The idea of a Product Roadmap is a simple one.

Provide a prioritised list of the New Products or Product Enhancements that the business will deliver to the market and show roughly when to expect them to be release/launched. Easy!

On the surface the process is a simple one too.

1. List all products and enhancements.
2. Prioritise products and enhancements.
3. Schedule products and enhancements.
4. Share the roadmap with others.

But here are some of the problems that we commonly hear that make the roadmapping process hard:

• Problem #1 – Not all of the items have been planned.
• Problem #2 – It is hard to see a roadmap at multiple time scales.
• Problem #3 – I need different versions of a roadmap for different stakeholders.
• Problem #4 – A lot of detail is required for a roadmap that is hard to show at a high level.
• Problem #5 – as soon as I am finished, the roadmap is out of date.

To address this we first need to think of the roadmap as two very separate processes:

• PLANNING and
• COMMUNICATION.
  They are both valuable on their own but unless they are both given proper consideration the results will not be effective.

In this post we will discuss the Roadmap PLANNING process and in a follow up post we will look at the Roadmap COMMUNICATION.