This software offers you the ability to create a product roadmap that showcases your company’s goals and the steps you are taking to reach them. Product roadmap software helps you share this information with investors as well as your team members so that everyone involved is on the same page.
With the best roadmap software, you can also track your progress toward achieving these goals. This way, if things start to go off track, you can take action quickly before it becomes a larger problem.
Roadmap tools also help keep team members accountable for their responsibilities and make it easy for managers to delegate tasks and monitor progress toward deadlines. Since most teams are now working remotely, having a tool that allows you to collaborate from anywhere is essential.
This is where cloud-based product roadmap software comes in handy because it enables all team members to access important documents and communicate with one another regardless of their location.
In this article we will introduce some of the best product roadmap software options available today as well as discuss what features and functionalities they provide so that you can find one that works best for your business’s needs and budget.
Best Roadmap Software
What Are Roadmap Software
As a business owner, you are responsible for ensuring that your company stays on track. You need to know where you are heading, and how to get there.
That’s why it’s important for you to have a roadmap software system at your disposal.
A roadmap is a visual representation of the most important tasks that need to be completed before reaching a certain goal or target. It helps businesses visualize their progress toward a goal and shows them where they stand at any given time. Best Roadmap Software Introduction
A good roadmap software system can help businesses plan ahead and reach their goals more efficiently.
Roadmap Software – Introduction
Roadmap software is a web-based project management tool that gives you a visual overview of your product roadmap, allowing you and your team to plan, manage and communicate high-level goals.
Use roadmap software to plan, organize, and schedule all the moving parts for your next product release.
Available for both Mac and PC, roadmap software can be used by any organization looking to plan anything from a simple project to an entire company goal.
What is Roadmap Software? Roadmaps are used in many different industries as a way to help visualize high-level goals and objectives.
A roadmap also allows managers and team members to break down those goals into projects that can be worked on independently or collaboratively by the team.
If you’re looking for a way to visualize company initiatives or just want help with planning your next big project, check out the best roadmap tools available today!
What is the Best Roadmap Software?
For many organizations, product roadmaps are a critical part of their planning process. They provide a way to align teams and departments, as well as give your customers and stakeholders visibility into your product direction.
A good roadmap is clear, concise, and focuses on the future. It’s meant to be a high-level view of your plans for the next few months or quarters — not a detailed project plan.
The best roadmap software makes it easy to communicate your plans to different audiences. With Aha!, you can build beautiful roadmaps in minutes and share them with anyone.
There are two main types of product roadmaps: Strategic roadmap — Long-term roadmap that sets the direction for higher-level initiatives or epics that you will deliver in the future. This is often presented at a higher level of detail and focus on why you are building certain things.
Release roadmap — Focuses on upcoming releases and highlights key features that will be delivered during those releases. This is typically presented at a lower level of detail, showing what you plan to deliver rather than why you are building it.
1. Monday.com
Monday.com is the easiest work platform to manage any team and any project: Simply pick from a variety of templates or create your own workflow to get started.
Sync, plan, organize, and track your teams projects from the high-level overview down to the smallest details. Over 70,000 teams use Monday.com to focus on whats important, see whos in charge of what, and stay updated in one collaborative tool.
Why you’ll love Monday.com – Easy to get started: It takes just minutes to learn and there are tons of templates ready for you to customize – Visual: See everything thats going on at a glance with our visual boards – Customizable: Make it your own by adding your favorite integrations – Unlimited possibilities: Manage all aspects of your business with our wide range of features
Monday.com is a work operating system where teams create, organize and track their work. It empowers teams to collaborate, communicate and move forward faster. Monday.com is built with the mission of making teamwork simple, visual and flexible, so that everyone can participate in the flow of work to achieve better results.
Features
It’s time to get organized. monday.com is the most visual collaboration tool on the market, your team will thank you for it.
Create Boards, Lists & Projects Create a board for every project you have, and add lists to organize them into specific tasks. Customize your board with multiple views – Kanban view, Timeline view, Calendar view, and more! Add columns to your lists to fit the workflow of your team.
Choose from over 30 column types such as numbers, dropdown menus, checkboxes, and date columns. Need more details? Use our text and long text columns to add more information. Add items and assign tasks! Add as many items as you like with any amount of detail you want and assign them to anyone on your team.
Make sure that every task is assigned properly by adding custom statuses to each list. Attach files from Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive directly into an item so everyone can see them in one place. You can also attach photos or videos directly from your phone or computer!
Multiple users can work on the same board at the same time and changes are updated in real-time across all devices!
Pros
Monday.com is a very flexible and scalable product that can be tailored to fit almost any workflow. The core features are simple but powerful and are augmented by a rich add-on ecosystem of over 700 integrations and custom apps.
Here’s a breakdown of the biggest Monday.com pros: Powerful automation features Simple yet powerful core features Extensive third-party integrations
monday.com is an award-winning work and project management platform that helps teams of all sizes plan, prioritize, manage, and execute their work more effectively.
2. Wrike
Wrike is a collaborative work management platform that unifies systems and transforms the way teams plan, manage, and complete work. The company integrates with over 50 enterprise applications, including Microsoft Office 365, Google Drive, and Adobe Creative Cloud.
Its project management software features include workload management, time tracking, resource planning, progress, and performance reporting. Wrike was founded in 2006 by Andrew Filev. In November 2012 Wrike Inc. closed a $5M Series A round of funding led by Bain Capital Ventures and added former Adobe Systems CEO Bruce Chizen to the board of directors.
In June 2014 Wrike secured $15M in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and other investors. The company has offices in Silicon Valley and San Diego (CA), London (UK), St. Petersburg (Russia), and Kyiv (Ukraine).
In October 2016 Wrike launched its official mobile app on Android platform. In February 2017 Wrike announced $10M in additional funding led by Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell’s family office with participation from Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.
In September 2017 Wrike released its official mobile app on the iOS platform.
Features
Wrike Features
Collaboration: Share files, communicate in real-time, manage projects visually with interactive timelines, and Gantt charts
Reporting & Analytics: Visualize data in real time with dashboards, analytics tools, and reports; set alerts for specific events or milestones.
Workload Management: Eliminate bottlenecks by monitoring team capacity; share workload across the organization with single-click reassignment; set individual or team schedules to ensure proper pacing of work.
Team Collaboration: Collaborate across teams from different departments or geographies; keep everyone on the same page with personalized workspaces for every user group.
Pros
The Pros of Wrike
It is very easy to use. It is completely free for 5 users. It has a simple, user-friendly interface. It has an easy and fast client approval system. You can track multiple projects simultaneously.
Wrike helps you to provide better customer service. You can assign tasks to different teams and members of your team. Wrike enables you to manage internal communications effectively.
3. Roadmap Planner
The Roadmap Planner is a tool to help companies anticipate, plan and respond to the challenges of going public.
The Roadmap Planner: Anticipates the key areas most likely to benefit from early attention. Provides time-based recommendations to efficiently prepare for going public.
Enables real-time tracking of progress toward pre-IPO goals and Helps benchmark against past IPO companies.
We are a collaborative road mapping tool, providing a structured way for your team to create and manage your roadmap. We are the first project management solution that enables teams to plan and deliver projects collaboratively, using a visual map-based approach.
With our powerful drag and drop interface, you can quickly get started creating plans and roadmaps that are easy to update and share with your team. Hang on, you’ll be able to access your Roadmap Planner later today. We’ve taken the decision to temporarily disable access to the Roadmap Planner while we’re busy making it better.
We want to make sure you have a great experience, so we’re working hard to rebuild and improve it at the same time as getting you access to your new account. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
Features
The Roadmap Planner is a visual project planning tool that helps you develop your strategy, visualize your goals, and communicate your plan to all stakeholders. With it, you can create a roadmap, or several roadmaps, that are optimized for different audiences.
You can break down your strategy into individual initiatives and feature sets, assign an owner for each item, enter the start and end dates of each item, and define dependencies between items. You can also share your roadmap with anyone inside or outside of your organization by generating beautiful HTML reports with one click.
Here’s a quick rundown of the main features: Create multiple roadmaps to suit different audiences; Build out initiatives and features, assign owners, set dates, and define dependencies; Collaborate with team members on Roadmap Planner projects in real-time; Customize the layout by adding markers, milestones and images to the timeline; Generate HTML reports that can be shared as web pages or exported as PDFs.
Pros
Roadmap Planner Pros Roadmap Planner Pro is a roadmap app for Windows and Mac that lets you create beautiful visual roadmaps. It also has a number of features that make it stand out from the crowd of other apps.
First of all, Roadmap Planner Pro is designed specifically for creating roadmaps. That means it offers a lot of features that are absent in other project or diagramming apps. Features like:
Multiple themes with different colors, fonts and shapes Customization options like colors, icons, labels and more Support for multiple plans on one canvas The ability to export your roadmap as an image file Roadmap Planner Pro is available in two versions – a free version with basic features and a premium version with additional features. The premium version comes with additional templates and customization options and can be bought directly from the developer’s website.
Roadmap Planner Pros Roadmap Planner Pro is an easy to use app that lets you create beautiful visual roadmaps in just a few minutes. It has a number of features that make it stand out from the crowd of other apps.
Roadmap Planner is a cloud-based project management solution designed for businesses across various industries such as finance, marketing, advertising, research and more.
4. Hello Focus
“Focus, focus,” you mutter to yourself as you stare at your laptop, eyes watering and shoulders tensed. You’ve been working on the same task for hours, but it feels like you’re getting nowhere. You have a ton of work to do, but you just can’t seem to settle into one project.
Hello Focus, I am writing to ask for an opportunity to review your product. I have a blog that is dedicated to providing entrepreneurs and business owners with great tips and advice on running a successful business. My audience would really benefit from your product. I was also wondering if you would like me to write about you as a company as well?
Please let me know if you are interested in this opportunity. Hello, I’m Focus! I’m here to help you stay focused, and to make sure you don’t forget all the things you need to take care of. What’s your focus today? We are offering a new way of tracking your goals and tasks. Sign up to start tracking your progress!
Features
We are a major global studio, dedicated to crafting event-driven stories for a passionate audience. Our upcoming slate includes some of the industry’s most exciting talent and filmmakers, including Academy Award® winners Joe Wright, Guillermo del Toro, Martin McDonagh, and Bill Condon.
In addition to releasing worldwide hits such as Darkest Hour, The Beguiled, and Victoria & Abdul, we have built a library of acclaimed films that include Dallas Buyers Club, Brokeback Mountain, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Moonrise Kingdom and Lost in Translation.
Pros
Hello Focus Pros! As many of you know, we love hearing from users on what they’d like to see in Focus. It’s one of the reasons we have a public roadmap and collect feedback through our user research studies.
We also love sharing what we’re working on so you can get early access and help us make the product better. We’re excited to share that we are launching a beta program for our users to try out new features before they’re released to all of our users.
This is something we’ve wanted to do for a while, but haven’t had the right tools in place to make it happen until now. If you want to get early access to new features and help us make Focus even better, sign up here!
Hello Focus is a cloud-based tool for managing tasks, projects, and teams, with features including to-do lists, recurring tasks, road mapping, task delegation, and more.
5. ProductPlan
Here at ProductPlan, we’re focused on helping companies build better roadmaps. We believe that better products begin with better product roadmaps and that they can lead to happier customers and more successful businesses.
This is Part 2 of our product planning guide. In Part 1 we discussed what a roadmap is, the value it brings to your organization, and how to use one for strategic alignment. In this post, we’ll examine more tactical issues — how to build your product roadmap and answer the question: “What should I put on my roadmap?”
To help you get started, we’ve created a roadmap template that you can download and customize. ProductPlan is the easiest way to plan, visualize, and communicate your product strategy Create beautiful roadmaps in minutes Get started quickly with pre-built roadmaps, or build your own from scratch. It’s easy to use and you can get started for free.
Tell the story of your product strategy Visually present your product roadmap with one click. Instantly share presentations, embed them in Confluence or Jira, or publish them on the web.
Features
ProductPlan is a cloud-based, real-time marketing platform designed to make it simple for small businesses and independent contractors to launch their own e-commerce stores. It’s designed for anyone who sells products online – whether you sell online or use an existing store from your website. Its features include:
– Product Plan: This is where you create a master catalog of all the products you sell, add images and descriptions of each one, and build a profile for each product. You can also add custom fields and import CSV files that contain your product information.
– Shopify Store Manager: This is where you manage all your storefront details – including payment options, shipping options, tax rates, etc. – Online Store Management: You’ll see reports that tell you how many visitors your store has each month, how many of those visitors are new customers (which are good) and how many are returning customers (not so good).
– Social Media Marketing: This allows you to post your store to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter directly from the platform.
Pros
ProductPlan Pros: -Pro: It’s very easy to use, and you can create a roadmap in minutes. -Pro: With ProductPlan you can share your roadmap with anyone. It allows you to share it via a URL link or embed it on your website. -Pro: If you have multiple roadmaps, you can manage them all in one place. -Pro: You can view your roadmap as a table, a timeline, or a calendar, which gives you more flexibility.
ProductPlan helps us plan, visualize and effectively communicate our product strategy. With ProductPlan, it is very convenient for our team to see the "bigger picture", helping each of us to align ourselves with a flexible roadmap that can be accessed anywhere and at any time across our organization.
6. Airfocus
Airfocus is the prioritization tool for modern teams. It helps your team to build better roadmaps, make data-driven decisions and ship successful products. It’s a collaborative, visual, and data-driven alternative to bulky spreadsheets and sticky notes. Based on various prioritization methods like MoSCoW, Kano or RICE.
It’s more than just a priority matrix or planning poker app. It is the only SaaS solution with an inbuilt real-time decision-making engine that calculates score cards, ROI and relative priorities in real-time so you can focus on shipping better products faster.
If you’re like most people, you have a lot of ideas. But how do you know which ones to pursue? How do you decide what to focus on? Airfocus helps teams and individuals make better decisions by making the process transparent and effective.
In a nutshell, Airfocus helps you: Visualize your ideas on a roadmap Rank your ideas using the right prioritization framework Share your roadmap with others
A project management software that is flexible and easy to use.
Features
Airfocus Features
With Airfocus, you’ll be able to estimate the value of your ideas, plan your roadmap and manage your backlog in a visually intuitive way. In addition to the core features, we are constantly working on new things to make it an even more powerful tool for product managers and teams.
Value-based prioritization You can assign values to your ideas and estimate the effort required. Based on this, Airfocus will calculate a priority score for you. This will help you to see which items are most important to focus on.
Roadmap planning The visual roadmap allows you to create a plan for implementing your highest-priority items. The integrated timeline feature makes it easy to understand when each item will be delivered.
Manage your backlog Visualize and sort through all of your ideas in a single place using our drag & drop interface.
Pros
Airfocus pros: – user friendly – good for prioritizing features for roadmap – easy to use (scorecards) – easy to compare features – good for decision making – good for prioritization and ranking of features and tasks.
airfocus works around the framework of project prioritization through a set of standards and set criteria.
7. Roadmunk
Confidence is a crucial factor in the products and features that we choose to build. Knowing that we’re solving real problems for our customers helps us prioritize what we focus on. The more we can increase our confidence, the more likely it is that we’ll make decisions that help us reach our goals.
At Roadmunk, it’s important for us to be confident when creating new products or features. We don’t want to waste time on things that aren’t useful or desirable to our users. We do this by talking directly to our customers and being deliberate with how we collect feedback.
This ensures that our roadmap is aligned with what they need and want from the product, which increases our confidence in the work we’re doing. But making decisions based on qualitative feedback can be tricky, so we decided to try something new: the Confidence Score
The Confidence Score measures how confident you are in your roadmap. It’s a good way to measure qualitative feedback and create a single point of truth across your team, so you know exactly where you stand at any given time.
We’re always adding new features to Roadmunk. Check out this page for the latest news on what we’ve released and what we’re working on.
Features
Roadmunk Features Whether you’re creating a product roadmap or a release plan, Roadmunk has the features necessary to ensure your next initiative is a success. Interactive Timeline Build a beautiful, interactive timeline that tells your story and engages your audience.
With our timeline view, everything from customer stories to technical specs can be added to help bring your visions of the future to life. Roadmap Cards Create beautiful cards that represent what you’re working on now. With Roadmap Cards, you get advanced customization options that make it easy to create cards that tell your story and meet the needs of your stakeholders.
Pros
We just reached a big milestone…we’re now a team of more than 50 Roadmunks! Of course, we’ve been working on some really cool stuff over the past few months and I want to share a few of the highlights. In the last quarter, we:
Welcomed 12 new members to our growing team Became a Google Cloud Partner and launched a new integration with Google Sheets Launched a new API to help you get even more out of Roadmunk Released 3 Customer Success webinars so you can learn how customers like Microsoft and Hitachi are using Roadmunk
Roadmunk is web-based software designed to help create and share attractive visual roadmaps for product management. The solution enables the entire team to efficiently collaborate in planning the future steps of a product.
8. Aha
Aha! Aha! is a web-based product roadmap and feature management software. The platform allows users to organize and share their production ideas, goals, and strategies in one place. The tool offers different views for teams of any size including product management, teams, sales and marketing, and executive leadership. Aha! also provides a customer portal that allows users to see what is being built for them.
Key Features: Product roadmaps Strategic themes Release planning Integration with JIRA and other tools Aha! is a company that helps other companies make products that customers love.
We are a fast-growing and profitable business with thousands of paying customers. Our team is 100% distributed across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. We have worked hard to build an incredible culture and create an environment where people can do their best work. That is why our employees voted us the Best Place to Work on Glassdoor!
We believe that diverse teams help us build the best products for our customers. That is why we are dedicated to hiring people of all races, ethnicities, religions, ages, sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and those who are differently abled.
Features
Here are some features of Aha! * Ideas * Roadmaps * Releases * Features * Product Requirements
Pros
Aha Pros is a highly curated community of the world’s top marketing and product professionals. We use a proprietary screening process to select only 3% of applicants. We’re always looking for new marketing and product leaders:
Chief Marketing Officers SVPs of Marketing VPs of Marketing Directors of Marketing Heads of Product Ecommerce Managers What is Roadmap Software? When we hear the word “roadmap,” most of us imagine a traditional map with roads and intersections.
Roadmap software is similar but more advanced and detailed. It’s a tool that visualizes a plan of action, helps to execute it, and tracks progress. Companies use roadmap software when they need to create and maintain strategic plans.
How Does Roadmap Software Work? Roadmaps are created by project managers or product owners to track development processes and help team members stay on the same page. They usually consist of three major parts:
Objectives. These are the goals that you want your team to achieve, such as launching a new version of the project, designing a website or creating an updated version of your product.
Strategies. You need to set several strategies for each objective so that you can reach it successfully. These strategies can be described in words or illustrated with diagrams, charts, etc., depending on the type of software you’re using.
Tasks. Each strategy needs to be broken down into tasks that can be completed in time. Tasks include things like assigning responsibilities and deadlines to individual team members or departments, creating reports, etc.
Roadmap software makes it easier for teams to see what needs to be done and make sure everyone
Aha! is a cloud-based software company that provides product development software for companies in the United States and internationally. Aha! offers Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products for organizations to set strategy, ideate, plan, showcase, build, and launch new products and enhancements.
How Do You Create A Product Roadmap?
Product Roadmap: A product roadmap is a document that lays out a strategy for the development of a product. It typically has a timeline of 12 to 18 months, and is broken down into milestones, each with a list of features or tasks that need to be completed.
A product roadmap is a high-level, strategic document used by companies to outline their vision for an upcoming product or service. Rather than focusing on the details of what needs to be done, the roadmap concentrates on the “what” and “when.”
This helps keep everyone in the company focused on the big picture. In addition to laying out your product’s future direction for your internal team, it can also be used to communicate with customers, partners, and investors about what you’re working on and when they can expect new features to be released.
A product roadmap is a plan for how your product will be developed over time. The roadmap typically includes a timeline and key milestones and goals, but it can also include other elements.
1. Creating A Product Roadmap Define The Product Strategy
A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that maps out the vision and direction of your product offering over time. A roadmap communicates the why and what behind what you’re building.
A good roadmap also provides sufficient detail about when new features will be released so customers, sales and marketing people, investors, executives, and developers can plan for upcoming releases.
As the product manager, you must understand the strategic direction of your organization or business unit and how your product contributes to that goal. From there, you can define a strategy for your product and create a high-level roadmap to communicate that strategy across your organization.
The product roadmap is a strategic plan for delivering a valuable product. It is a tool that helps you make decisions about features, priorities, and people.
The product roadmap simplifies the product planning process by creating a central place to organize, store and share your plans with the team. It provides a framework for making important strategic decisions.
The roadmap unites the team around a common goal, gives context to daily work, and lets you effortlessly explain your plans to stakeholders.
2. Creating A Product Roadmap Gain a Clear Idea of the Requirements
Even if you have a picture-perfect product in mind, you’re not quite ready to pitch it. You need to create a product roadmap, which will help you gain a clear idea of the requirements, prioritization, and scheduling of your project. This will give your stakeholders a clear understanding of the work that needs to be done to reach the final product.
Creating A Product Roadmap: Gain a Clear Idea of the Requirements
A product roadmap is similar in concept to a business plan, but with a few key differences. While it contains many of the same components, such as goals and objectives, timelines and budgets, it doesn’t go into as much detail about how you plan to achieve those goals and objectives.
In theory, it’s possible to create a product roadmap without ever putting pen to paper. But it’s more likely that you’ll get more clarity on your project by mapping out its specifications in writing.
In addition to helping you organize your thoughts, this exercise can help you communicate more effectively with any team members or stakeholders who will be involved in the project. The following five steps will help guide you through the process of creating your own product roadmap:
3. Creating A Product Roadmap Assign Broad Timeframes
How do you know what to build first? One of the biggest challenges facing product managers is determining the order in which they should execute their product roadmap. The assumption is that they know what they’re building, but they can’t figure out how to prioritize.
I’d argue that the problem typically lies in defining the scope of what you’re building, not in prioritization. To illustrate this point, let’s look at a common scenario: A company wants to move into a new market; it has an opportunity there, and it’s part of the strategic plan.
The product management team starts with research and discovery, then defines a set of features and requirements that are needed for success. They might even create user stories and prioritize them using some kind of voting system. But when it comes time to build, they’re stuck. What do they build first?
The answer to this dilemma isn’t about sequencing or prioritization; it’s about scope. If you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re building — or why — then your product roadmap is going to be extremely difficult to execute against. You might wind up building something super-complex that doesn’t solve the user problem or deliver business value
4. Creating A Product Roadmap Customize the View
This article explains how you can customize the view of your roadmap. If you haven’t created a roadmap yet, read this article first. In order to create a new view, you can click on the drop-down menu called “Views” in the top right corner of your roadmap:
If you want to customize the existing views, you can do so by clicking on the “…” button next to the name of the view. When creating or customizing a view, you will see different options for customizing it. The first section is called “General Settings”.
In this section, you can: change the name of the view choose if all other users (including non-admins) should be able to see and modify this view (only admins have access by default), edit whether other users should be able to add new columns in this view (enabled by default, but only for admins), andedit whether other users should be able to add new rows in this view (enabled by default, but only for admins)
5. Creating A Product Roadmap Share the Roadmap
Sharing Your Product Roadmap
The key to creating a product roadmap is sharing it with the right people. After all, if no one sees your product roadmap, then it’s just another piece of paper on your desk.
Here are a few tips for sharing your product roadmap: Keep it simple. The more complicated you make the roadmap, the less likely people will read it. Use a tool that makes it easy to share the roadmap and gives readers the ability to ask questions or leave comments.
Make it visual. The best product roadmaps use pictures to show how products will look or work in the future. This helps people understand what you’re planning and builds buy-in from users who need to use the product day in and day out.
Get feedback from customers. The best way to make sure you’re developing the right things is to get direct input from customers about what they need and want from your product. Poll them about which features they’d like to see first and keep them informed about new releases so they stay engaged with your product.
Roadmap Software – Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve compiled a list of the top questions that our customers ask about roadmaps and the software that powers them.
Q: What is the difference between a product roadmap and an agile release plan?
A: While there are many similarities, there are also some key distinctions, which we explored in depth in this blog post.
Q: What is a portfolio roadmap?
A: A portfolio roadmap visualizes all of the products or projects that a company is working on. It helps teams coordinate across multiple initiatives in order to maximize value delivery. Here’s how to create one.
Q: What do I need to consider when creating an agile roadmap?
A: Many teams look for ways to incorporate agile values into their planning processes, as it aligns with the way they work. We’ve put together best practices for agile roadmaps to help you get started.
Q: How frequently should I update my roadmap?
A: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to updating your roadmap, but it’s important to keep it up-to-date and communicate changes frequently to your team, partners, and stakeholders.
1. Is There Any Difference Between Roadmapping and BPM Software?
If you haven’t already been introduced to the world of road mapping, you’ve probably at least heard of business process management (BPM) software. Many people are surprised to find out that they can perceive these two systems as being interchangeable with one another, but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that this isn’t the case.
So, is there any difference between roadmapping and BPM software? That depends on what it is you want out of your business process solution.
WHAT IS ROADMAPPING SOFTWARE? Roadmap software is designed to help teams plan their products in a visual way. The roadmap itself acts as the high-level overview that encapsulates the entire product lifecycle from start to finish.
Inside the roadmap, users can create interactive cards that serve as containers for all the details and information associated with a particular task or milestone. These cards are laid out over time using a timeline view so that project teams can visualize their progress and allocate resources accordingly where needed.
Roadmaps can also be used by company executives for strategic planning purposes. By creating a vision for their product or service and laying it out in an easy-to-understand format, they can then communicate this vision
2. What Are the Different Types of Roadmaps?
What Are the Different Types of Roadmaps? There are four main types of roadmaps. They all have slightly different features, benefits, and uses, so it’s important to understand which type is right for you. The four types of roadmaps are:
Strategic roadmap — This roadmap shows the initiatives your team will work on in order to achieve long-term goals. Strategic roadmaps show the direction you plan to go in over months or years and how you intend to get there.
Feature roadmap — This roadmap provides a high-level summary of the features your team plans to deliver in a particular release or set of releases over a period of months or years. Feature roadmaps don’t typically show when specific features will be delivered, but rather provide an overview of what’s coming down the pipeline.
Release roadmap — This roadmap shows which features will be delivered by your team in each upcoming release, along with the dates you plan to ship those releases. Release roadmaps are typically shared with stakeholders who need to know exactly what will be delivered and when, but don’t need a detailed view of individual features or initiatives.
Project roadmap — This roadmap shows the timeline for delivering a specific feature or initiative, down to the level of individual
3. Can You Use Spreadsheet Software to Create Roadmaps?
As readers of this blog know, I am a strong proponent of using the right tool for the job, even if it might seem unconventional. So when I came across an article arguing that you can use spreadsheet software to create roadmaps, I was intrigued.
The author, Niklas Goeke, is the founder and CEO of productboard, a company that makes roadmap software. He argues that spreadsheets are a poor fit for product road mapping because they are linear and hierarchical rather than visual and nonlinear.
I agree with him on this point — although roadmaps need to be structured in order to be effective, they also need to be flexible enough to accommodate the ever-changing nature of product development (see “What Is Product Roadmapping?”).
Where Goeke’s argument falls short (and where many arguments like it do) is in assuming that the only alternative to spreadsheets is complex and expensive commercial software. There are a lot of excellent free and open source tools for creating visual and/or nonlinear roadmaps like mind maps (see “Free Mind Mapping Software”).
I also disagree with his assertion that everyone in your organization needs to be able to access your roadmaps — or at least not everyone needs access all the time. As I’ve
Best Roadmap Software – Summary
The best roadmap software should allow you to create roadmaps that are simple to understand but still powerful enough to help your team achieve its goals. A roadmap is a visual representation of how a product or project will develop over time.
Roadmaps don’t need to be complicated, but they should be easy to customize and track. The best roadmap software should help you communicate strategic goals, foster alignment across departments, and deliver projects on time.
There are many different types of product roadmaps: feature roadmaps, release roadmaps, investment roadmaps, and development roadmaps are just a few examples. The best roadmap software for you will depend on what type of roadmap you’re creating and how you want to share it with your team.
ProductPlan offers the best roadmap software for creating timeline-based visualizations of your product strategy. You can quickly build beautiful product roadmaps using a drag-and-drop interface.
The best roadmap software helps you do more than just build roadmaps—it aligns teams around shared goals, helps you make informed decisions about features and releases, and empowers your organization to deliver products that solve real problems for users.
