Product Development- 1. Roadmap definition and purpose

While starting on a product development project, we might ask ourselves why do we need a product roadmap. This is more pertinent if we work in an agile product development team where we plan one sprint at a time. Why should we make long-term plan, in this case, the product roadmap? Also, in a dynamic market where there are bound to be changes, is it worth spending time on a a product roadmap?

However, it is proven that for most organizations product roadmaps can be extremely valuable. At the end of the day, product that we are developing will help us serve the business. We need a product roadmap that allows all the business units to coordinate their planning towards the goal of getting the market to react positively to the product. 

The product roadmap allows all of the different stakeholders of our product, to plan and coordinate their own future activities. Another way to think about it is that a product roadmap provides predictability to the product development process, and everyone loves predictability. 

We will look into some of the key stakeholders who can benefit from the well laid out product roadmap. The stakeholders can be internal or external. The internal stakeholders can be internal facing or external facing.

The internal facing departments could be the procurement and external facing department could be the sales & marketing department. The procurement team needs to plan for the purchases & integrations and Sales & marketing department will need to decide on the channels, messaging and customer support. They may use a product roadmap to develop their materials such as documentation and training, all of which require some lead time.

At times, investors are involved and they need to see the firmed up product plan to decide on the investments needs and the feasibility of that investment.

Last, and the one people often don't think about, are the architects, engineers, and designers. They can use the visibility provided by a roadmap to create higher-quality designs for our products. Without a longer-term plan in place, design can become piecemeal and create unforeseen problems, and there can be many others. Consider the human resources team, who might need to change hiring plans, or the legal team, who might need to develop contracts, and so on. 

There's another critical but less obvious function that a product roadmap can provide. It forces the leadership team of the business unit to clearly articulate its business goals and its strategy for achieving them. Having a product roadmap helps ensure that the product development efforts are aligned as closely as possible with the strategy. And having the key stakeholders aligned around that roadmap ensures that everyone works together effectively.