Learn how to plan for future initiatives on a quarterly basis through a roadmap

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For optimal efficiency and performance, software development teams require clear direction and guidance in terms of where the team is headed and why they are headed in that certain direction. This clarity can come in the form of macro-plans — such as a company vision or product strategy — or from micro-plans — such as from sprint cycles or the details in an epic and user story.

However, there is something missing in the middle of both the macro and micro view of the future. The question is, “What are our plans for the quarter or several weeks ahead?”. This might sound like an easy question to answer, but this requires rigorous planning and deep hindsight to determine not only what your team will be working on but also why they might be working on those initiatives and the purposes that they serve your company during that quarter.

This is where a well-defined and deeply considered roadmap comes into play. By tying your roadmap to the wider organization and product vision, as well as being the reason why your team is working on certain epics or user stories, your roadmap can act as the bridge between your macro and micro plans, as well as being the bridge between your customers and the company as a whole.

The advantages of creating a quarterly roadmap

There are plenty of reasons — both theoretical and practical — why you and your team should be following a roadmap. Despite this, it is sometimes troubling how many product managers and teams don’t take the time to plan out initiatives that they would like to tackle for the quarter, as well as figure out the in-depth reasons why they would like to tackle those initiatives either.

As such, the following are the main reasons why a roadmap is crucial for your team’s current and future initiatives:

Connects the dots between the organization’s vision & goals, with your own team’s initiatives & strategy

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One of the biggest strengths of having a roadmap is in the role it plays as the connective tissue between your company’s mission, purpose or vision and the initiatives that your team decided to work on. Without having a common reason or purpose for working on initiatives, this will not only cause uncertainty — and a certain amount of ambiguity — for your team when they are making decisions about what to build next, but this also hampers any coordination efforts that can be garnered between your team and other parts of the organization, such as customer success, marketing, finance, sales, etc.

Ensuring that initiatives in your roadmap are supported and undergirded by your company’s overall ambition and mission, will help your team make clearer and faster decisions in terms of building out your future initiatives, as well as help other stakeholders within the company understand the reasons why your team are building a specific feature or function in the first place

A communication tool that aligns the rest of the organisation around a single set of priorities

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As mentioned above, a roadmap can be used to inform other stakeholders within the company, but outside of your team, about the specific reasons why your team is focusing on building out particular features or functions. Having this information communicated in this form will also assist stakeholders with their own plans, as they have a clear field of view and understanding of what and why your team is building, which can help feed into their own department’s strategies or future projects.

For example, the product marketing function would benefit from a clearly communicated roadmap. If they are provided a transparent view of your team’s planned initiatives, as well as an understanding of the reasons behind the decisions made to pursue those initiatives, this will arm them with the information necessary to plan for future marketing releases, and the themes around each release, to suit not only the strengths of the features & functions that your team is building but also promoting the vision and strategy of the company in the process.

Helps customers understand and anticipate the product’s future direction

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In some cases, a roadmap is also made publicly available for existing and potential users to analyze, understand and, in some cases, anticipate what’s to come out next. Gauging customer interest and sentiment around future initiatives, not only assists the product team in undertaking problem discovery and validation with customers cheaply and quickly, but it can also serve to generate interest within your existing and potential customer base about the future direction of your product.

The components of a roadmap

The following are the key components to building out your roadmap:

1. Company Mission or Objective
2. Product Vision
3. ‘Now’, ‘Next’ & ‘Later’ Timeframes
4. Creating your primary themes for each ‘Now’, ‘Next’ & ‘Later’ timeframe

Company Mission or Objective

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Firstly, you want to ensure that your roadmap, and the initiatives planned under the said roadmap, are aligned with not only what the company wants to achieve in the near future but also the reasons behind why the company wants to set those particular targets.

This is ground 0 — the reason why we are developing the product at all. Finding your company mission or objective should be pretty simple, as this is usually available for public consumption, either on your product’s website or another public forum where company plans are discussed and disclosed to the public.

For example, a quick Google search yielded Facebook’s (Meta’s) mission statement, which reads:

Give people the capacity to form communities and bring the globe closer together

Product Managers at Facebook would then base lots of their plans, and why they are tackling particular initiatives as part of their plans, on the above mission statement.

Product Vision

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A vision is all about having an idea of what the future might look like, what your product is seeking to achieve in the future, and the problems it is trying to solve. In other words, a vision is about having an opinionated assumption or opinion about what the future holds, based on your own intuition, research, and experience.

This forms the basis of the roadmap and the intended end goal of your team, which is the destination at the end of the roadmap. You can create a vision statement using the following template:

A world where the [target customer] no longer suffers from the [identified problem] because of [product] they [benefit].

‘Now’, ‘Next’ & ‘Later’ Timeframes

Example of a ‘Now’, ‘Next’ & ‘Later’ timeline bucket for roadmaps

One of the most common mistakes that new product managers make is that they believe they should be saying ‘yes’ to everything that is thrown at them, no matter where it comes from, and to try to fit everything that everyone wants within a reasonable time frame. This is probably furthest from the truth as you can get — as covered in my previous article, being able to say ‘no’ is one of the key traits a product manager can develop, and it’s even more important when you start building out a roadmap with ‘Now’, ‘Next’ & ‘Later’ timeframes.

Their meaning is reflected in the way they are written and the order they are placed, as in the above example. The ‘Now’ timeframe is the initiatives that are either imminently or currently being worked on by your team. The ‘Next’ timeframe signifies the work that comes after the ‘Now’ column is completed, and the ‘Later’ column is work that you have not yet dedicated the time or resources to completing in the near future.

The reason for including timeframes in this manner is to avoid any form of over-commitment on the part of your team. Having timeframes in mind helps you seriously scope down the level of your work to what is absolutely necessary for your product’s success, and helps you to communicate to other stakeholders your immediate and future priorities.

Creating your primary themes for each ‘Now’, ‘Next’ & ‘Later’ timeframe

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Finally, you can set themes for each of the 3 timeframes which you and your team will focus on solely for that quarter. Themes are just groups of issues that you’ve identified via your continuous discovery efforts — whether that’s by customer interviews, online surveys, or gathering feedback on low-fi design prototypes.

Organizing what your team will work on through themes will help engender focus on delivering an outcome for that quarter, rather than a numerical or quantitative output in terms of work done. Due to the fact that themes are a group of customer problems, this not only helps the team identify potential solutions to assist with solving the customer problem but also ensures that this remains the top priority for everyone until the end of the quarter.

An example of a theme can be:

Product: Social Media Application
Problems:
1. Inability to log in to social media application
2. Inability to have 2-factor authentication when logging into social media applications.
3. Inability to chat with anyone in social media application
4. Inability to share moments (e.g. photos & videos) with others in social media applications
5. Inability to play games with other friends on social media applications
6. Inability to screenshot moments in games with friends in social media applications

Timeframes & Themes:

Now:
Theme — A better first-mile experience for our social media application
Problems 1 & 2

Next:
Theme — Creating a better community within our social media application
Problems 3 & 4

Later:
Theme — Create a better gaming experience on our social media application
Problems 5 & 6

Conclusion

Follow the tips above and create your own basic roadmap in no time.