or worse). 

Bets, on the other hand, are calculated risks. They're not led by any customer in particular. They're typically led by market awareness, product sense, and vision. They're inherently uncertain because we don't for sure know customers will pay for them. But good bets drive the product forward.

Noting this difference on each row allows me to spot whether we're leaning too much on either. 

Too many 'deals' on the roadmap? We're likely at the mercy of the next customer request, chasing our tail trying to satisfy everyone, and losing ground to our more innovative competitors.

Too many 'bets' on the roadmap? As a sales-led organisation, our sales force should be an important source of insights into our customers' wants & needs. We may not be listening to them enough and disconnecting from our actual paying customers.

Business impact is the ultimate PM goal. If creating a product roadmap can be a pain, we can turn this pain back into value by carefully aligning it to business impact.