The purpose of a product roadmap is to communicate direction and progress to internal teams and external stakeholders. A product roadmap gives a broad overview of all aspects of an upcoming product: goals, timeline, features, resources, etc.
How to create Product Roadmap with Hygger Software?
Step 1. Define your product strategy
A product strategy defines the direction of your product and the business goals. Establishing the strategy keeps everyone focused on the work that matters the most. It tells the team where the product is headed and what needs to be done to get there. In order to define what business goals your product will achieve answer the following questions:
Who are your customers?
What problems will your product solve?
Additionally, think about how your product will stand out from the ones that your competitors have.
Step 2. Collect requirements
Start with interviewing your sales and customer support teams. These departments know first-hand how the outside world feels about your company’s existing products, and likely have customer feedback which can help you prioritize new features. You can also engage directly with product enthusiasts who have already spent solid time using your product and gain valuable information from them.
Also use your own product knowledge of its functionality, features, and limitations. Think about which components are most crucial to your users. Once you identify these, focus on what you can do to significantly improve any weaknesses.
To gather all ideas, requirements in one place create a Backlog. It will help you to optimize your priorities and put first things first.
With Hygger software you can you create dependencies between tasks from Roadmap board and any other boards. That will help you to track their development stage.
By using Add Task from another board option you can quickly search items from other boards and add them to Roadmap and by that create a dependency between these tasks.
You can also include tasks from other boards into your Roadmap by copying their link and inserting it into the Add Task or Add Task from another board fields, and the task will appear on the Roadmap as a linked task.
Step 3. Define timeframe
To avoid situations when your team might not be able to deliver promises you have committed, try to refrain from strict deadlines. Keep in mind that the main goal of your product roadmap is providing guidance. So, rather than indicating specific dates, set the timeframe for your inputs at the monthly or quarterly level.
Step 4. Customize a roadmap to your stakeholders
A product’s success depends upon the participation of the people required to develop, market, and sell the product. The best way to gain full support during development is to collaborate with the key stakeholders by creating and updating the product roadmap. This allows you to leverage their particular interests and ideas and to create strong buy-in.
Here’s an example of some common internal stakeholders and the information they typically want in a product roadmap:
Upper management: product strategy, plus any data regarding market size.
Marketing: product features, how your product will differentiate from those which your competitors have.
Sales: release dates, advantages the product brings to users. Remember not to indicate specific release dates, rather display general timelines like those mentioned above.
Developers and QA: requirements, deadlines, sprints, and specific tasks.
Track tasks’ statuses by their status icons on Roadmap board near task’s name.
Step 5. Determine your Resources
Determine how many people with which skills are likely to be required to create the desired releases on the roadmap. Are there enough employees with the needed expertise available in your company? Do you need to hire or contract people? This will help you to indicate approximate labor cost. Consider also the cost for facilities, infrastructure, materials, licenses, and other relevant items.
Step 6. Regularly Review and Adjust the Roadmap.
In the agile environment changes are unavoidable. Therefore regularly review and update your product roadmap - between every four weeks to every three months to keep up with the market’s dynamic.
For more detailed guidance of using Roadmap Board in Hygger, please visit our Help Center.