A Simple Product Roadmap Example | Software Related

February 15, 2011 – Some people find reviewing a product roadmap example useful for helping them see how this crucial document can be applied in specific areas. This article shows an example of one I created for a software house, but the concepts are kept relatively generic so that the process can be applied to any industry.

After joining a small software house as their new product manager it was my goal to initially define a clear product roadmap for the next two years. Two years is about right for any company as any goals you set past that will often change in relation to your products (due to competition, technological trends, etc.). The initial product roadmap had included a large amount of conceptual ideas from the CTO’s own innovation strategy regarding how new technologies were to be used.

It was important however to also get feedback from marketing department’s, sales, engineering heads, quality control, etc. These ideas form the basis of the research and analysis required for producing a product roadmap example. The goal was to identify specific markets that these ideas can relate to and then research the potential of these markets (i.e. the volume of customers, competition, potential return on investment, etc.).

Once this research was complete it was possible to focus in on specific markets and product lines/features that should be targeted. These were prioritized based on desirability. In this case we focused on which products have the most desirable ROI.

Longer term goals were not discarded completely but kept within the queue/list as long term or follow-on product lines. The CTO’s innovation strategy also used architectural decisions which relate to creating a product framework upon which different product lines could be built. This is commonplace in software development where the basic framework of application code can be reused in numerous products.

The final step then was to have the product roadmap reviewed by as many stakeholders within the company as possible. This did result in a large amount of rework as extra ideas and concepts were included.

 

 

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