Make better decisions in each stage of development
A roadmap is a strategic plan that outlines a project or business's vision, direction, and priorities over a specific timeframe. It serves as a high-level, visual document that communicates the key steps and milestones involved in achieving particular goals.
Roadmaps are essential for aligning teams and stakeholders around a common objective, ensuring everyone understands the sequence of actions needed to drive progress. They can be used for a variety of purposes, including product development, marketing strategies, and organizational change initiatives. The Mural Roadmap template provides a dynamic and collaborative way to build, display, and update a roadmap — facilitating real-time input and adjustments from team members, regardless of their location.
Remember, a roadmap is just a guide for how to get from Point A to Point B. It shouldn’t include specific details like deadlines and every single feature — that'll just confuse teams. Your roadmap should only include broad themes, milestones, and goals, like achievements, approvals, events, and key meetings. For product ideas that aren’t prioritized for the roadmap, creating a backlog for these ideas can help capture valuable information without creating too much noise.
A roadmap can be used for any project, initiative, or task that requires a general outline of the different phases your task will go through. This is different from a Product Marketing Plan, which goes into meticulous detail on each stage of a product’s development.
Some common types of roadmaps include:
Product roadmaps
Display the agile product development timeline. This could include how a product will be brought to market, design modifications, feature changes, and more. The internal roadmap is for your company and team members and includes detailed descriptions of a product’s timeline. External roadmaps are broader and are for non-company personnel, including press, customers, partners, and analysts.
Product roadmaps often include gantt charts and swimlanes to outline how work will be done in the upcoming sprints.
Try out the Resilient Product Roadmap Template to help clarify your product strategy and build a strategic roadmap for your product.
Marketing and strategy roadmaps
Outline how you’ll bring your product to market in broad terms, like when the email campaigns should start or when the launch event will occur.
Marketing roadmaps typically illustrate the go-to-market strategy, ongoing campaigns, and strategic initiatives that accompany product releases.
Visionary roadmaps
These broader business roadmaps detail the “big picture” of trends, movements, or directions in a market and how your team will approach them. These are often “30,000-foot view” roadmaps that include larger initiatives and business goals.
Technology roadmaps
Show you the technology trends in your industry and how your company can implement them or how they’ll affect your product (like incorporating AI). These new features will typically be broken down into smaller product updates and planned into Agile workflows.
Platform roadmaps
Illustrate how certain platforms or app support will interact with your product or initiative (e.g., Windows, Google, MacOS) as well as what that platform may mean to your product or initiative in the long run.
Creating a roadmap plan involves several key steps that help outline the strategic direction and timeline of a project. Here's a simplified process for creating a roadmap plan:
Define the objectives
Start by clearly identifying the goals and objectives of your project. Understand what you want to achieve and what problem you're trying to solve.
Conduct research
Gather information about your target audience, market trends, and competitive landscape. This research will provide insights to inform your roadmap.
Identify key milestones
Break down your project into significant milestones or deliverables. These milestones represent major achievements or stages that need to be completed to reach your goals.
Prioritize features and tasks
Determine the features, functionalities, and tasks that are essential to achieving each milestone. Prioritize them based on their importance, impact, and feasibility.
Define timelines
Assign timeframes or durations to each milestone and associated tasks. Consider dependencies between tasks and any external factors that may affect the timeline.
Visualize the roadmap
Create a visual representation of your roadmap using appropriate tools or templates. This could be a timeline chart, Gantt chart, or any other visual format that helps communicate the plan effectively.
Review and refine
Share the roadmap with stakeholders and gather feedback. Revise and refine the plan based on input from team members, executives, and other relevant parties.
A roadmap plan should provide a clear overview of the project's direction, major milestones, and timelines. It serves as a communication tool to align stakeholders, facilitate decision-making, and guide the execution of the project.
Mural is the only platform that offers both a shared workspace and training on the LUMA System™, a practical way to collaborate that anyone can learn and apply.