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Product roadmap

I've created over a few dozen product roadmaps in my career. Most of them were wrong—not just slightly off—fundamentally wrong. It wasn't until I was sitting in a quarterly review, watching my meticulously planned roadmap get demolished by market realities, that I truly understood what a roadmap should be.

What challenges does this help with?

I'd put Product roadmap on your radar and read on, if you're facing these challenges:

  •

    One of the most common issues in product teams. Teams are moving too slowly, causing frustration inside and competitors to catch up. If you’re not going to fix it, You’re going to have a bad time. Learn more

  • No product impact means that the product or feature created does not result in any measurable change or improvement to the customer experience or business outcomes. Learn more

  • A feature factory describes a product development approach focused solely on delivering a high volume of features, often at the expense of user needs and overall product quality. Learn more

  • Low innovation means that a company fails to deliver new features or improvements that meet customer needs, leading to decreased satisfaction and loyalty. Learn more

Why You Should Care

Most people get product roadmaps wrong. They treat them like project plans instead of what they really are—a strategic communication tool.

I've seen countless products fail not because of poor execution but because of poor direction. One of the most painful lessons I learned was watching a team spend six months building features that perfectly matched our roadmap but completely missed evolving market needs.

Here's what a good roadmap does:

  1. It provides a strategic context for daily decisions
  2. It aligns stakeholders around common goals
  3. It makes prioritization discussions more productive
  4. It helps teams say no to ideas that don't serve the current strategy

And perhaps most importantly, it forces you to think. Funnily enough, creating a roadmap for the first time can sometimes provide more value than the roadmap itself.

11 Principles of Great Product Roadmaps

A great product roadmap isn't a list of features or a Gantt chart. It's a story about how you'll solve customer problems and achieve business outcomes.

Through my 20 years of dancing with the roadmaps, the best ones I've found consistently demonstrate these eleven core principles:

  1. Great Roadmaps are Strategy-Driven. Your roadmap is not a collection of random features but a direct, logical result of your . When I look at a roadmap, it should be very, very obvious what your strategy is. You can read more about the here. I've seen too many roadmaps that are just a collection of feature requests from sales or executive pet projects. These inevitably lead to products that lack coherence and fail to move key metrics. The best roadmaps I've created started with a clear strategic foundation—every item can be traced back to core strategic objectives. Strategy is your first check when prioritizing features. Does it feed your strategy? If yes, consider it. No? Park it.
  2. Great Roadmaps are Outcome-Oriented. Focus on the impact and outcomes rather than just feature completion. Shipping features and marking them as "Done" doesn't mean they were successful. You need to measure against actual business and user goals. I recall so many celebrations about shipping something, only to realize we hadn't moved the needle on any meaningful metrics—sad panda. Great roadmaps define success in terms of customer and business outcomes, not feature completions. This shift in thinking transforms how teams approach problems and often leads to more straightforward solutions that actually work. Every item that you decide to work on should have a goal, like so:
    Feature Goal Outcome
    Integrate Login with Google Number of registrations by 10% Number of registrations by 2.5%
    Add password-less authentication using biometrics (fingerprint/face ID) Increase login success rate by 15% Increase login success rate by 25%
  3. Great Roadmaps are Not focused purely on development. Avoid rushing into development. I've watched too many teams jump straight to building without understanding the problem. Follow a structured approach:
    1. Wonder (Problem definition, opportunity assessment)
    2. Explore (Solution definition, prototypes)
    3. Make (Building and releasing)
    4. Impact (Assessment and iteration planning)
    All phases besides Make are quite cheap. Jump between phases, build only when you're confident. The most successful products I've worked on took time to understand the problem space before writing a single line of code.
  4. Great Roadmaps are Prioritized. Use clear prioritization frameworks. As a starting point, consider the framework. After many painful quarters of trying to do everything, I went with something simple. We started using these simple criteria to compare everything:
    • potential Impact of the feature (1-10) on
    • Easiness of shipping it to production (1-10)
    • how much data we had to feel Confident about it (1-10)
    Then you multiply it, compare, and have some conversations. Score features based on these criteria to make informed decisions:
    Feature Impact Easiness Confidence Score (I*C*E)
    Integrate Login with Google
    		 High (9/10) High (9/10) High (8/10) 9 * 9 * 8 = 648
    New onboarding flow
    		 Mid (6/10) Low (2/10) High (9/10) 6 * 2 * 9 = 108
    New CRM integration
    		 Low (2/10) Low (2/10) Low (5/10) 2 * 2 * 5 = 20
    Psst: The prioritization framework matters less than having a consistent, transparent way to make decisions. I've seen teams get paralyzed trying to perfect their prioritization framework while missing the point entirely. The best prioritization approaches create clarity and alignment, not mathematical precision. All frameworks can be hacked.
  5. Great Roadmaps are Not Greedy. Balance your resources between new development, keeping the lights on, and technical debt. Don't go all in - distribute. I've seen many teams forced to spend 90% of their time on new features, only to watch their velocity grind to a halt as technical debt accumulated after 6 months. The most sustainable products I've managed maintained this balance religiously, even under pressure to deliver more features. Your future self will thank you for this discipline. Here's one way to distribute it:
    Existing features New features Reliability Growth
    Pre-PMF 20% 70% 10% 0%
    Post-PMF 20% 30% 30% 20%
    Mature 20% 10% 50% 20%
  6. Great Roadmaps are Diverse. Use what I call the boulder-rocks-pebbles approach:
    Boulders (20%) Large, high-impact initiatives with high level of uncertainty
    Rocks (50%) Medium-sized investments with lower level of uncertainty
    Pebbles (30%) Small, straightforward improvements
    The magic happens when you find the right mix—big enough wins to move the needle, medium initiatives to show consistent progress, and quick wins to maintain momentum and address urgent needs.
  7. Great Roadmaps are Evidence-Based. Don't rely on gut feelings - I've made this mistake too many times and paid for it dearly. Support decisions with user research, market data, technical feasibility studies, and success metrics. It's not about having perfect data (you never will), it's about making decisions based on the best available evidence. Use Confidence meter (for example in ) - the stronger the data, the more points you'll have: The strongest roadmaps I've built combined quantitative data with qualitative insights, creating a complete picture of what users do and why they do it. Remember, the goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty but to reduce it enough to make informed decisions.
  8. Great Roadmaps are Continuous. Don't treat roadmap planning as an annual event. Your roadmap should be rolling, evolving, and regularly reviewed and updated. Think of it as a living document that gets sharper the closer you get to execution. The best roadmaps I've managed were reviewed every other week with the team and monthly with stakeholders, allowing us to incorporate new learnings and market changes without losing sight of our long-term objectives. This continuous approach keeps your roadmap relevant and credible.
  9. Great Roadmaps are Long-Term Focused. Maintain a 12-month rolling view while being more detailed in the near term: high precision for the current quarter, medium precision for the next quarter, and directional beyond that. This isn't about predicting the future - it's about providing enough context for strategic decisions while maintaining flexibility. This approach helps manage expectations with stakeholders who want certainty while giving teams the freedom to adapt as they learn more. The key is being explicit about the confidence level of each time horizon.
  10. Great Roadmaps are Open & Transparent. Make your roadmap accessible to anyone in the organization. This transparency isn't just about sharing information - it's about building trust and enabling better decisions across the company. When I started making roadmaps truly open, something magical happened: sales teams started planning better, marketing became more aligned, and engineering could make better technical decisions with the bigger picture in mind. Yes, some will misinterpret it as a commitment, but that's a coaching opportunity, not a reason for secrecy.
  11. Great Roadmaps are Run by Competent People. Ensure your roadmap is managed by people who understand the market, know the technology, can make strategic decisions, and communicate effectively. This might seem obvious, but I've seen too many roadmaps handed off to project managers or junior PMs who lack the context to make good decisions. The best roadmaps I've seen were led by product managers who could hold their own in technical discussions, understand business implications, and effectively communicate up and down the organization. They weren't necessarily experts in everything, but they knew enough to ask the right questions and facilitate good decisions.

These principles might sound obvious, but even experienced product leaders often miss these fundamentals. I certainly did early in my career. The key is that they work together to create roadmaps that focus on problems rather than solutions, embrace uncertainty while providing direction, and align teams around outcomes rather than outputs.

Looking back at all the roadmaps I've created, I see that the successful ones consistently followed these principles. The failures? They usually violated several of them. Of course, following these principles doesn't guarantee success, but ignoring them almost certainly guarantees failure.

Remember, a great roadmap isn't about predicting the future perfectly - it's about providing a framework for making better decisions today. In my next section, I'll walk you through a practical example of how to put these principles into action.

How to implement it step-by-step

  1. Add Product roadmap to your deck / :
  2. Communicate the start of work on the practice to the team.
  3. Assemble strike team to work on the practice.
  4. Define your , or at least work on: and
  5. Set Strategies and Metrics

    Define your key strategic initiatives that align with business goals and establish measurable metrics for each strategy. These strategies should directly support your overall product vision and have clear success criteria.

    Example #1:

    Strategy name:
    Personalization
    Goal:
    Enhance user engagement through tailored experiences
    Metrics:
    • Increase user session duration by 25%
    • Improve content engagement rate by 30%
    • Reduce bounce rate by 15%

    Example #2:

    Strategy name:
    Gamification
    Goal:
    Increase user retention and product stickiness
    Metrics:
    • Increase daily active users by 40%
    • Improve user retention rate by 25%
    • Achieve 50% completion rate for core features

  6. Add Features Per Strategy

    For each strategy, identify specific features that will help achieve your goals, making sure to consider technical requirements and dependencies. Include both user feedback and market demands in your feature selection process.

    Example:

    Personalization features
    • AI-powered content recommendations
      • Machine learning algorithm development
      • User behavior tracking system
      • Content tagging framework
    • Custom dashboards
      • Drag-and-drop widget system
      • User preference storage
      • Widget marketplace
    • Smart notifications
      • Time-zone based delivery
      • Behavior-based triggers
      • Notification preference center
    Gamification features

    ...

  7. Prioritize features

    Evaluate each feature by rating its Impact, Confidence, and Ease on a scale of 1-10, then calculate the ICE score (Impact × Confidence × Ease ÷ 10) to create a prioritized list. Use these scores to make data-driven decisions about feature priority.

    Feature Impact Easiness Confidence Score (I*C*E)
    Smart Notifications
    		 High (8/10) High (9/10) Mid (7/10) 8 * 9 * 7 = 504
    Custom Dashboards
    		 Mid (7/10) High (8/10) Mid (6/10) 7 * 8 * 6 = 336
    AI-powered Recommendations
    		 High (9/10) Mid (7/10) Low (4/10) 9 * 7 * 4 = 252
  8. Decide What to Do and When

    Take your prioritized features (but use your judgment, you should decide, not scores!) and organize them into time horizons (Now, Next, Later), considering both resources and dependencies.

    • Now should contain precise, well-defined items that are committed for the next quarter,
    • Next should include items that are planned but may need more discovery for the following 2-3 quarters,
    • Later should encompass strategic initiatives and ideas that need significant research or are dependent on earlier deliverables.

    Balance the need for quick wins with longer-term strategic investments.

    Example:

    Category This Quarter Next Quarter Later / Maybe
    Personalization
    Smart notifications
    AI-powered content recommendations
    Custom dashboards
    Gamification
    Achievement system
    Challenge framework
  9. Repeat

    Regularly review and adjust your roadmap based on actual results and new information, typically on a quarterly basis. Update your metrics, reprioritize features, and adjust timelines to keep the roadmap aligned with business goals and market needs.

    Here's some rhythm example:

    Example:

    Monthly Check-ins

    • Track metric progress
    • Adjust feature specifications
    • Update timeline estimates

    Quarterly Strategy Reviews

    • Evaluate strategy effectiveness
    • Update ICE scores
    • Reprioritize feature backlog
    • Adjust resource allocation

    Annual Planning

    • Review and update product vision
    • Set new strategic initiatives
    • Plan major feature releases
    • Adjust long-term roadmap

PS: If you need help with implementing the Product roadmap, contact me. I have 20+ years of commercial experience working with bigger and smaller companies, upgrading product, design, and engineering teams to the next level. I can also connect you with experts on this subject.

Product roadmap Template

Product roadmap Template

This template walks you through the process of creating the strategy and corresponding metrics, through generating features and prioritizing it in the simple Now, Next, Later roadmap.

Download links:

Common Anti-patterns

  1. The Feature Factory: Listing features without connecting them to outcomes
  2. The False Promise: Pretending you can predict exact delivery dates
  3. The Perfect Plan: Creating a beautiful roadmap that doesn't survive contact with reality
  4. The Kitchen Sink: Trying to make everyone happy by including everything
  5. The Time Trap: Spending more time maintaining the roadmap than talking to customers

Conclusion

A roadmap is just a tool. The real power behind lays in the conversations it enables and the decisions it drives. The best roadmap isn't the one that predicts the future perfectly—it's the one that helps your team make better decisions today.

I still get it wrong sometimes. But I've learned that being roughly right is better than being precisely wrong. Your roadmap should be a guide, not a guarantee. Use it to start conversations, not end them.

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Here are other practices related to Product roadmap:

  •

    Product strategy provides the logical sequence of big bets (projects, value streams) that will take you to Product Vision. Learn more

  • ICE prioritization is a framework for ranking ideas based on their Impact, Confidence, and Ease of implementation. Learn more

  • PRD (Product Requirements Document) is a detailed blueprint that defines a product's purpose, features, and success criteria to align stakeholders and guide development. Learn more

  • Empowered Autonomous Teams can decide what to build to solve they problem they're being assigned, without any excessive oversight. Learn more

  • Product goals provide targets on the list of metrics product team is asked to achieve. Learn more

Learn more

Here are some useful links if you want to learn more:

Hope that's useful!

Piotr Kacała