01 Aug 2025
|10 min
How to build a product roadmap
Learn the essential steps and key considerations for creating an effective product roadmap that aligns teams, prioritizes features, and drives your product vision to success.
01 Aug 2025
|10 min
The beauty of a product roadmap lies in its clarity of purpose – it's exactly what it sounds like, and that's precisely why it works so well.
Even if most people take driving directions from an app these days, we can all imagine how difficult it would be to get from point A to point B without a roadmap.
A product roadmap does the same thing for an organization. It serves as a single source of truth to show how you can move from a vision to a launched product and beyond.
Slack is a widely used instant messaging app for workplaces. The Slack team started with a clear vision: simplify workplace communication. They focused on rapid development cycles, collecting user feedback, and quickly integrating new features during beta.
Fast iteration: They tested early versions with small teams and continuously refined based on direct user input.
Clear milestones: Goals were broken into manageable sprints, each aimed at improving specific communication features.
Collaborative approach: Designers, developers, and stakeholders had frequent check-ins to align on priorities.
This approach helped Slack evolve into a platform that millions rely on daily for seamless collaboration.
What does a company look like without a product roadmap? Imagine organizing a complex group trip without a clear destination or route – everyone might start heading in different directions. Without a roadmap, teams lack a unifying vision of where to go, causing confusion and missed opportunities.
In this article we explore why you need a product roadmap, the essential steps to take to develop a successful one, and practical tips for putting it into action. Let’s explore how we can build roadmaps that truly serve your team and users.
A product roadmap is a living strategic document that outlines the vision, goals, and planned development of a product over time. Most often, this takes the form of a visual timeline that shows what will be done by when, and why it matters for your company. It acts as a sole source of truth for stakeholders about what to expect.
How is a roadmap different from a backlog? While a roadmap shows the high-level vision and goals to be achieved, a backlog focuses on the specific tasks or features required to fulfill that vision. Think of the roadmap as the guiding path and the backlog as the detailed steps that move you along that path.
For product managers, the creation and maintenance of a product roadmap is a key duty. The accuracy and usability of the roadmap is essential to the product manager’s success in their role. But a roadmap used only by the product manager isn’t a good one. A roadmap should be just as easily accessed and understood by:
Leadership and management, so they can feel sure that teams are prioritizing features and initiatives that ladder up into the broader product development strategy and its attending business goals.
Product teams, to facilitate collaboration and understanding of priorities.
Marketing teams, so they know what’s coming down the pipeline and can create campaigns accordingly.
Customer service and sales reps, so they can better guide conversations with external parties.
External stakeholders and users, when appropriate, so they understand what improvements are coming.
For more on collaborative roadmap best practices, see our stakeholder interview guide.
Many organizations are committed to either agile (an iterative, flexible approach focused on shorter development cycles) or waterfall (a sequential, linear methodology) product development methodologies. Yet, numerous prioritization techniques, such as MoSCoW (Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, Won’t Have) and RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort), can work effectively in both. It all depends on your team’s goals, resources, and culture.
A waterfall roadmap, meanwhile, follows a sequential and linear approach. It outlines the planned phases and deadlines in advance, often visualized through a Gantt chart (a bar chart that illustrates a project schedule). If changes emerge mid-project, the entire plan may need adjusting to accommodate them.
Ready to create data-driven product roadmaps? Get user feedback that inform your strategy with Lyssna's free research tools.
Creating a product roadmap can be a turning point for a company – it's when strategy, vision, research, and reality come together thoughtfully to form something actionable.
We understand these steps might feel overwhelming at first. The good news is that for startups or smaller teams, you can begin with a simple outline and gradually refine it. We’re here to support you as you develop a roadmap that best fits your company’s stage and goals.
Every product roadmap begins with a clear and compelling vision. Define the ultimate goal to achieve with the product. What problem does it solve? What value does it provide to your customers? Establishing a strong vision sets the foundation for the roadmap and ensures all decisions and initiatives align with your overarching purpose. (If you’ve already created a product strategy, you’ve likely done this step, but it’s worth reviewing that document to see what might have changed.)
Next, establish specific objectives that contribute to the realization of your vision. Think of them as measurable milestones that not only guide your team’s efforts but also help track progress along the way.
To create a roadmap that resonates with your target audience, you must deeply understand your customers' needs, pain points, and preferences. Conduct user research, collect feedback, and analyze market trends to gain insights into customer behaviors and expectations.
This is where user research becomes invaluable – conducting usability tests, surveys, and user interviews helps ensure your roadmap priorities are grounded in real user needs rather than assumptions.
If you've already launched your product, your customer-facing teams probably have valuable insights from user interactions that should inform your roadmap.
Regardless, make sure that you gather all ideas. If you’re dealing with lots of ideas, sort them into related themes, features, or initiatives to make them easier to manage. Themes could be categorized by department or features, like “UI upgrades” or “customer satisfaction improvements.”
Ready to validate your roadmap decisions with real users? Our feature preference template helps you prioritize what matters most to your audience. Test different features, gather insights, and build a roadmap that resonates with your users.
With a clear vision and customer insights, the next step is to prioritize the features and initiatives that will fulfill the product strategy. Consider factors such as market demand, customer impact, technical feasibility, and business goals to determine the priority order.
One simple method, helpful for smaller companies, is to give simple scores from 1–3 to each theme’s potential impact, cost, or urgency. You can also incorporate MoSCoW (Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, Won’t Have) or the RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) framework for more structured prioritization. These approaches keep discussions organized and help your team focus on the most impactful items first.
Once the prioritization is complete, translate your product roadmap into a visual representation that’s easily understandable and accessible to all stakeholders. Choose a format that suits your needs, such as a Gantt chart, timeline, or thematic visualization. If you’re using a specific piece of software, this will largely determine your options.
Clearly communicate the major milestones, releases, or phases, and assign estimated timelines to each. It’s essential to balance setting realistic deadlines and allowing flexibility to adapt to evolving circumstances. Remember, the roadmap should be a living document that develops as your product and market landscape evolve.
A product roadmap is not just a planning tool; it’s a communication vehicle for aligning teams and stakeholders. This means that presenting the roadmap is one of the most important steps, as it’s the moment buy-in happens. When sharing the roadmap, keep in mind a few best practices:
Keep the audience in mind: If you’re presenting to leadership, they’re likely going to want to see strategic goals and KPIs more prominently. If you’re talking to dev teams, they’re concerned with day-to-day tasks and resource allocation.
Use metrics: Keep everyone aligned on the broader goal by using data wherever possible, whether it’s retention figures or hour allotment based on previous projects. Showing your work helps to sell it.
Keep the narrative in mind: Reiterate the overall vision and, when possible, tie this product roadmap to the higher-level vision. This helps individual goals and tasks feel meaningful.
Be open: This is one of those meetings that truly should be a conversation. You want everyone from executive leadership to individual developers and marketers to raise questions and poke holes in the plan. This makes a roadmap more trustworthy for everyone involved.
The final step of producing a good roadmap is maintaining it. Set a cadence to review and update it. This may be a weekly touch-up or a more formalized quarterly reevaluation and rollout. Whenever you’re reviewing the roadmap, ask yourself a few key questions:
Are we on track to achieve our strategic objectives and vision?
How have market dynamics or customer needs changed since the last review?
What progress have we made on the roadmap items? Are there any bottlenecks or challenges that we need to address?
Are there any new market opportunities or emerging trends that we should consider for inclusion?
How have customer feedback and insights influenced our understanding of their needs?
Have there been any changes in business priorities or resource allocation that may affect the roadmap?
Are there any redundancies or overlaps in the roadmap that we can consolidate or streamline?
Are there any gaps in the roadmap that we need to fill?
How can we improve the clarity and communication of the roadmap to stakeholders?
What have we learned from past roadmap iterations and how can we apply those learnings?
These questions might lead to important discussions and reprioritization decisions, which is exactly what a living roadmap should facilitate.
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