10 Principles of Effective Roadmaps

Is Your Product Roadmap Just a Project Plan in Disguise?

One of the common pitfalls product management teams fall into with roadmapping is that what is produced tends to resemble project plans more than strategic documents.

Roadmaps support decision-making, align stakeholders, and adapt to changing market conditions among other things. These are not the same goals for a project plan.

Then what makes a roadmap an effective strategy document? Let’s start by recalling the relevant aspects of a map that apply to roadmaps.

✅ A map depicts.

Implying that it is a graphical representation of something. In the case of a company roadmap, it graphically displays the strategy.

✅ A map has various patterns and features.

Meaning that it is based on multidisciplinary integration. In terms of a roadmap as a strategy tool, we deem this to involve orchestrating and linking inputs from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, mainly through the involvement of various relevant actors. 

✅ A map has a scale.

Thus, making a map involves scaling based on knowledge of distances and how items are ordered. More specifically, in a strategic context, scaling is associated with time as time plays a role as an explicit or an implicit measure of the sequence of activities, the timing of activities relative to other activities, and the effort activities require. 

Let's review 10 Principles of Effective Roadmaps as discussed in this article.

1. The roadmap is a visual used throughout the strategy process.

Roadmaps are visual artifacts that feature short textual descriptions. They are not just tables, bullet lists, or plain texts. Firms should use the visual to create and communicate their strategy. 

It is vital to manage the tension between using a simple visual graph to convey important elements of a strategy and devising a comprehensive storyline and stimulating the roadmap’s creators to devise better strategies. 

Interactive software tools can be helpful to ensure a holistic, orderly, and understandable message about the strategy. For example, they can provide a zoom function to switch between broad and detailed views of the roadmap.

2. The roadmap connects the short term and the long term.

If firms are driven solely by short-term customer demands in their current economic environment, they will inevitably fail. 

Firms must also ensure that they anticipate explorative developments beyond the short term and formulate the preparatory actions required. Therefore, roadmaps must include short-term, medium-term, and long-term horizons, with the short term being more detailed than the longer term.

3. The roadmap consists of various perspective layers.

Roadmaps should explicitly incorporate and align multiple perspectives, covering why, what, and how, typically the markets to serve and the internal drivers for change, the offerings to customers, and the resources and competencies required. 

Firms should avoid narrow-scope roadmaps with a sole focus on products that do not connect to other perspectives. In short, all important elements of the strategy should be considered in detail to ensure that strategies are effective.

4. The roadmap has a sufficiently broad Scope.

Roadmaps are relatively easy to create at the level of projects or individual products, but they only unleash their full potential value as a strategy tool if a broader, more comprehensive, scope is adopted. 

Roadmaps at the level of multiple products, business units, and the firm not only improve the overview of and alignment across activities but also create the ability to achieve platform potential and synergies that can create efficiency, shift priorities, and even lead to investment in directions that otherwise would not be feasible.

5. The roadmap is created by a multidisciplinary team.

Roadmaps benefit from being created by multi disciplinary teams that exploit the diverse knowledge of their members, create superior quality roadmaps, and increase the chances of successfully implementing the strategy. 

Team members may have a background in, for example, R&D, product management, marketing, and supply-chain management.

6. The roadmap is driven by a future vision and intermediate goals.

The starting point of a roadmap should be longterm direction setting by means of a challenging and inspiring vision. The vision offers a clear picture of where the firm will be heading, motivates behavior and investment, and prevents nearsightedness. In addition, setting intermediate goals over multiple time frames supports the firm in effectuating the transformation required.

7. The roadmap uses various visual design elements to elucidate aspects of the Strategy.

Visual design elements are important in conveying the roadmap’s key messages lucidly. They can include colors to show the importance of various activities and how they are linked, bars to mark activities and occurrences with a duration, and symbols to spotlight events and milestones. 

Connecting lines between these shapes show the developmental path, denoting output/input connections and the timing required. In essence, roadmapping and visualization skills go hand in hand.

8. The roadmap forges a temporal, timeline-based narrative.

Pinpointing the temporal location of activities on a timeline and showing other dimensions of time are elements that are inherent to successful roadmapping. Not only should firms display the timing, duration, and speed of an activity but they must also coordinate these dimensions with those of other activities and set priorities. 

Firms should forge a storyline across time frames, giving consideration to intertemporal trade-offs and ensuring that the sequence and timing of activities are right so that the offerings required are in place and are consistent with the available resources, the firm’s long-term goals, and the external demands placed on the firm.

9. The roadmap secures commitment from the audience affected.

Informing employees, changing their minds, and triggering actions that are in line with the strategy is vital for firm performance. Therefore, the content of the roadmap should be explained to employees, and they should have continuous access to it. If a firm fears that it cannot keep its secrets secure, it may vary the level of detail in the roadmap items that it shares with its employees.

10. The roadmap forges a clear path toward the future with activities that are tailored to each other.

Firms need to ensure that their strategies are prescriptive and focused, clearly indicating the

priorities that should be focused on. The aim is to create a coherent story that breaks down the future vision into concrete steps for today. To this end, adhering to the previous nine principles is a prerequisite. Above all, it requires strategic thinking, tailoring activities, and making choices among alternatives to create value. In doing so, a firm should select and adjust strategic options so they fit together seamlessly, balancing aspects such as time horizons, risk levels, and the re-sources and competencies available.