Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age

by Roman Pichler

Capture Your Roadmap with the GO Template Getting the roadmap format right and expressing goals and benefits effectively can be tricky. To help you develop your product roadmap, I have created a goal-oriented roadmap template called the GO Product Roadmap. It is built on the idea that goals are more important than features, and it consists of five elements: date, name, goal, features, and metrics, as Figure 40 shows. FIGURE 40: The GO Product Roadmap Template Let’s take a look at the rows of the GO roadmap in Figure 40 from top to bottom. The first row captures the date or the time frame when a new product release should be available—for example, 1 March 2015, or first quarter 2015. The second row states the name of the release. Think of release names such as iOS9 or Windows 10, for instance. The third row is the most important part of the GO roadmap. As its name suggests, it states the goal of a release, the benefit it should provide, and the reason for creating it. Sample goals include acquiring users, improving the user experience, and removing technical debt. The fourth row lists the product’s features that are necessary to meet the goal. Derive the features from the goals and ensure that they help create the desired benefits. Focus on what really counts; limit yourself to five features per release, and keep the features coarse-grained. More details, including epics and user stories, are provided in your product backlog. Remember, the purpose of a release is to meet th...