Product Roadmap is a tool that many Product Managers use to communicate the direction of their product, usually with stakeholders and customers. A roadmap is often used in conjunction with a business case to validate the value proposition of your product or platform. To help you create your own Product Roadmap, we’ve collected some of the best-practice guidelines along with examples from companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Atlassian, and more.
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Keep It Simple
A good rule of thumb is to keep your Product Roadmap focused on 3-5 major initiatives per year (e.g. expand into China) plus 1-3 strategic initiatives for each fiscal quarter (e.g. launch new Ad platform). With these in mind, a one-page Product Roadmap is often a good way to present your product strategy. At Microsoft, the company sticks with a simple traffic light system.
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Prioritize Your Initiatives
Your Product Roadmap should outline what you plan to do and why each initiative matters. When prioritizing initiatives, look at the initiatives that will have the greatest impact on your organization – these are your key initiatives. In some cases, your key initiatives may align with the business unit or regional goals. If this is the case, make sure you communicate that to stakeholders. You will also want to consider which of these initiatives can move quickly and which require more time and investment upfront before delivering value out in the market. These types of projects will fall into different categories on your roadmap – make sure you communicate what type of project each is to avoid confusion.
In the example above, our team has mapped out a list of initiatives that we want to accomplish in the next 6 months. We have ranked these initiatives by their impact on achieving our key result areas and have categorized them as follows:
Critical initiatives which will require significant up-front investment but deliver a high level of business benefit over time Priority initiatives which are important to the business and have specific deliverables within a certain timeframe Key initiatives which support our mission and enable us to achieve future growth In order to ensure successful delivery for both Critical and Priority initiatives, we need internal stakeholders involved from the beginning so that we can plan together for success. This will help ensure that we understand the dependencies and can utilize each other’s strengths.
Critical initiatives: E-commerce Site Listings – We need to increase visibility across the industry and drive bookings onto our site. To do this, we plan to expand our online presence through B2B data feeds and directory listings for both hotels and vacation rentals. This will allow us to take advantage of the growing number of business travelers who rely on search engines before making an online booking decision. Data Quality Project – As part of our strategy to increase website organic traffic, we plan to improve both product and rate parity by establishing a consistent set of data quality metrics across all markets in which we operate including Canada. We already completed Phase 1 in 2014; Phase 2 is underway and is expected to be completed in Q3 2015 (See Section 7). Improved Customer Satisfaction – We plan to introduce new features to improve the guest experience, such as a concierge messaging service, which will allow guests and property managers/owners to communicate with each other directly via the website. These initiatives should enhance our user engagement and customer loyalty through improved product and personalization offerings.
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Improving Product Offerings
We plan to continue to improve our suite of products and enhance the pricing options they offer, including expanding product features that allow us to target new customer segments. For example:- We plan to extend our demand generation efforts by continuing to roll out new online advertising campaigns and enhancing our brand awareness through offline marketing. These initiatives are designed not only to attract more travelers but also higher value guests because they will provide better booking experiences for them, with easier access to customized offers and an enhanced user experience. – Our mobile apps have been downloaded more than 8 million times since their launch in September 2014, representing a 100% increase from July 2014 . In 2015, we plan on making significant enhancements to the apps to continue growing our user base.
We generate revenue from three sources:
(i) delivery of advertisements and other marketing services to customers,
(ii) commissions on transactions with travel suppliers, and
(iii) fees for additional travel services and customer support.
– We have been able to increase our top line by expanding our sales channels from traditional retail outlets to alternative distribution channels, such as online direct bookings and mobile devices. In 2015, we will continue to invest in our direct booking capabilities through offline advertising campaigns, which are designed not only to attract more travelers but also higher value guests because they will provide better booking experiences for them, with easier access to customized offers and an enhanced user experience.
– The changes in our Channel Development strategy in the past few years have yielded tangible results. Between 2009 and 2014, our booking mix by channel has shifted from traditional retail to online at an average annual growth rate of more than 20%. Specifically, in 2009, 73% of our gross bookings were through offline retail channels, while 27% were through direct channels. In 2014, these numbers had changed significantly with 50% of our gross bookings coming from direct sources and 50% coming from indirect sources.
Due to this shift, we also decided to move closer towards a 100% commission-based compensation model for travel agencies in most countries outside India where they are allowed by law.