Roadmap is a tool for visualizing the company’s development strategy, project launch and product promotion stages. It is a document or a graphic file that describes the main stages necessary to achieve a goal.
Why you need a roadmap
A roadmap is used to coordinate work between departments, show investors the milestones and deadlines of tasks, and help team members better understand the process of achieving goals. It is also used by team leaders and CEOs, sales departments, and customer support teams.
Roadmap is created before the launch of a project to visualize the competitive development strategy, as well as after the launch, if there are dramatic changes in the work. Roadmaps are developed for a quarter, half a year and even a year. They include such information as goals and objectives, stages of work and their prioritization, and key deadlines.
Unlike a marketing plan, a roadmap displays long-term strategies and goals, rather than a detailed description of the work process with requirements for employees and deadlines for each task. A roadmap is a “living document” that can change, so you need to designate a person responsible for adjusting it.
Since a roadmap is necessary to harmonize work between all participants of the business process, it is important that it be understandable and accessible. That is why a roadmap is most often created in the form of a table, which makes it easy to scan the information regardless of the number of stages and complexity of the project. Next, you will learn what types of roadmap there are.
Types of roadmap
Roadmaps are categorized based on function. Familiarize yourself with their main types.
- Product roadmaps. These are strategies for developing a product or product line;
- Project. Designed to describe the main stages and timeframes of project development;
- Sectoral. Describes the schemes of development of industries and market segments;
- Corporate. Designed to describe the process of company development and achievement of long-term key objectives;
- Educational. These are plans for training and professional development of employees.
Roadmap goals
A roadmap does not tell you the solutions to tasks because it is not designed to track the work process at each step. It describes key business objectives or challenges. With the help of this strategic document, everyone involved in the business process will have a clear understanding of the direction of the company’s product. See what goals can be achieved with a roadmap.
- Improve communication. Roadmap create for mutual understanding between team members, departments, managers. With its help, it is easier to tell about the mission, strategy and deliver information about key milestones;
- Build a shared vision. Thanks to the roadmap, each team member can see where the project or product is going. This helps in developing a detailed work plan;
- Lead the discussion. The roadmap reflects the main stages of project or product development, which helps to eliminate misunderstandings among all participants in the process, as well as facilitate discussion of new ideas, vision changes and decision-making;
- Align the work. A roadmap makes it easier to understand the direction of development and discuss strategy, so it’s easier to synchronize work within the team, across departments, and other process participants.