6 Product Roadmap Examples for Maximizing Productivity

In product development, having a clearly defined goal is crucial. But it's not enough.

Imagine you are going on a trip. You have a clearly defined goal – your destination. But you won't get there without a map. You need to visualize different roads to choose the best one and know the average driving time to plan the trip well.

Product development is like a road trip. Apart from knowing where you want to get, you need a product roadmap to visualize how you will get there. 

This article features six product roadmap examples to help you reach your business goals and achieve maximum productivity.

6 product roadmap examples with Zeda.io

To execute your product vision, you must collaborate and communicate with many people: product teams, executive stakeholders, customers, product managers, designers and developers. As a product manager, you must link all those people together and present them with a strategic view as a product roadmap.

That's why it's so important to have a centralized platform that will help you create a streamlined product development process.

Zeda.io is perfect for that. This AI-powered product discovery tool helps you identify customer preferences, market trends and user behavior and make data-driven decisions.

The app provides you with product roadmap templates you can customize to the needs and specifications of different stakeholders. Apart from choosing existing templates, you can also build your own.

Moreover, you can integrate the Zeda.io platform into multiple third-party apps to increase productivity, ensure seamless coordination between teams and attend to feedback from internal and external stakeholders.

Here's a list of product roadmap examples Zeda.io can help you build.

Feature roadmap

A feature roadmap tracks the development and release of product features. It allows you to set the time frames for specific features and track progress with a timeline.

You can use feature roadmaps to communicate the upcoming features and the time they will be available. These roadmaps help to allocate an organization's resources in a way that aligns with the product vision.

Product portfolio roadmap

When you need a clear vision of your business's overall product strategy and timeline for its different initiatives, it's best to use a product portfolio roadmap. It is a single roadmap that embraces multiple product plans. This roadmap helps product managers and executives see the relation of each product to the company’s goals.

The single view of the product portfolio roadmap helps track progress and ensures the development team is on the same page on the most vital work.

Goals-oriented roadmap

A goals-oriented roadmap focuses on the outcomes the product team wants to achieve rather than only features they will develop. 

This strategic product roadmap aims to establish product goals, plan releases and coordinate the work of cross-functional teams. 

The benefits of a goal-oriented roadmap include:

• Aligning stakeholders and development teams
• Acquiring a budget if required
• Being compatible with objectives and key results (OKRs)

Status-based roadmap

If you need a detailed planning tool, you may choose a Status-based roadmap. It categorizes tasks, features, or initiatives into specific stages of completion like "Planned," "In progress," "Testing," and "Done." 

This roadmap aims to provide a comprehensive view of the current status and plans for product development, so it usually includes timelines, deadlines and milestones.

A status-based roadmap allows stakeholders to monitor the development pipeline by tracking the precise progress of each element. 

Now-next-later roadmap

Sometimes, focusing on timelines turns out to be ineffective. It is when the Now-next-later roadmap comes to help. 

Rather than focusing on deadline-based delivery, this roadmap emphasizes customer needs and business opportunities.

The Now-next-later roadmap organizes work into three columns:

• The Now column features the initiatives you are working on at present. It contains clearly defined, detailed items.
• The Next column contains projects you will work on once you complete the Now column. These items are not fully broken down because they're not in front of you yet.
• The Later column includes more high-level items. You know you will have to deal with these general problems in the undefined future, but you don't need to break them down right now. When the Later column moves closer, you will explore them more precisely.

The Now-next-later roadmap is especially useful in agile or fast-paced environments, where priorities shift frequently. Using this roadmap, teams and stakeholders can focus on the items most important at different project phases.

Custom roadmap

With Zeda.io, your product team can create a roadmap tailored to their specific needs and goals. Custom roadmaps can serve a variety of purposes; for example, you can use them to:

• Communicate the vision of a product offering
• Establish product goals
• Plan releases
• Coordinate the work of cross-functional teams

How to create a product roadmap with Zeda.io

Zeda.io offers multiple customizable templates and helps you follow product roadmap best practices to streamline the product's development. Here's how to build a product roadmap with Zeda.io:

Use a theme-based template with epics and stories

Once you have selected a viable product idea, it's time to consider deliverables and decide about deadlines. Choose a theme-based roadmap to help you stick to the product's vision and the organizational mission.

A template you choose will help you keep things simple. The theme should reflect your overall goal. Then, as you break the work into deliverable pieces, epics and stories should reflect the features and functionalities.

Share it with your team and shareholders

When you have created the roadmap and completed it with details like product features, make it available for your team and shareholders to receive input.

However, you should remember that it's best to keep the number of editors as low as possible. Each of them should provide input concerning the laid-out plan.

Choose North Star metrics

The next step in creating a product roadmap is identifying your North Star metrics. Here's how they can benefit your product strategy:

• Give clarity and set expectations: North Star metrics clearly focus the team, helping everyone understand the ultimate goal.
• Reflect impact and progress: These metrics should be sensitive to changes in your product's performance, which means they can effectively measure progress and assess the impact of your work.
• Hold teams accountable: While teams track their progress against North Star metrics, it's easier to identify which teams or areas need improvement if they fail to meet those metrics.

Here’s how to make the most of out of North Star Metrics:

• Determine each metric’s 'success range': Instead of having a single target, it's essential to understand a range within which the metric should ideally fall. This range will help you define success more realistically and account for variations.
• Define tools to measure it: Decide which tools will best measure and accurately monitor your North Star Metrics.
• Estimate for best and worst-case scenarios: While setting North Star metrics, it's wise to consider both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. It allows you to be prepared when something goes wrong.

Determine the resources you’ll need to achieve success

The last step is to estimate the resources necessary to complete the process of creating a strategic roadmap. Remember to share the data with the decision-makers and consider positive outcomes and bad scenarios.

Conclusion

Use product roadmaps discussed in this article to improve the project management process and create great products your customers will love. Zeda.io will help you streamline the process. It gathers all your tools and data in one place, simplifying your workflow.

Zeda.io is one of the best product roadmap tools for product teams that helps you create effective agile product roadmaps by providing a platform where you can easily manage customer feedback, collaborate with different product teams and communicate with stakeholders. Sounds interesting? Sign up for Zeda.io and start your free trial.