Product Roadmaps
From Product Vision to Product Backlog
Product Roadmaps are another potentially valuable tool for Product Owners and Product Managers. A roadmap communicates a plan or strategy for how the product will be evolved via a series of intermediate goals and milestones towards the Product Vision. These goals and milestones can be captured on a roadmap as Epics & OKRs. By showing how major objectives are prioritized and sequenced over a period of time, they can be used to communicate a high-level product development strategy – a Product Roadmap. The time period can be strategic, say 2-3 years, or short-term, say the next 12 months. A roadmap is a communication tool for visualizing strategy. It shows how the product will be evolved towards the Product Vision, and helps keep stakeholders and delivery teams aligned. In many organizations however roadmaps are little more than laundry lists of product features to be delivered, and hence add little value beyond what is already captured in the Product Backlog. Roadmaps are of much greater value when focused on major objectives to be achieved and problems to be solved as opposed to talking about solutions (features). When OKRs are used to represent strategy in roadmaps, they provide a direct link between the Product Vision and the Product Backlog.
OKRs link the Product Vision to the Product Backlog
The flow from vision to solution-specifics (Product Backlog) is:
The Purpose of a Product Roadmap is to:
- Communicate the direction of a product over various time horizons
- Specificity is tailored to time horizon:
- Longer-term/strategic: Focus on What/Why
- Near-term – show proposed solutions: Product capabilities/features
- In both cases: content is traceable to product goals/objectives (OKRs)
- Can be used to engage and align stakeholders
- Primary inputs: Product Vision, OKRs
- Rank/Prioritize/Sequence goals/objectives based on Value vs. Cost.
- Adaptable/Empirical: Continuously revised based on feedback from stakeholders, customers on the evolving product.
Important differences between Product Roadmaps and Product Backlogs:
| Product Roadmap | Product Backlog | |
| Purpose | Communicate Product Strategy – How the Product Vision will be realized over time. | Ordered list of everything needed to implement the Product Vision. Single source of work undertaken by the Scrum Team. |
| Content | Major initiatives (Epics), goals/objectives (OKRs) | Solutions/Implementation deliverables (Features, User Stories) |
| Audience | Business leadership, stakeholders | Delivery teams |
| Timeframe | 1-2 Years | Several Sprints |
Issues with traditional roadmaps.
- Focus largely on outputs (features) vs. Business outcomes (value)
- Operate as commitments vs. forecasts subject to continuous adaptation
- Deliverables vs. experiments subject to iteration
Inputs to a roadmap – business context
- Product Vision – Big Picture
- Business Objectives – prioritized objectives: what needs to be accomplished, and how results will be measured.
The primary responsibility of a Product Delivery Team is to solve business problems vs. deliver features. Features are solutions to the goals, objectives, and key results sought to solve business problems and opportunities. Product Roadmaps can be an effective way to align delivery teams and business stakeholders on a common set of objectives and priorities, and provide guidance on steps needed to achieve a Product Vision.
