What is the Purpose of a Product Roadmap

In today’s article, we’ll be taking a look at what a product roadmap is and what its purpose is by talking to Miguel Augustin, Fractional CPO and Consulting Lead here at Trustshoring as part of a multi-part series.

Miguel has over 15 years of experience working with product teams, and 20 years in process management helping B2B, B2C companies, startups, scaleups, and enterprise companies add product knowledge and organize their product and software development life cycle.

We wanted to pick Miguel’s brain on what product roadmaps are, and in the first episode, we asked him to outline the purpose of a product roadmap as well as the common signs of a failing or struggling product roadmap.

The Purpose of a Roadmap

A product roadmap communicates the “why” and “what” behind what you’re building. A roadmap is a guiding strategic document as well as a plan for executing the product strategy.

“I think roadmaps are a very interesting topic because every company wants it to happen – We all want to plan. The purpose of a roadmap to guide us into the future. What’s coming so that we can make our plans?”

“And that’s interesting because in that way we can inform the marketing function, the sales function, customer support, customer success, and even in terms of resourcing for product development.

“Having a roadmap helps manage the budget and the plans”

Signs of a Failing Roadmap

So now that we know the purpose and function of a roadmap, what are the most common signs of a failing product roadmap?

“The biggest sign of a failing roadmap is when you cannot do any of that. So you have the marketing team coming and telling you, and I’ve had this in companies, like, “We don’t know what’s coming.”

‘We don’t know when it’s coming’ – You’re preparing this big feature, but I don’t know when to plan for it or when to plan all the communications. I don’t know when to plan for this.”

“You’re kind of, we’re launching this v2 version of this new next-gen version with all these new features but customer support needs to prepare for that. They need to understand it, they need to learn it in time, and they need to be able to communicate to the customers so that’s one of the signs of a not useful roadmap.”

“When it doesn’t help the rest of the company know what’s happening when it’s coming another sign is even internally in the product development teams when the development teams.”

Maintaining a Happy and Engaged Development Team

A working or failing product roadmap can also have a huge impact on your team’s engagement, morale, and overall happiness.

“The lack of a proper roadmap can lead to your dev and product teams feeling disconnected. They don’t know and come back to the product person and the company owner saying  ‘I don’t know what we’re going to be doing next.’

“I don’t know how we’re contributing to this. And then that creates frustration. It makes the development teams even a bit slower.

“Lack of context, lack of purpose. And then there is another one that is also very interesting, which is that without a working roadmap, the development teams keep changing subjects.”

“They’re working on this today and two weeks later, there will be a different priority. They will go to work on that and park this other thing. And then they will come back to that later, but it takes them time to remember what they were doing.”

“So they always keep chasing the latest because there is no clear path to success, which is what the roadmap gives you.”

“So in that sense, the roadmap gives you not just the priorities but also highlights the timeline, the sequence in which they will be done with, you know, the sequence with reasonable accuracy in terms of the timeline.”

“It highlights all the big bets and the big rocks that the company is working on to get where it wants to be in terms of the strategy.”