Product and technology roadmap processes facilitate high-level collaboration, communication, and alignment between products, and platforms for "understanding interdependencies between teams and the larger business network" are synchronized across multiple time zones.
A product roadmap is an outline of upcoming product releases for a specific time period. The roadmap details the overall implementation of the product strategy.
A product roadmap includes the following:
Themes
Release timelines
Descriptions of the features that have been built.
The characteristics of the problems will solve them.
A product roadmap aligns your company's product vision with that of external stakeholders. Stakeholders are people who have an active interest in your company or product, including investors, prospectors, customers, internal teams, and boards of directors.
A product roadmap answers the following questions:
What will you do next?
What are the future capabilities of your products?
Which problems will you solve?
What features will be available in the next version?
Types of Product Roadmaps
History-Based Roadmap
A historically based product roadmap outlines future releases by date. It's difficult to maintain and doesn't account for planning changes that naturally occur in the business world.
Investors and potential clients prefer historically based roadmaps because they answer questions about when you will deliver.
Theme-Based Roadmap
A theme-based roadmap outlines the themes or goals of a product over a specific time period. Themes or goals are based on market problems you plan to solve. Themes tell your stakeholders which problems you will solve in which timeframe. Theme-based roadmaps tend to be published less frequently and have more general goals to be met.
Technology Roadmap
To launch a new product (or maintain an existing one), you may need to establish technical building blocks. Releases outlined in a technical roadmap may not produce customer-facing features, but they will provide the foundation for future development.