How to create more effective product roadmap ?

A product roadmap is a powerful tool to describe how a product is likely to grow & to align the stakeholders.

Effective Roadmap ~ Good Product

How about such Framework ?

Thanks to Andrew Chen & Noah Weiss — Designed this framework reading your essays on products, found this working well.

1. Know Macro-Goals or Metrics

Identify & Define all your business goals or metrics, such as…

Sorry, could not cover all metrics or products :-(

Anything built in product must have required impact on a core metric or goal. Also, a primary factor to prioritise features.

2. Define Item a.k.a Feature

Do give a catchy & unique name to a feature — helps bring emotion in to execution

3. Provide Details a.k.a Feature Brief

Couple of lines to describe the feature, should help anyone in company to relate and understand the feature.

4. Mention Feature Benefits or Goals

Every feature should have a related micro level metric, may be adoption or repeat usage.

Used to prioritise features, define experiments, design features, track feature’s success.

5. Perform Feature Fallacy Test

Feature Fallacy is a myth that the next feature to be shipped will change the game for you.

Never ship or prioritise a feature which do not clear feature fallacy test.

Ask will the feature have maximum impact in terms of user segment & its adoption ?

Who is the target of this feature? — Core User, Non-User or New User

What kind of investment required by the user — Deep or Lesser

Pass features where target segment is above average size & requires lesser investment from user

6. Check Virality Elements

Always prefer or prioritise features with virality impact.

Put ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in the column to signify as value.

7. Input Effort & Sizing

Consider Tech Team Inputs on Sizing & Velocity on shipping a feature. No need to mention — Its also a key to prioritise features.

8. Allocate Priority Bucket

In the end, roadmap is all about Priority. so, lets generate an output in form of buckets — #Now , #Next & #Later

• #Now (1–2 weeks)
• #Next (1–2 months)
• #Later (> 2 months) — anything or everything left…

Feedback or query ? — please comment. Do recommend or share for karma :-)