Agile Roadmaps Flashcards
What is an agile product roadmap?
A product roadmap is a plan of action for how a product or solution will evolve over time. Product teams use roadmaps to outline future product functionality and when new features will be released.
Building the roadmap
To build a roadmap, product teams take into account market trajectories, company goals, customer feedback and insights, and engineering constraints. Once these factors are reasonably well-understood, they are expressed in a roadmap as initiatives and timelines.
Generally speaking, it’s best for product roadmaps to stick to bigger chunks of time like months or quarters, rather than committing to specific dates.
To keep prioritization conversations focused on goals and strategy, instead of timelines, you can even try mapping initiatives to Now, Next, and Later.
Sharing the roadmap
Once a roadmap is built, it needs to be shared with the entire product team, leadership, and delivery teams so everyone understands the vision and direction.
Most collaboration tools will automatically notify all participants of a project letting them know the roadmap has changed.
Using the roadmap
It’s important to link your team’s delivery work back to the product roadmap so you get that whole “context” thing mentioned above. A tried-and-true way of doing this is to map out the product ideas you’ve prioritized on your product map, then break those ideas down into epics, requirements, and user stories on your delivery roadmap.
Anti-Patterns to watch out for
- Future planning is completely ignored — we’re shootin’ from the hip!
- The “rest of the business” is kept in the dark as to what the team is up to.
- The roadmap is continuously updated (or never updated).
- Detailed requirements are weighing down the roadmap.
Evolving the roadmap
To combat “thrashing”, staleness, and nearsightedness, keep the roadmap evenly focused on short-term tactics and strategic, long-term goals. A great way to do this is to review roadmaps quarterly, adjust as needed, and share.
