How to build a robust product roadmap?

A good roadmap helps organizations have a bigger picture of the product, and aids in aligning product development teams with long-term product goals. Furthermore, managers can utilize customer feedback and suggestions through a centralized platform like product roadmap software to optimize product roadmap.

Whether your goal is to create a new product or release new features, an accurate plan via product roadmap platform can assist in streamlining workflow for internal teams and avoid unwanted errors in product development procedure.

In simpler terms, a new product takes time, effort and requires a company to implement the right roadmap planning tools. As a product manager, you need to have a clear vision and lean to basic details. Customer feedback, analytic data should be your go-to reference in the process of ideation, creation, and releasing a new product.

Sounds confusing? Don’t worry we are here to solve your concern. In this blog we will navigate you through the process of using product roadmap software for seamless product development to understand the product management pricing for your better understanding.

What is product roadmap software?

In simpler words, a product roadmap is a visual roadmap that gives you vision, and steps, and helps you plan along with tracking the progress of creating a product or updating features. Whereas, product roadmap software enables a product manager to seamlessly build a product that demonstrates why, and how behind it.

A product roadmap software will come into action when your team has a vision of the product, which outlines the long-term goal of your product, including targeted customers, USP, and more. In addition, a product roadmap platform brings together different stages of product development:

Allocating assignments within the internal team.
Third-party integrations for high-level projects
Tracking the progress of tasks by integrating with Salesforce
Timeline for each task associated with product development
Visual cues catered to different stages of the roadmap

like color filters and more.

Different metrics to measure various actions

What makes an ideal roadmap planning tool?

An effective roadmap planning tool demonstrates a high-level visual overview of the goals and timeline of the product, the product’s long-term directions and a detailed plan for further iterations.

Usually, product management teams utilize roadmaps to assign tasks to team members for each phase of product development. The phase involves – planning, monitoring, and managing the roadmap throughout the product lifestyle.

In addition, a robust product roadmap software prioritizes tasks and achieves a few factors:

Monitors the progress of product development until it meets the end goal.
Coordinates tasks and activities thoroughly within the team.
Create a detailed understanding within the team with product direction.
Offers transparency internally and externally among stakeholders.

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Process of creating product roadmap platform

A robust product roadmap is most likely to fail in meeting its end goal when it is not planned accurately. Irrespective of your preferred approach for your product roadmap software, there are certain principles that you must include in your roadmap strategy to maintain a high-quality procedure.

Communicate the product’s goals with your team

Facilitate a visual product roadmap with your team, to help them gain a clear perspective on the project. You can begin the process by making sure your team has a detailed understanding of the organization’s long-term vision and customers’ needs.

Build a plan for your internal team

Schedule dedicated sessions with your internal team to plan how new products or upcoming features can help the organization or product to achieve the expected outcome.

Create your first roadmap draft

Make sure you draft the roadmap that aligns the method of product development preferred by your team and meets with the company’s outlined goal. Include an overview of all the essential stages of product development in your roadmap. Avoid getting into details like features or other factors that are not defined as important as per the company’s current goal.

Seek feedback from your team members

Share first draft via roadmap planning tools like Antrika . And then allocate dedicated time to the team to comprehend and process the plan. Over some time, conduct sessions to seek feedback, and understand their suggestions to solve the prudential issues that may have missed out to touch in your product roadmap.

Share the roadmap to your stakeholders

You should have confidence to share the product roadmap with stakeholders as it is aligned with organization’s goals, customer needs, market trends which is enough to satisfy your stakeholders with your product plan.

Tap to Explore more: Customer Feedback | Product Development | All in one Centralized SaaS Services

5 strategies to Create a robust product roadmap

A product roadmap tool helps you optimize the plan, there are certain factors that you need to consider along with the product’s vision. We are listing below a few strategies to help you plan a product roadmap that aligns with the organization’s goals and customer needs.

1. Have a product vision

The first step helps to keep your team aligned in creating a specific product strategy. In simpler words, this vision serves as a vision to what is desired and aids in identifying potential solutions that need to be addressed in your new product.

The vision does not have to be final but it begins the procedure of creating a product roadmap so that further decisions can be made around the vision. Additionally, this vision will help you draw potential ideas and solutions on what you want your product to look like and address certain features in the right way.

2. Plan out your strategy

The next step in creating a product roadmap includes planning out an accurate strategy for your product or feature you wish to focus on, Ensure that your internal team and external stakeholders are aware of the organization’s goals before you begin with the journey of product development.

Remember, your strategy should be planned around explaining how your product benefits the company in terms of improving brand identity and revenue. And later on, combine it with the vision you have already planned out in the previous step. Make sure, these factors are aligned, and then you are good to go ahead with developing or improving and stay consistent with the plan.

3. Outline vital requirements for your product

To understand important requirements or data for creating a new product, you must seek for deeper understanding of the customer’s needs. Collaborate with the sales team, and customer service team as they have hands-on data with the group of people who already use your product, how they feel about the product, and what they are expecting further with the product.

Your next move should include matching the data with technical product requirements through market research and understanding the features that need to be on priority in your next releases. Additionally, you can connect with current customers to understand detailed requirements via Antrika’s centralized feedback-collecting software or get in touch with subject matters.

4. Have a closer look at your product plan

This step focuses on how your product will meet the organization’s goals. Consider connecting more subject experts, as this plan will execute how your product development process moves ahead.

Make sure you set a dedicated goal and timeline, it can be broad so that it offers flexibility but at the same time, it does not have to reach some milestone. Plan out specific time frames on a monthly or quarterly basis as specific dates may feel overwhelming to achieve for the team.

5. Keep internal team and metrics in mind

As we mentioned, you may not dedicate deadlines with specific dates but make sure you keep track of the progress of product development throughout each phase especially quarterly-based timeframes, this step will ensure that everyone is aligned internally.

In addition, ensure that all your team members are aware of your preferred metrics and utilize these metrics regularly to keep the flow of the product roadmap. Every team member needs to follow the approach that the company has outlined to meet desired goals and outcomes.

Factors to avoid in product roadmap procedure

There are certain things that every organization should avoid while planning their product development system. While you may receive many feature requests and feedback that may feel overwhelming as a manager you must prioritize suggestions that align with customer needs and the organization’s goals, and besides are actionable.

We are listing a few factors that every business needs to avoid to maintain a smooth workflow throughout the product roadmap.

Strict deadline

A roadmap communicates the product’s vision and often requires time to demonstrate what was outlined by the team to make the process successful. Avoid specific dates, and conduct frequent sessions with the internal team to make sure you seek feedback timely to make actionable changes at the moment and utilize time effectively. This will give your team room to focus on the right things and dedicate important things accordingly without added pressure.

Non-valuable factors

When you are building a product roadmap, your focus should not be on bug fixes, Dev ops, or technical factors. These things need to be considered while testing the product, considering in between the creation of the product will disrupt the flow of product development and consume more time than expected.

Build your Product roadmap with Antrika

We hope you have a basic idea of creating a product roadmap and how to strategize it with the organization’s vision of the product. Begin strategizing product development by having a clear vision and involving your product team to analyze the changes that need to be addressed in your next product release.

If you want to know more about how the product roadmap works with Antrika or product management pricing, then get in touch with us today!