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8 Steps to Create a Success Path Roadmap

Learn how to build strategic roadmaps with steps and product-focused insights. Dive into timeline templates, examples, and master the art of planning.

Hadar Peretz

7 minute read

How to create a roadmap
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Short answer

8 Key Steps to Roadmapping

1. Define the Roadmap's Purpose and Scope
2. Conduct Market Research Thoroughly
3. Collaborate with Stakeholders for Buy-In
4. Establish Roadmap Themes and Goals
5. Rank Initiatives and Features
6. Draft Detailed Timelines and Landmarks
7. Analyze Dependencies and Potential Threats
8. Adopt Advanced Visualization Aids

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Ensure that each entry on the roadmap has a strategic rationale behind it

Why is every item on your roadmap crucial? Each one should be underpinned by a compelling strategic reason, emphasizing its role in achieving the broader goals of your project or organization.

Clear strategies guarantee alignment, purposeful actions, and a united vision, minimizing misused resources and misdirected endeavors.

With that foundation set, let's head to the building part now.

Getting Ready for Your Roadmap?

Before you start, it's vital to anchor your roadmap in a clear strategy. First, define your overarching objectives.
Then, align with stakeholders to ensure buy-in and consistency.

Don't forget to leverage past data for insights. This foundation ensures that your roadmap seamlessly aligns with business ambitions.

How to Build a Roadmap?

Building a roadmap embodies purposeful planning, breaking goals into achievable steps, fostering collaboration, and adapting to challenges.

It's about guiding progress with foresight and determination to make a roadmap toward success.

8 steps to build a roadmap:

1. Define the Roadmap's Purpose and Scope

Setting the direction for any project begins with a clear understanding.

Define roadmap's purpose and scope' empowers you to pinpoint your objectives and demarcate the boundaries, laying the foundation for a successful venture.

  • Articulate the Intent: Before diving into your roadmap, it's essential to gain clarity on its primary purpose.

  • Self-Reflection: Start by asking yourself the reason behind creating this roadmap. What motivated you to initiate this process?

  • List Possible Focus Areas: Draft a list of potential focal points, such as Product development, project mapping, strategic business expansion, launching a new initiative, and business process optimization.

  • Assess Relevance: For each focus area, weigh its relevance and importance to your current business or organizational objectives.

  • Consult Key Stakeholders: Engage primary stakeholders to gather their insights. They might offer a perspective or priority you hadn't considered.

  • Make a Decision: Based on your reflection, relevance assessment, and stakeholder feedback, determine the specific intention of your roadmap.

  • Document Your Intent: Clearly write down the chosen focus, ensuring it's easily understandable to anyone who views the roadmap. This will set a clear direction for subsequent steps.

  • Determine the Scope: Carve out the exact scope of your roadmap.

This involves highlighting particular goals, sub-goals, and smaller tasks, ensuring a streamlined direction and pinpointed focus. Remember, clarity here can significantly reduce future pivots.

2. Conduct Market Research

By conducting thorough market research, you gain a comprehensive view of the nuances, trends, and forces that are at play, which positions you ahead of the competition.

  • Amass Pertinent Data: Immerse yourself in comprehensive market research. Harnessing the right data aids informed decisions.

  • Identify Data Sources: For a solid roadmap, delve into industry reports, market surveys, customer feedback platforms, and competitor publications.

  • Track Market Trends: Stay updated with industry newsletters and magazines. Use tools like Google Trends and SEMrush to catch emerging market patterns.

  • Engage with Customers: Listen to your customers through surveys, focus groups, and feedback on social platforms. Analyze their behavior on your digital platforms.

  • Competitive Analysis: List competitors, evaluate their products, and understand their market positioning. Assess their customer feedback to identify potential opportunities.

  • Utilize Data Analytics Platforms: Harness tools like Google Analytics and Tableau for insights. CRM systems can provide historical data and customer trends.

  • Attend Industry Events: Join webinars, conferences, and trade shows for insights. Engage with peers to gather informal opinions.

  • Document and Organize: Use tools like spreadsheets for data organization and regularly update the information for relevance.

3. Collaborate with Stakeholders

Building a roadmap is a collective journey.

Collaborating with stakeholders for buy-in emphasizes the value of unity, shared vision, and ensuring every voice shapes the path forward.

Engage Stakeholders Actively: Stakeholders, whether internal or external, play an integral role in the success of any roadmap.

Involving stakeholders actively ensures the roadmap is built with their perspectives, concerns, and feedback in mind.

Here's how to foster this engagement effectively:

Identify Key Stakeholders:

  • External Outreach: Determine who within the organization has a vested interest in the roadmap's outcome. This might include department heads, team leads, and even specific team members depending on the project's scope.

  • Internal Mapping: Recognize crucial external stakeholders. Are they investors? Partners? Clients? Identifying them early on ensures their concerns are addressed proactively.


Facilitate Open Dialogues:

  • Kick-off Meetings: Start with an initial gathering to introduce the roadmap's intent, gather preliminary feedback, and set expectations.

  • Feedback Forums: Regularly schedule sessions where stakeholders can voice opinions, concerns, and suggestions. This iterative feedback ensures the roadmap remains relevant and aligned.


Leverage Collaboration Tools:

  • Digital Platforms: Utilize platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Asana to maintain open lines of communication.

  • Feedback Collection: Tools such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey can be instrumental in gathering structured feedback at various roadmap stages.

Provide Transparent Updates:

  • Progress Reports: Periodically share detailed reports showcasing the roadmap's progress, accomplished milestones, and upcoming objectives.

  • Setback Communication: In the event of any hiccups or roadblocks, be upfront. Share the challenges faced and the strategies in place to address them. This transparency builds trust.

Empower Stakeholder Participation:

  • Task Involvement: Where applicable, involve stakeholders in specific roadmap tasks.

  • Decision-making Collaborations: For pivotal decisions, consider collaborative approaches. Workshops or brainstorming sessions can tap into collective wisdom, ensuring the best path forward.

Establish Communication Channels:

  • Open and maintain continuous communication channels: Ensuring stakeholders' sustained commitment and validation.

4. Establish Themes and Goals

Setting the stage for success, establishing roadmap themes and goals directs focus, aligning every step with the overarching vision and specific targets.

  • Break Down the Roadmap: A well-organized roadmap is always more effective. Segment it into coherent themes or sectors that mirror your larger, overarching objectives.

  • Formulate Specific Objectives: Planning process by meticulously outlining S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) objectives.

These serve as the cornerstone for each phase, providing clear milestones to monitor and assess the real-time efficacy of your roadmap.

5. Rank Initiatives and Features

Prioritizing with precision, ranking initiatives, and features ensures that pivotal steps lead the journey, maximizing impact and value.

  • Deploy Prioritizing Tools: Tools such as the MoSCoW method can be invaluable. Use them to align initiatives with stakeholder interests, strategic intents, and market viability.

  • Balance Task Lists: With a variety of tasks at hand, it’s crucial to harmonize immediate actionable items alongside the broader, long-term vision to ensure a steady pace.

6. Draft Detailed Timeline

Charting the journey, and drafting detailed timelines and landmarks meticulously map out the progression, providing clarity at every turn.

10 elements that make up a timeline:

  1. Determine Start and Finish: Mark the project's beginning and anticipated end, allowing for adjustments.

  2. Outline Major Segments: Break the roadmap into stages, with clear objectives for each.

  3. Position Milestones: Highlight key achievements as progress benchmarks.

  4. Assign Task Duration: Set timeframes for phases, including buffers for changes.

  5. Recognize Dependencies: Understand task interconnections and order them logically.

  6. Delegate Tasks: Assign specific tasks to individuals or teams, ensuring clarity and timely completion.

  7. Schedule Check-ins: Regularly review progress and adjust based on feedback and challenges.

  8. Engage Stakeholders: Make the timeline accessible, promoting transparency and collaboration.

  9. Stay Adaptable: Be open to revisions, aligning with evolving objectives and keeping stakeholders informed.

  10. Visual Representation: Use tools for clear and intuitive layout presentations.

Here's a great example of a multimedia presentation deck by one of our clients:

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7. Analyze Dependencies and Threats

Avoiding potential pitfalls and ensuring a smoother journey by identifying and avoiding potential pitfalls.

  • Chart Task Interconnections: Identify the interdependencies of tasks to anticipate possible overlaps or challenges, ensuring smoother transitions and reduced roadblocks.

  • Risk Management: Spot potential challenges early, evaluate their implications, and strategize preemptively. A robust risk management plan is key to sidestepping foreseeable issues.

8. Adopt Advanced Visualization Aids

Elevate your roadmap's clarity and impact by utilizing cutting-edge visualization tools, ensuring stakeholders grasp complexities with ease.

  • Utilize Best Tools: Consider options from leading data visualization tools to amplify and clarify your roadmap's display.

  • Embrace Flexibility: Opt for tools and methods that are adaptable and provide real-time updates, ensuring stakeholders always have the latest insights.

5 Main Types of Roadmap

Roadmaps are pivotal tools, providing clarity and direction in complex projects.

As we delve into the five main types, we'll uncover their distinct purposes, helping you choose the right one to align with your business objectives and stakeholder expectations.

1) Product Roadmap

Central to product managers, this highlights the vision, strategy, and progression of a product over time. It addresses features, updates, and major milestones, ensuring alignment with both business objectives and user needs. The focus is often on product evolution and prioritized features.

2) Technology/IT Roadmap

This is tailored for IT departments, highlighting technological advancements and infrastructural changes. It plots out system upgrades, new software adoption, and other technological initiatives.

3) Project Roadmap

A high-level overview of a project’s objectives, milestones, and deliverables. Unlike detailed project plans, these roadmaps communicate broad strokes to provide clarity about a project's direction.

4) Business Roadmap

A strategic tool that offers a bird's-eye view of the company’s goals and strategic initiatives. It’s less about specifics and more about showcasing the broader vision and direction.

5) Marketing Roadmap

This lays out the marketing strategy over time, capturing campaigns, events, content schedules, and key performance indicators. It's vital for aligning marketing efforts with overall business goals.

Take a look at our Interactive roadmap templates for clear investor & stakeholder presentations:

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Creative project roadmap
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IT project roadmap
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Project management roadmap
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General project roadmap
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6 Tools for Building a Roadmap

1. Trello: A visual board for organizing tasks and milestones.
2. Asana: Collaborative planning with tasks, timelines, and dependencies.
3. Aha!: Purpose-built for creating product roadmaps with feature prioritization.
4. Roadmunk: Offers visual roadmap templates with easy drag-and-drop features.
5. Microsoft Project: Comprehensive project management with detailed timeline views.
6. Storydoc: Transform traditional presentations into engaging, interactive sales narratives for roadmapping.

Hadar Peretz

I am a Marketing Specialist at Storydoc, I research, analyze and write on our core topics of business presentations, sales, and fundraising. I love talking to clients about their successes and failures so I can get a rounded understanding of their world.

Table of contents
Key steps to roadmapping Getting ready for your roadmap? How to build a roadmap? Types of roadmap Roadmap templates Tools for building a roadmap
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