I think there’s a better alternative to the product roadmap slide . 

Now don’t worry, I’m still going to give you all the insights you need to know about the product roadmap slide – there’s even a template or two if you really want to make one – but I am also going to make the case for something wayyy better: The flyover method. 

As the inventor of the best product roadmap format – Now-Next-Later –  I know a thing or two about product roadmaps. It’s kind of my jam. if you can’t trust me then honestly I don’t know who you can.

Over the years I’ve talked to thousands of Product Managers who struggle with the product roadmap slide, be that not understanding what it’s for, or struggling with the demand making one brings. 

Here’s my advice on the product roadmap slide, what it’s for, as well as a template to help you achieve the same effect more easily.

What is a product roadmap slide?

A product roadmap slide is a one-page presentation slide that shows off your roadmap and strategy. It’s a top-level visual of your roadmap that’s stripped of extra detail so that various stakeholders can get the core idea without being bogged down by nuance they might not care about. 

It’s the spark notes of your roadmap. The condensed TL;DR version including high-level data like your Objectives and the initiatives  

What’s the point of a product roadmap slide? 

The aim of a product roadmap slide is to make sure that all your cross-functional teams and external stakeholders have a clear idea of what’s going on. It’s a way to communicate and collaborate and remove the shroud of shadow and mystery that can fall over the Product Team if it’s not shared. 

Of course, when making a product roadmap slide, you don’t want to overshare. Take a look at your current roadmap. It may be a little cluttered. That extra detail is great for you, but may not be necessary for whoever you’re presenting the slide for. You’re trying to show your strategy in a clear and concise way that shows what work is coming up in a way that isn’t too granular. 

Why is that simplicity important? Because you need to make sure that the conversation doesn’t get too focused on the outcomes. The detail will derail your ability to present your strategy. 

A roadmap slide comes into its own when you’re trying to convey the big picture – it’s a visual aid that shows your product strategy, how it fits with business goals, and how you aim to deliver against those strategic objectives. It’s a way to create a dialouge without giving away things you aren’t ready to share or getting bogged down in specifics.

Who is a product roadmap slide for?

A product roadmap slide can be for ANYONE. Any single type of stakeholder can benefit from getting a view of your roadmap through a product roadmap slide. They can be both external or internal:

• C-Suite Executives – They want to see how your roadmap aligns with business goals, growth strategies, and long-term vision.
• Sales – They need insight into upcoming features and improvements to help shape their pitches and set customer expectations.
• Product Marketing – They rely on roadmap updates to plan campaigns, content, and product launches effectively.
• Customer Success – They use the roadmap to anticipate customer needs, manage expectations, and provide proactive support.
• Product Developers – They benefit from understanding what’s coming next and how their work fits into product development.
• Customers – They want to know when they can expect new product features, improvements, and bug fixes that enhance their experience.

Now here’s something important. Ideally, you’re not making a single product roadmap slide to be used for all these stakeholders. Instead, the aim should be to make a customized product roadmap slide for each individual type of stakeholder. 

This is because each stakeholder is looking to learn different things. They care about different aspects. A Product roadmap slide for your financial and product-led growth focused C-Suite stakeholders should include different things that a product roadmap slide for your Customer Success Team.

As a product roadmap slide is something that you make manually, crafting one for each stakeholder at a regular cadence is a lot of work. It’s time-consuming. 

Is there a better way? There sure is.

Do you actually need to create a product roadmap slide? 

In this day and age, creating a single, one-slide product roadmap presentation is a bit outdated, and it doesn’t align well with other principles of creating a good product roadmap. 

For starters, a roadmap presentation slide is static, a single snapshot in time that gets outdated quickly. If your stakeholders only have this small window into your roadmap, they’re not getting a full, consistent picture of what’s going on. This can quickly lead to misalignment if you’re not updating them often enough.

Plus, you need to make multiple versions of your product roadmap slide. This is time-consuming and is taking you away from he strategic part of your work – the meat and bones of Product Management. So what do you do now?

Well, If I’m going to be honest with you all, I don’t think you need to create a product roadmap slide at all – in fact, I think it’s best if you don’t. 

Instead, I think it’s better to show a high-level view of your product roadmap. I think you need to give stakeholders access to a dynamic, modified version of your roadmap. To do that, let’s explain The Flyover Method . 

What is the flyover method? 

Instead of creating a product roadmap slide, I suggest giving stakeholders a public product roadmap. The flyover method is our funky, catchy name for giving a stakeholder access to this public roadmap view. It provides a framework for how to create it that makes sure we’re doing it right and achieving the main aims of a product roadmap slide. 

“Can I have a look at the product roadmap, please?”
“Sure, we’ll give you a flyover.”

We call it the flyover because it neatly describes the core characteristics of what makes a good public product roadmap. A flyover is a low flight over a certain area to record details about it. Think FBI or MI5 reconnaissance missions. They get a bird’s eye view of the area: exactly what you want to do when sharing a public product roadmap. 

You don’t want to get too granular, instead the aim is to focus on top-level details so that they get the gist. By using the flyover method, you’re creating a public roadmap that strips back the specific details, such as Ideas and Target Dates.You don’t have to provide a deep dive into everything, just focus on the core aims in each time horizon. 

Another key aspect of creating a public product roadmap with the flyover method is that it’s dynamic. Instead of a product roadmap slide that’s rigid and set in stone like it’s just finished a staring contest with Medusa, it changes in real-time. This means that every time a stakeholder accesses their public product roadmap link, they see the most up-to-date version instead of a static document that was created a week ago. 

That’s where flyover fits again, as you’re moving over the roadmap, not just hovering in one single place or moment in time. 

How to make a public product roadmap with the flyover method

So how do you actually make a public roadmap that incorporates the ideas of the flyover method? Well before you do anything, you need to answer a few questions: 

Who is your audience? 

Think about who you’re creating the public roadmap for. Think about what they care about and what they want to see. For example, C-Suite stakeholders might be more curious about how your work aligns with long-term goals and drives growth. This dictates that you should include your product vision and strategic plans in your public roadmap, and the objectives your initiatives link to, but you can leave out actual Ideas and prioritzation model scores. 

Internal teams like Customer Support might value seeing the feedback and ideas from customers on their public roadmap view, while Sales might be keen to see User Personas and User Stories – which you can add on ProdPad – to help them focus their messaging. 

Understanding who you’re creating this public roadmap for will dictate what is included.

How transparent should you be?

Before you put together your public roadmap, you need to decide just how much you want to share. Transparency is great for building trust with customers and stakeholders, but there’s a fine line between being open and oversharing.

For example, sharing high-level themes and priorities helps set expectations without locking you into specific deadlines. On the other hand, if you include too much detail – like every feature in progress or precise release dates – you risk disappointing customers when things shift (because they will shift).

Think about what level of transparency aligns with your company’s communication style and risk tolerance. Some teams keep things broad and strategic, while others are happy to go deep into specifics. Striking the right balance ensures your roadmap is useful without becoming a source of frustration.

Once you know these things, you’re in a better position to create your public roadmap.  

In ProdPad, you can easily share public roadmaps and configure exactly what you want to share by toggling on and off different initiatives, time horizon columns, and much more. 

Gee, that’s a lot easier than making a manual product roadmap slide.

Once you’re happy, generate a secure link to the roadmap and share it with who you want to give this view. Crucially the stakeholders who get their hands on the public view will NOT be able to make any changes to the roadmap – just like how a pilot in a flyover can’t alter or change the landscape they’re viewing in any way. 

Start a free trial with ProdPad to start making public product roadmaps with the flyover method, and kiss the product roadmap slide goodbye.

ProdPad’s public roadmap

There’s a saying that goes something like, don’t copy what I say, copy I what I do. Well, with ProdPad you can do both. 

We have and always will have a public version of our product roadmap available for anyone to vist and check out, so that you can see what we’re working on and how the product is improving. It’s a great resource for users and potential customers to check out, but it’s also a great example of what a public product roadmap should look like. 

Here’s a snapshot:

A key take away is that there are no timelines, just the bare-bones headline ideas and key milestones – and not too many of them – and the goal or goals that they are intended to achieve. The headlines are backed up with a sentence or two that gives a little more detail about the initiative so that the reader can see how our activity links to our strategy. It’s easy to take in and understand, which is the main goal of a public product roadmap and product roadmap slide. 

We also have a feedback widget enabled on the page because we want to hear from our customers: 

Remember that your roadmap is a prototype for your strategy, your version of the strategy based on what you know today. Use the roadmap to facilitate dialogue with external stakeholders who may have a wider view of the world and whose views can be used to inform your strategy.

Product roadmap slide vs the flyover method

Now, I’ve not been subtle about my thoughts about what method is better when sharing an overview of your product roadmap. But, to really make it clear,  let’s compare these options side-by-side.

Product roadmap slide – pros and cons 

It’s available on and offline
You’re in complete control of what you put on the slide
It exists within a presentation and can be quickly added to other people’s slide deck 

It’s manual – you have to create the slide by hand every time
It’s static and can become outdated really quickly
A slide is set at a restrictive 16:9 size ratio – good luck fitting everything on there
You have to make multiple versions for different audiences
Cumbersome file sizes – you can really clog up a company’s server
Once shared people can add whatever they want and mess it all up

Public roadmap (the flyover) – pros and cons

It’s available on and offline (just like the product roadmap slide)
You’re in complete control of what you put on it (again, just like the product roadmap slide)
It’s quick and easy to make 
You can make multiple versions for different stakeholders effortlessly
The public roadmap is always up-to-date
There’s no edit access available so your roadmap can’t be ruined

Um, I don’t know, it might make people envious of how good you are at your job?

Seriously, when comparing a product roadmap slide with a public roadmap, there’s no competition.

Public Product roadmap templates 

If you want to check out some examples of killer public product roadmaps, we’ve got plenty of them chilling in our interactive sandbox environment. Our sandbox is a free-to-access version of ProdPad, where you can explore its full functionality and learn how our Now-Next-Later roadmap works. 

We’ve got a customizable template and other roadmap examples for you to explore, ranging from startup product roadmaps to roadmaps for various types of product lines. 

Start using our product roadmap template to easily create a public view and remove the need to create manual, time-consuming product roadmap slides. Give your stakeholders the full picture by adopting the flyover method.

The post Product Roadmap Slide Template – The Flyover Method appeared first on ProdPad.

As the authority voice on product roadmaps, we thought it was only right to clearly list out what you need to do within your roadmap to make it as effective as possible and work not just for you, but all your important stakeholders. 

Product roadmaps are your blueprint – your treasure map to a fantastic product – so they’re pretty important to get right. Use this list of best practices to help you get there. 

Now, as useful as it can be to be told all the things you should be doing, I think it’s also important to be aware of the roadmapping practices you need to avoid. Because even if you’re doing everything else right, adopting a single one of the bad practices can ruin all your hard work.

That’s why this list is so effective, and why it has the jump over any other product roadmap best practices article. We’ll go over all the dos – and crucially, – all the don’ts to ensure you’re managing your roadmap in the best way possible. 

Think of this as your list of things to avoid, sprinkled in with the steps you should be taking every time you use your product roadmap.

11 product roadmap best practices to transform your roadmap

Here’s our list of product roadmap best practices. The things you should be doing that can sometimes be overlooked or forgotten, and some of the faux pas that many smart, well-intentioned Product Managers make with their roadmaps. 

Follow this list, and you’re guaranteed to have an excellent product roadmap.

Product roadmap best practice 1: Don’t put a timeline on a product roadmap

Focusing your roadmap around dates is seriously a bad move. We’ll be real, we hate dates, and we hate timeline roadmaps. The reason for that is because having dates forces you to plan too far in advance. This makes you rigid and wedded to a visual timeline that might not play out how you thought, making it impossible to iterate, adapt, and be flexible in any way. 

We’re also not keen on the mindset that dates on your roadmap can creater. If you’re constantly working to a deadline, that can make you more output-focused than outcome-focused. 

“Just get the release out so that we make the deadline”

That’s not indicative of a good product. 

Instead, we suggest using loose time horizons over hard release dates and deadlines. This organizes work by what needs to be done now, what you’re working on next, and what demands attention later.

If timelines have been embedded in your roadmap process till now, we’ve got a whole article to help you remove the shackles of time and adopt an agile roadmap instead:

Timelines and strict time frames should be a thing of the past. Try Now-Next-Later instead, and you’ll:

• Keep your roadmap flexible and adaptable to change
• Foster an agile team that can handle change
• Reflect different levels of certainty across your plans
• Save time by focusing on priorities instead of arbitrary deadlines
• Align work more clearly with strategic objectives
• Make more informed, outcome-driven product decisions

Product roadmap best practice 2: Do have a defined product vision

A defined product vision is essential for creating a product roadmap that delivers long-term value. It acts as a guiding star, ensuring that every product development decision is aligned with broader business goals. Without a clear vision, internal teams may find themselves working on features that don’t contribute to the bigger picture or fail to meet customer needs. 

The product vision informs the prioritization process, providing a framework for deciding which features, enhancements, and fixes will drive the most impact.

When building your roadmap, ensure that each milestone or release directly supports your product vision. This single source of truth guides everything you do. 

It’s not just about checking off tasks; it’s about making deliberate progress toward fulfilling your company’s mission. This clarity empowers cross-functional teams to work cohesively towards a common goal, fostering collaboration across Design, Engineering, and Product Marketing. In the absence of a product vision, it becomes easy to lose sight of strategic objectives, causing misalignment and inefficiency.

Product roadmap best practice 3: Don’t be too customer-driven

Listening to your target audience is a vital part of Product Management – but there’s a fine line between being customer-informed and being customer-led. If you let customer demands drive your roadmap, you risk turning it into a never-ending list of feature requests. Instead of focusing on strategic growth, your team gets stuck reacting to the loudest voices, constantly iterating on small tweaks rather than solving bigger, high-impact problems.

And who are you really listening to? The most vocal customers aren’t necessarily the ones representing your broader market. Prioritizing based on whoever shouts the loudest can skew your roadmap toward short-term fixes rather than long-term value.

The best approach? Take user feedback as valuable input, but not the sole driver of decision-making. Step back, analyze data, and validate ideas against your product vision and business goals. The right roadmap isn’t just about what customers say they want, it’s about solving the problems they haven’t even articulated yet, in ways that help your product and company grow.

Product roadmap best practice 4: Do make your product roadmap executive-friendly

When presenting your product roadmap to executives, the key is clarity and focus on strategic objectives. Executives typically aren’t interested in the nitty-gritty of each feature or task; instead, they want to understand the overarching vision and how it aligns with business goals. By distilling the roadmap into high-level categories – such as key initiatives, major releases, or milestones – you allow them to quickly grasp the direction of the product and how it fits within broader company priorities.

This is all about speaking the language of your stakeholders and potentially having different versions of your roadmap to suit their needs.

Avoid drowning them in details like user stories or product backlog items; those can come later when you’re working with the Product Team. instead, focus on major themes and top-level insight. By showcasing broader themes, you also help executives evaluate potential resource allocation and make prioritization decisions.

The goal is to keep them engaged without overwhelming them, offering a clear picture of where the product is headed and how it impacts the organization’s strategy.

Product roadmap best practice 5: Don’t  be too data-driven

We’ve told you not to be too customer-focused with your roadmap, but you also don’t want to swing to the other side of the pendulum and be too data-driven. 

Data-driven Product Management has its place, but trusting the data too much and banking solely on quantitative data (numbers and statistics) can lead you astray. 

Instead, when validating and creating your roadmap, you do need some qualitative input, from surveys interviews, and more. 

One thing I really want to warn you about regarding product roadmaps is excessive A/B testing. Now A/B testing has it’s place, but testing every decision often means you lack conviction, leading to wasted resources building multiple versions of the same thing. 

Worse, many A/B tests don’t yield statistically significant results – especially for smaller startups without a massive customer base. While large companies can afford to run endless experiments, startups need to move fast and make bold decisions rather than getting stuck in analysis paralysis.

Being too heavily influenced by data is a great way to learn that every idea is a bad one. To create successful product roadmaps, you need to balance the data with customer insight and other factors to find sensible solutions to prioritize and put onto your product roadmap.

Product roadmap best practice 6: Do link every Initiative to an objective

One of the most effective ways to ensure that your product roadmap stays aligned with business goals is to link every initiative directly to an overarching objective. This practice creates clarity, driving focus and purpose for each project or feature in the pipeline. By making sure that the initiative you add links to a specific strategic goal, you establish a measurable reason for its existence, helping stakeholders understand how each piece fits into the bigger picture.

When planning your roadmap, be sure that every initiative, whether it’s a new feature, update, or enhancement, has a clear and traceable objective tied to it. This could be improving user retention, driving revenue growth, or increasing user engagement. Not only does this ensure accountability, but it also helps in prioritizing initiatives based on how directly they contribute to product goals.

Additionally, when you update or modify your roadmap, linking initiatives to product objectives allows you to assess whether the shift still aligns with the company’s larger vision. This practice also helps during communication with stakeholders, offering a straightforward explanation of why a particular initiative is there in the first place.

To make things even clearer, we’ve got one of the best product roadmap templates that you can access for free to help you see how easy it is to follow this best practice and link Initiatives to Objectives. Our product roadmap template is dynamic and can be found in our Sandbox. Check it out.

Product roadmap best practice 7: Don’t prioritize at the idea level

Prioritizing individual ideas is like trying to clear a landslide by picking up pebbles one by one instead of moving the big boulders. It’s too granular, too reactive, and keeps you focused on what you can build rather than the impact you can create.

Instead of ranking ideas or product features in isolation, zoom out and think about the bigger problems you’re solving for your customers. The best roadmaps aren’t just a list of things to make – they’re a strategy for achieving meaningful outcomes.

This is why tying your roadmap to objectives, user personas, and pain points is so powerful. When you prioritize based on real problems and desired outcomes, you ensure that everything you build moves the needle in a meaningful way—rather than just adding more to your backlog.

With the Now-Next-Later approach, you use a two-step hierarchy when adding Ideas and Initiatives to the board. you first add Initiatives to your roadmap, the high-level problems you want to solve, such as: 

“Reduce friction by making the signup process easier” 

From this overarching initiative focused on a single problem, you can then prioritize it against all your other problems. Discover which problems have the biggest impact when solved. 

There are a million and one prioritization frameworks you can use to work this out, but our favorites can be found in the ebook below. 

Once you have your high-level Initiatives sorted, you can then add Ideas to them that are tangible actions to achieve that solution.

Product roadmap best practice 8: Do update the roadmap regularly

A product roadmap is a living document, not a one-time project. It needs to evolve alongside shifts in the product, market, and broader company goals. Regular updates are essential for ensuring that the roadmap reflects the latest insights and feedback from both customers and stakeholders. By setting a consistent review and update cadence – whether weekly or monthly – you create a dynamic framework that keeps the Product Team aligned and prepared for changes.

Updating the internal roadmap regularly also allows the team to stay agile, quickly adjusting to market shifts or new priorities. It provides clarity and focus, ensuring that the roadmap doesn’t become outdated or irrelevant. A stale roadmap, on the other hand, can lead to misalignment within the team, missed opportunities, or resources being allocated to features or initiatives that no longer serve a purpose.

Incorporating regular reviews and updates ensures the roadmap remains a practical, actionable guide that drives product success and aligns with the ever-evolving landscape.

Product roadmap best practice 9: Don’t treat the roadmap as a list of features

One thing to remember is that a roadmap is not a product backlog. It’s not a list of features or tasks, or work to be done, it’s more an exploration of the things you can do to improve your product. It’s an opportunity log. 

If you treat your roadmap like a list of features, you risk becoming a feature factory – pushing out updates without considering whether they truly move the needle. Product Teams aren’t here to keep the Development Team busy; they’re here to solve real customer and business problems.

If all you think of is features, you could be missing out on easy wins. Sometimes the work that can improve your product is refining your messaging, tweaking your pricing model, or improving the customer experience.

By thinking beyond features and collaborating across internal teams, you open up more creative and effective solutions. A great roadmap is about impact, not just output. When you focus on strategy rather than a to-do list of features, you ensure that every move you make aligns with your broader business goals.

Product roadmap best practice 10: Do limit edit access to the roadmap

A product roadmap is a strategic document that guides the direction of your product’s development. If too many people have editing access, it can quickly spiral into chaos, with constant changes, conflicting priorities, and a lack of clarity. This dilution of control can lead to confusion and disrupt alignment across teams. To prevent this, it’s vital to limit the number of individuals who can make changes.

The key is to grant editing privileges only to those with the authority and expertise to make high-level decisions. These are typically Product Managers, Product Owners, senior leadership, or key stakeholders. This ensures that the roadmap stays focused, consistent, and in line with broader organizational goals. Collaboration can still thrive with input from your Marketing, Customer Success, and Development Team, but they should have access to review, comment, and provide feedback, not alter the plan itself.

By restricting edit access, you maintain control over the roadmap’s integrity, making it a reliable tool for guiding product development and strategic alignment. This keeps your product strategy on track and aligned with both short-term goals and long-term vision.

Product roadmap best practice 11: Don’t keep the roadmap hidden

Just because you don’t want everyone making sweeping changes to the product roadmap doesn’t mean you should keep it to yourself. Too often, Product Owners and Product Teams create a roadmap and keep it locked away, assuming it’s strictly internal or that only one version should exist. In reality, you can (and should) tailor different versions for different audiences.

Give EVERYONE working on your product a window into your roadmap. You can do this by having different versions or views.

Your internal roadmap is the most detailed, outlining not just the problems you’re solving but also how and why. This version keeps internal stakeholders aligned on priorities and execution.

An executive roadmap, on the other hand, should cut out the granular details. Executive stakeholders don’t need (or want) to sift through the nitty-gritty – they need a high-level view that ties into business strategy.

For customers and external stakeholders, a roadmap should be high-level, visually appealing, easy to understand, focused on key value propositions, and clearly communicate upcoming features and development timelines, while avoiding overly technical details, with a focus on the benefits customers will see from future updates. If customers don’t care about certain roadmap items, that’s a clear signal those areas might not be as urgent as you thought.

The perfect product roadmap 

To create the perfect product roadmap, you need practice, and you need to get into the weeds. Of course, product roadmap best practices can help you a lot, but specific training and education walking you through the process is going to help even more. 

Well, if you’re looking for education, you’re in luck. We’ve got a complete, free-to-access course on product roadmapping, helping you to brush up on your skills and perfect your roadmapping process, you can access it below.

Plus, when you roadmap with ProdPad, we have best practices built in. By making certain tasks compulsory and by adding in prompts and our AI support, we give you all the tools to create a product roadmap that can really help you make sense of your priorities. 

Give ProdPad a go by accessing our interactive sandbox environment and try out our many templates to see how an agile product roadmap works in action. 

The post Product Roadmap Best Practices – 11 Do’s & Don’t to Instantly Improve Your Roadmap appeared first on ProdPad.

No matter if you’re mapping out and communicating a product roadmap for the first time, are unhappy with your current product roadmap format, and want to try something new, or are just sense-checking your approach, we’ve got the product roadmap template to help you. 

Of course, there are a lot of product roadmap templates out there, varying widely from basic slide deck templates to fully interactive and detailed templates that help you fully understand best practices. Makes you wonder if you’re using the right one? 

Not all of these roadmaps are going to be super helpful. Some can be nothing more than an outline to fill in, but others are more interactive and allow you to fully understand what you need to do to create a successful product roadmap. 

If you’re looking for the latter, you’ve come to the right place. 

At ProdPad, we have categorically the best product roadmap template available. Now I’m not just saying that through obligation, we genuinely believe our roadmap template is the most useful. If you hear us out as we explain why, we’re sure by the end of it you’re going to agree. 

In this article, we’re going to walk you through the product roadmap template, giving you reasons why you need to use one, why ours is the best choice, and how to use it.

Believe us already? Dive straight into our dynamic, drag-and-drop product roadmap template.

What is a Product Roadmap template? 

A product roadmap template is more than just a fill-in-the-blanks document – it’s a structured framework that helps you plan, communicate, and evolve your product strategy. It outlines key aspects of your chosen roadmap format to help you use it effectively. 

Essentially, a great product roadmap template functions as a how-to guide on using a roadmap properly.

Now most roadmap templates come in a downloadable format, ready to be filled in like you would a workbook at school. We’re not throwing shade at these types of templates. We’re all for a good downloadable resources and have plenty ourselves that help with every aspect of Product Management.

But when it comes to product roadmaps, a static document doesn’t go far enough. Product roadmaps are living, breathing tools, unlike other forms of product documentation. They’re dynamic and evolve constantly alongside your product. If your roadmap is dynamic, your product roadmap template should be too.

That’s exactly what our product roadmap template is. It’s an interactive tool designed to help you fully grasp – and actually use – your roadmap in the way it’s intended. 

Why use a Product Roadmap template? 

Product roadmaps are a huge part of a Product Manager’s day in the life, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to use. Roadmaps can be complicated, especially if you’re working with an unfamiliar format. Given how much attention they demand, it makes sense to use a template as a structured way to navigate and master them.

Now there are a lot of different product roadmap formats around, so many that we’ve covered them in their own neat article:

With how different they are, it can be jarring to switch from one type to another. Each roadmap type has a learning curve. A roadmap template acts as a blueprint, helping you quickly adapt to and fully engage with a new format.

If you’re using a quality product roadmap template complete with guidance notes and example content, they can demonstrate the gold standard of what that roadmap should look like. They ensure you adopt Product Management best practices, avoid common mistakes, and don’t make any omissions, all to help you create a roadmap that’s clear, effective, and actionable.

Plus, if you get the whole Product Function in your organization to follow the same product roadmap template, you can foster alignment and standardization across your team. With everyone using the roadmap in the same way, this consistency prevents any collaboration issues, making you more effective and synced up. 

If you’re looking to explore a new type of product roadmap – say, moving from a timeline roadmap to Now-Next-Later – a template makes that transition seamless. But why would you want to do that?

I’m glad you asked… 

What is the best product roadmap template to use? 

We’ve said it from the start, our product roadmap template is the best. But why? Well, for starters, our template is focused on the most popular, and most effective, roadmap format there is: Now-Next-Later. 
Now-Next-Later is an agile product roadmap format, meaning that it’s focused on outcomes, not outputs, and allows for adaptability. It does away with strict timelines and deadlines, instead giving you the flexibility to plan your work within broader time horizons, focused on the outcomes you want to drive, not the features you want to deliver. You break your Initiatives into stuff that needs to be done now, things you’re working on next, and priorities for later. Check it out:

Here’s why Now-Next-Later is categorically the best: 

• Simple to understand: A Now-Next-Later roadmap is easy to understand, reducing the potential for confusion or misinterpretation. This makes it a great way to communicate your product strategy and direction, especially with stakeholders or team members who may not be involved in the day-to-day Product Management process.
• Customer-focused: The emphasis on ‘problems to solve’ ensures your product delivers maximum value for your customers, making it a more successful product.
• Happy, empowered teams: By allowing scope for discovery and experimentation within each roadmap item, the team has more autonomy to find the best solutions, making their day jobs more interesting! This, along with less deadline pressure, makes for a happy, productive team.
• Efficient and time-saving: The Now-Next-Later time horizons help Product Teams avoid wasting time planning out detailed schedules that are too far in the future to be accurate, only to have to rework them when deadlines aren’t met or priorities change.
• Strategically aligned: Everything on a Now-Next-Later is linked to a strategic objective, ensuring you are prioritizing based on what will create the most business value. It’s an easy way to align a product roadmap with what is most important to the organization.
• Faster delivery: Because Now-Next-Later does not rely on exact deadlines for its structure, teams aren’t asked to plan schedules ahead of time and commit to exact dates. This means no one is baking in buffer time and things get delivered faster.

Now we know that we’re not the only Belle in this ball. There are a lot of roadmap templates out there, with many others also focusing on Now-Next-Later. But let us tell you why we turn heads. 

If you didn’t know, ProdPad Co-Founders Janna Bastow and Simon Cast invented the Now-Next-Later roadmap. That means that we know this format inside out, like the back of our hand. We’re the originators, the OG. Why would you get a Now-Next-Later roadmap for anybody else? 

If you need more convincing that Now-Next-Later is the most effective product roadmap template, you can learn why ProdPad Co-Founder, Janna Bastow, invented it: 

Another reason why our product roadmap template is the best is because it’s dynamic. It’s not a print-out, it’s a functioning version of ProdPad that you can use and learn from. It’s not one of those templates that you’re going to make a copy of, fill out, and then forget about by this time next week.

Frankly, we’re surprised by how many static product roadmap templates there are out there. Because they’re simply bad. Here’s why using a static document as a product roadmap template is a bad idea: 

• They lock you into a single moment in time: A static roadmap might capture your plan today, but as soon as priorities shift, it’s outdated. You’ll either have to recreate it from scratch or work from an obsolete roadmap.
• They aren’t flexible: A static template forces you into a fixed structure that might not fit your team’s workflow, making it harder to adjust as things change.
• They kill collaboration: A file-based product roadmap template is just a document, not a living tool. Teams can’t update it in real-time, meaning decisions happen elsewhere, and alignment suffers.
• They focus on formatting over function: Using a rigid template often means squeezing plans into predefined boxes rather than thinking strategically about what needs to be communicated.
• They don’t scale: As your product evolves, your roadmap should too. A static template doesn’t grow with your team, leaving you with an outdated or overly simplified view of what’s next.
• They make tracking progress a nightmare: With a static roadmap, there’s no easy way to reflect shifts, updates, or completed work without manually editing or recreating the document.

Here’s another thing. Not all product roadmap templates are created equal. In fact, some straight-up suck. With Now-Next-Later being a popular format, you’re going to find lots of templates masquerading as this style. When choosing a product roadmap template, you need to beware of fakers. 

When is a Now-Next-Later product roadmap template not a Now-Next-Later product roadmap template? 

There are a couple of key components of Now-Next-Later that without them, result in a different style of roadmap. Now-Next-Later is outcome-driven, not output-focused. That’s why you can easily tie OKRs and business goals to each Initiative in the roadmap, alongside framing your roadmap around problems to solve and prioritizing based on the outcomes you want to achieve. Without this outcome-driven focus, you haven’t got a Now-Next-Later roadmap, you have trash. 

And crucially, a proper Now-Next-Later product roadmap template uses a two-step hierarchy. This means that you have your overarching problems to solve, and then within them the possible ideas and experiments you’re going to explore to best solve those problems. 

So, as an example, the first level of your roadmap item would be a problem that needs solving like  “How can we improve user onboarding?” while the second level solution ideas might be “Create a new onboarding flow” or “Test new user onboarding emails”. 

If you’re missing any of these elements, you ain’t got a Now-Next-Later product roadmap template. Beware of imitations. Product roadmap templates that call themselves Now-Next-Later, but that lack the inherent outcome-focused structure, are nothing more than feature boards. 

If you’re looking for a Now-Next-Later product roadmap template, it’s best to go with the O.G. Founded by the creator of Now-Next-Later, ProdPad lives and breathes this format. 

How to use our Product Roadmap template

Our product roadmap template is easy to use. That’s because it’s baked right into our online sandbox, a free-to-access version of ProdPad that you can use today to see how it all works. Your access is unlimited and forever and includes a bunch of different roadmap examples for different industries and product types to help you understand Now-Next-Later in action. 

Now with it being an open sandbox environment, any changes you make won’t be saved. So when you’ve learnt everything from the product roadmap template and it’s time to save and share your own version, you’ll want to start a free trial of ProdPad which will allow you to save your roadmap, create unlimited customized views and share and publish it to all your stakeholders.

To help you fully understand how to use our template, let’s break down all the key elements: 

Time Horizons

In the Now-Next-Later roadmap, time horizons replace traditional fixed timelines. Instead of committing to specific dates, Initiatives are categorized based on their priority and readiness. Now by default, our time horizons are Now, Next, and Later, but you need to define what that means for your team.

This is important because everyone can have different interpretations of what now, next, and later mean. You need to be explicit about how you’re defining these horizons so you’re setting the right expectations with your stakeholders. 

For example, your time horizons could be something like: 

• Now = Well-understood problems with defined solutions and committed development resources. 
• Next = Problems at the design or discovery stage with assumptions that need to be tested. 
• Later = Fuzzy aspirations that are still taking form. 

Alternatively, they can be spit up into fiscal quarters – a good tactic if you’re weaning a team off timeline roadmaps. 

You don’t even have to stick to now, next, and later as your time horizon headings.You can adopt the process and principles of the Now-Next-Later without being tied to those exact terms.

In fact, even in ProdPad, we allow our customers to customize the column headings and call them whatever they want. You might want to be more explicit about the time brackets for each and call them ‘This quarter’, ‘Next quarter’, and ‘The future’.

Using time horizons allows teams to manage uncertainty effectively, providing a structured yet flexible approach to planning. It acknowledges that priorities can shift, enabling teams to adapt without the constraints of rigid timelines.

Objectives

Objectives are the core aims of your product. They’re the overarching goals and you need to be aware of them to then dictate the Initiatives you set to try and achieve them. Your Objectives don’t have to be specific, measurable goals just yet, but they do need to be something that you can focus your roadmap around. 

With your Objectives, you can set them in the Objectives & Key Results tab. Once you have them there, you’re then able to assign them to the relevant Initiatives, so that you’re always clear on what each Initiative card is working towards.

By focusing on objectives rather than just a list of tasks, teams can maintain a strong sense of purpose and adaptability, making sure every effort contributes to meaningful progress.

Initiatives

Initiatives are high-level problems that the Product Team aims to address. These are the particular efforts you want to focus on to deliver value that aligns with the product’s strategic goals. Initiatives should be expressed as problems to solve – that’s very important for Now-Next-Later. 

If the Initiatives on your product roadmap are focused on the problems you want to solve for your customers or your business, then you have the flexibility within each Initiative to explore different solutions and adapt your plans as you learn through discovery and experimentation.

To help you tick off Initiatives, the steps involved are then broken down into smaller tasks or Ideas that can be linked to the cards. More on them in a sec.

In our product roadmap template, you create Initiative cards, which you can then move based on priority and readiness, based on the time horizons you’ve set.

Focusing on Initiatives helps maintain a clear connection between daily activities and overarching strategic objectives, promoting coherence and purpose in the team’s work.

Ideas

Ideas are potential solutions or actions that can be done to achieve the defined Initiatives they’re linked to. They represent the team’s creative responses to the problems identified.

Ideas can emerge from various sources, including team brainstorming sessions, customer feedback, or market research, and should be linked to the Initiative(s) they most relate to.

When adding Ideas to your roadmap, they need to be assessed for feasibility, impact, and alignment with strategic goals before implementation.

Target date

While the Now-Next-Later roadmap emphasizes flexibility over rigid timelines, assigning target dates can be beneficial for planning and accountability. Target dates provide a temporal reference, helping teams manage expectations and coordinate efforts.

These dates are set with an understanding of their tentative nature, allowing for adjustments as priorities evolve. Usually, as Initiatives move across the roadmap right to left from the Later column to Now, this target date will likely get more concrete and not as broad. 

Instead of fiscal quarters and rough monthly estimates, you’ll be using more specific dates as you gain more knowledge on Intitivate.  

Target dates ensure that the roadmap remains dynamic while providing sufficient structure to guide the team’s activities.

With target dates, that’s all the basics of Now-Next-Later covered. Of course, there’s still so much to learn and see. Access our product roadmap template to fully get to grip with this outcome-focused format.

Inside the initiative card

All the above is just what you can change and edit from the roadmap overview display. When you dig into each individual initiative card, you have options to add more details to help you better plan and optimize each item included in your roadmap. For example, when you click on each initiative, you can add extra juicy details like: 

• Target outcomes: These are the goals and metrics you want to hit with this initiative. For example, it could be increasing user retention by 10% or improving feature adoption rate within the first month. Defining the target outcome helps align the initiative with your overall product and business objectives.
• Actual outcomes: The actual results of the initiative once it’s completed. This is where you can compare the planned outcomes with the real impact, helping you measure the success and refine future initiatives. It could include metrics like conversion rates, user satisfaction, or revenue growth.
• Linked ideas: This allows you to connect related Ideas or features that are tied to the initiative. If your initiative is part of a bigger goal, you can reference related Ideas that are driving or influencing it, providing context and showing how the pieces fit together.
• User stories: A description of the user’s perspective on the feature or initiative. User stories define what the user wants to accomplish, why, and the expected benefit. Adding user stories helps keep the focus on delivering value to the user and ensures alignment with their needs.
• Any comments you need to add: This is where you can add additional notes, insights, or clarifications related to the initiative. Whether it’s feedback from stakeholders or adjustments based on new market insights, this section helps keep everyone aligned on any changes or additional context.

If you’re stuck with any of these, our in-built AI Assistant CoPiliot can help you generate descriptions and Ideas. In fact, CoPilot can help automate a lot of the roadmap process. Check out what else CoPilot can do.

Making the switch to Now-Next-Later

Sold on Now-Next-Later? Thought you might be. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You want to switch but don’t know if you can. You feel shackled to timeline roadmaps, trapped by them. You can’t fathom to think about the effort to make the switch and convert everything over – oh the horror! But just like scary films, that horror is not real. 

With ProdPad’s inbuilt AI, you can upload documents – like your old timeline roadmap – and have them automatically transformed into a fully working, fully functional Now-Next-Later roadmap. It’s that easy. 

What we’re saying is that there’s no excuse. Between our product roadmap template and CoPilot, we make it as easy as possible to adopt Now-Next-Later, definitively THE BEST product roadmap format. 

Go and give it a go and transform how you handle your product roadmap.

The post The Ultimate Product Roadmap Template and How to Use It appeared first on ProdPad.

• What are product roadmap tools? 
• Why use product roadmap tools?
• Key features of the best product roadmap tools
• What are the alternatives to product roadmap tools? 
• What are the benefits of purpose-built product roadmap tools?
• Key considerations for choosing from the best product roadmap tools
• The best product roadmap tools 

So, let’s dive into the seven best product roadmap tools you should be considering in 2024 and how they can help you stay outcome-focused.

What are product roadmap tools? 

I’m going to assume you all know what a product roadmap is. Of course you do. You know you need a roadmap, you’re looking for the right tool to help you manage it. For anyone looking for clarity on what a product roadmap is just check out our Ultimate Guide to Product Roadmaps. 

But we’re here to talk about tools.

Product roadmap tools are designed to help Product Teams plan, communicate, and track their product strategy. They give you a clear visual of where your product is heading and how you’ll get there. But the best product roadmap tools go beyond just listing out features or release dates – they help connect your product strategy to your business goals and provide clear evidence to your stakeholders of why you have made the roadmapping decisions you have.

The best product roadmap tools help you communicate a roadmap that effectively answers questions like:

• How does this initiative align with our objectives?
• What customer problems are we solving with this update?
• What outcomes have we driven with each completed initiative?
• What stage of the development process is each initiative at? 
• Why has this initiative been prioritized over others?
• What different ideas have we explored for each problem area?
• How do we know the chosen idea is likely to be the best solution?

In short, the best product roadmap tools help you shift from feature factory mode into a more strategic approach, ensuring your team is working on the right things for the right reasons.

The best product roadmap tools don’t just help you communicate your strategic priorities in such a way that adds transparency to your decision-making process – although they certainly should do that. The best product roadmap tools also provide you with all the features and functionality to help you actually make those decisions, and then act on them. 

The best product roadmap tools will also help you:

• Prioritize your idea backlog to help you find candidates for your roadmap
• Link to your customer feedback so you can be sure you’re solving the right problems
• Speed up your ideation with AI assistance
• Generate supporting documentation 
• Collaborate with your teammates and stakeholders across your organization
• Capture all your product work and decision logs in one centralized place

Why use product roadmap tools?

Do you have to use a specific tool for your product roadmap? Can you not just draw it up on a piece of paper and be done with it? No. No you can’t. 

Because in Product Management, alignment is everything. The best product roadmap tools make sure everyone – from the developers to the executives to your customers – has a live and dynamic view of not just what you’re building, but why you’re building it. These tools give you a clear, shareable view of what’s in the pipeline and how it ties back to your broader business goals. 

A piece of paper on your desk doesn’t give anyone else visibility into your product strategy and progress. If your roadmap is not in an easily accessible and dynamic format, you’re going to spend every waking moment having to answer questions from stakeholders and teammates who have zero visibility of what is happening and why. 

Also, if your product roadmap is sitting there on that bit of paper, isolated and lonely on your desk, how often do you think you’ll be looking at it? 

Without your roadmap in a product roadmap tool – a central product tool in which you do most of your work –  it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and lose sight of that bigger picture plan. Before you know it, you’re a Project Manager pushing through features and not a strategically focused Product Manager delivering impact. 

Key features of the best product roadmap tools

What should you expect from the best product roadmap tools? If you’re going out shopping for a roadmap tool, what’s on your must-have list? Let’s start with the minimum requirements and then list out the features you can expect from the very best product roadmap tools. 

The best product roadmap tools should have:

• Dynamic, interactive roadmaps
• Customizable roadmap views that let you create different versions with different levels of detail
• The ability to publish versions of your roadmap externally
• Integrations with the tools your wider organization use
• Connection to your customer feedback
• Collaboration tools 
• Integration with your product management workflow
• Connection to your idea backlog

The VERY best product roadmap tools will also have:

• Outcome-based roadmaps
• A hierarchy that enables you to stay flexible, work in an agile way and declare the problem to solve, not specific features
• AI assistance to help you work faster and smarter
• OKR management to keep you laser focused on driving outcomes
• Portfolio management and the ability to scale if your needs increase
• Collaboration tools that do not require stakeholders to log into the product roadmap tool, but add their contribution from the tools they already use

Want to explore a product roadmap tool that has ALL these features?

Jump inside our product roadmap template found in our free-to-use Sandbox. Here you can see a quality roadmap in action, and learn how to build one for yourself in ProdPad. Our product roadmap template is dynamic, not static, helping you to really understand our product roadmap tool.

What are the alternatives to product roadmap tools? 

Spreadsheets and slide decks

We’ve already discussed the piece of paper. But surely no one would actually do that with their roadmap?! Some Product Managers, however, do use spreadsheets, slide decks and document files for their roadmaps. 

I know. Why would you ever do that? 

Spreadsheets, slide decks and documents are often static files, saved on a drive somewhere. They’re not dynamic and always up to date. The problems with this are extensive. You’ll be faced with endless versioning headaches and you can’t ever be confident everyone is looking at the most up-to-date version. You’ll have huge admin overheads, having to manually update your roadmap document all the time. You’ll end up having to repeatedly remind people where they can see the roadmap because no one ever remembers different filing systems or where something is saved. 

Even if you keep your spreadsheet or slide deck in the cloud and manage to remove the versioning headaches, how inspiring is a spreadsheet or presentation file ever going to be? There are better ways to visualize your product roadmap so people actually understand what they are looking at.

A product roadmap confined to a spreadsheet or similar document is also completely detached from everything else! Where’s the link to your customer feedback, your backlog, your release planning, your design files? This makes it extremely hard to keep your roadmap at the heart of everything you do. Increasing the risk of ‘everything you do’ becoming detached from the strategic plan. Which is when you start slipping into an output mindset instead of delivering outcomes. 

So, in sum, don’t use general tools like spreadsheets, slide decks or document files. 

Project management tools 

But what about those generalist productivity tools that are designed to help you manage tasks and track projects? Are they an option? 

I mean, sure, maybe if you’re just getting started and have no budget for a proper product tool. If you want to have an initial stab at creating a roadmap in a dynamic tool and you already have a license for something like ClickUp, Asana, Trello, or monday.com  then sure, give it a go. But, be aware of the limitations. 

Remember, a product roadmap isn’t a project plan, it’s a strategic communication tool. Don’t forget the distinction between a product roadmap and a delivery or release plan – don’t get them confused or try to solve both problems with one tool. If you use a tool designed for task management for your product roadmap, you can very easily fall into the trap of presenting your stakeholders with a timeline project plan Gantt chart instead of a high level strategic plan. 

The other option some Product Managers will try is using whiteboard tools or wiki software. Although they can offer better visualization capabilities than project management tools or the dreaded spreadsheet, they lack the connection to your execution workflow. 

You need the best of both worlds – an easy-to-understand visualization of a bigger picture strategic plan, alongside the ability to drill down if needed and follow a thread all the way through to the detailed release plans. 

This is why purpose-built product roadmap tools exist. 

What are the benefits of purpose-built product roadmap tools?

The biggest advantage of using one of the best product roadmap tools, specifically designed for product teams and roadmapping requirements? The help it gives you to work in line with modern Product Management best practice.

Work within best practices

If you use a purpose-built product roadmap tool you should (assuming you’ve picked one of the best ones) find a structure and a bunch of built-in features that guide your process, behaviors and even the wider organization towards proven best ways of working. 

Not least of all will be the connection to objectives and key business goals. Because, as we’ve already said, the very best product roadmap tools will help you stay laser-focused on outcomes. You’ll have far better:

• Strategic alignment: Your roadmap will be clearly tied to your product strategy and business objectives.
• Clarity of communication: Everyone can see what’s coming up and how it fits into the bigger picture.
• Adaptability: As priorities shift, your roadmap will be able to keep up. The right tool will allow you to make updates without losing sight of your overall goals.
• Stakeholder visibility: Get buy-in from execs and other departments by showing how your roadmap connects to business growth.

Move faster

You’ll also be able to move a lot faster. Everything is set up specifically for the requirements of a Product Team, so you won’t need to get your head around how to bend and adapt a generalist tool to fit your use case. 

You’ll have ready-made product roadmap templates right off the bat, you’ll have suggested workflow stages already created, you’ll have default filters and suggested roadmap views ready to share.

Key Considerations for choosing from the best product roadmap tools

So, now you understand what product roadmap tools are and what makes purpose-built tools like this the best option. But you’ll still need to narrow down a fairly long list to find the best product roadmap tool for you. How do you decide? 

There are a number of questions you need to ask yourself. 

Are you outcome-focused?

This has to be question number one. What does your business value most? Is it more important that you can demonstrate volume of features or improved metrics and results? Hopefully you’ll be answering in favor of outcomes and results. If you’re not, you may need to have a word with your senior stakeholders and help them see the light about the importance of outcome-based roadmapping. We’ve got a ready-made presentation deck you can use for the job! See below

If you can confidently say that outcomes are your key focus, then you need a product roadmap tool that allows you to run an agile-friendly Now-Next-Later product roadmap. If you need to know more about the time-horizon-based roadmap format (the antithesis of the timeline roadmap), we have you covered. 

Do you want to foster a product culture across your organization?

Is part of your objective for revamping your roadmap and how you communicate it, to help promote a ‘product mindset’ across the company? Do you want to get more stakeholders engaged with the product process in the hope that you’ll convince them of the alignment, strategic importance and success of the Product?  Are you hoping to encourage collaboration from other teams and stakeholders so there is more transparency on how you work, how you reach decisions and why you have to balance priorities and sometimes say no?

If so, look for a tool that has the most robust publishing and sharing options, the right collaboration integrations and the clearest visualization of why things are where they are on your roadmap. 

Also look for a tool that will allow you to add everyone in your organization as a collaborator for free. And make sure you understand what they can do as a ‘collaborator’ or ‘reviewer’ or ‘contributor’ or whatever the user type is called. Can they only view? Or have they got the ability to submit feedback, add comments, join in discussions or even submit ideas to your roadmap initiatives? Spoiler alert – free reviewer accounts can do all that and more in ProdPad. 

Do you need your tool to play nicely with other tools in your organization? 

If you answered yes to the previous question then you’ll definitely need to consider this. The whole point of using one of the best product roadmap tools is so you don’t have a roadmap that sits in isolation from everything else. So think about how you need your chosen tool to integrate with your existing systems. 

Think about…

• Where your developers manage their sprint planning
• Which CRM your Sales Team uses
• The Customer Support tools your customer-facing teams use
• The messaging app your wider organization favors

What does the future of your team look like?

You don’t want to be back here in a year’s time looking for a new tool because your chosen one isn’t able to scale with you. So consider if you’ll be likely to add new products or new product lines and will need to manage a portfolio or even multiple portfolios. 

Also consider all the security implications of a growing team. Look out for the right type of Single Sign On capabilities and security compliance. 

The best product roadmap tools

OK, full disclosure, you’re on the ProdPad blog so you can guess which tool is top of the list. Yes we obviously have a degree of bias , but we seriously do stand by all the reasons why ProdPad is the best product roadmap tool for forward-thinking Product Managers. 

Having said that, we’re not about to start bad mouthing our competitors all over town. That’s not our style. We’re all product people building tools for product people, after all. And some of these folks have built some really great software tools, with some solid features that have given us food for thought over the years. 

We’ve included the tools we believe are the absolute best suited for product roadmapping – they are all purpose-built and all have a proven track record as an established player in the market. 

So let’s delve in….

1. ProdPad

Who is it for?

ProdPad is the best product roadmap tool for outcome-focused Product Teams of any size. ProdPad is structured around the industry-prefered Now-Next-Later roadmap format which was actually invented by our very own Co-Founders and allows Product Managers to present a roadmap that follows an Initiative > Idea structure.  

This two level structure to roadmap items is the key to staying flexible and working in an agile way. Instead of pinning exact features to your roadmap from the start, with ProdPad you create roadmap Initiatives that are focused on a problem to solve. You then attach various different Ideas to each Initiative as your thinking develops, working each through discovery until you find the best solution to the problem you have prioritized. 

This also makes ProdPad the best product roadmap tool for PMs looking to communicate their roadmap in a way that does not create stakeholder expectations tied to arbitrary dates. ProdPad’s roadmap flexibility provides stakeholders with a clear picture of the product priorities, with broad time horizons for the stuff that is further out, moving to more exact time periods as Initiatives move further down the line. 

In this way, Product Teams spend less time reworking their roadmap when discovery work invalidates one Idea and means changing to a different feature Idea. They can stay true to a roadmap that is agile, flexible and focused on the outcomes they want to drive, not exact feature outputs. 

Whether you’re in a startup or an enterprise, ProdPad’s flexibility and emphasis on strategic alignment make it the go-to tool for teams that refuse to compromise on quality or clarity.

Best features – ‘The Pros’

• Outcome-driven roadmapping: Unlike most tools that focus on features and timelines, ProdPad helps you build roadmaps based on business outcomes and customer needs. All Initiatives are linked to Objectives and the whole roadmap can be viewed by Objectives. Each roadmap item includes a space for you to capture target outcomes and record release outcomes. You even get a unique Completed view of your roadmap so you can easily demonstrate your outcomes to stakeholders.  
• OKR management: ProdPad’s product roadmapping tool comes complete with a full OKR management system that allows you to set, manage and track general objectives and specific goals. Importantly you can then link each Initiative on your roadmap with the particular Objective and Key Result it seeks to achieve. 
• Strategy canvas: Another unique feature of ProdPad. For each portfolio, product line and individual product there is a CAnvas to record and develop the product vision, value, positioning and more. This gives PMs a flexible space in which to document the broad strategy, stored next to the roadmap so no one loses sight of the bigger picture. 
• Integrated customer feedback: Part of a complete product management platform, ProdPad also collects, organizes, and prioritizes your customer feedback, meaning you can link your evidence directly to your roadmap to support your decision-making.
• AI Assistance: ProdPad also has the best and most mature AI capabilities of any other tool on this list. ProdPad has been able to automatically de-dupe your backlog for many years, but with new AI features being released every week the tool is even further ahead of competitors. Honestly, the AI is game-changing.
• Collaboration-ready: ProdPad’s product roadmap tool is specifically designed to foster communication and alignment across teams. It comes complete with, for example, the most robust Slack and Teams integrations of all the tools on this list. This means anyone in your organization can contribute and comment on your roadmap and its Initiatives from the safety of the tools they already use day-in, day-out. 
• Prioritization tools: ProdPad has built-in prioritization tools like our Prioritization chart which makes it quick and easy to spot the Ideas and Initiatives that will deliver the most impact relative to the effort and feasibility.
• Portfolio management: As standard with ProdPad, you can create an unlimited number of roadmaps so you can easily use the tool across your whole organization. Full portfolio management is also available meaning you can have specific roadmaps, OKRs and strategy canvases at each level. 

Restrictions

• No timelines here: If you are fighting against stakeholders who don’t understand how agile roadmapping works, we feel for you. We would be more than happy to help you convince your stakeholders that timelines are bad for business – so please reach out if that’s of interest. Because ProdPad doesn’t have Gantt chart style timeline options. We do enable target dates to be added to all Initiatives – so your stakeholders can understand when something is coming, but that doesn’t dictate the whole layout of your roadmap. We also have two-way syncs with development tools like Jira or Azure DevOps so you can happily link to your release planning for that complete view. But if you want a product roadmap in a timeline format this ain’t the tool for you. 

Pricing

Starts at $24 per month, with custom plans available for enterprise organizations. You can also purchase just the product Roadmap tool from ProdPad’s full suite and later add the Customer Feedback and Idea Management modules as you need. 

G2 Rating

4.5/5

2. Aha!

Who is it for?

Aha! is a well-known option for Product Managers working in large organizations. Aha! Is underpinned by a more traditional approach to Product Management so may be better suited to those that approach Product from more of an operational perspective. 

Best features – Pros

• Strategy tools: In a similar way to ProdPad, Aha! provides an area for PMs to capture their Personas, Strategy and Vision (although it’s at the overall account level and not sitting next to individual roadmaps). There are also a number of strategic framework tools available as templates to help you do, for example, SWOT analysis. 
• Customizable reports: Aha! provides a very customizable suite of reports that enable you to drill down into the data and create analysis into your product process. The customization takes a bit of time to get your head around, but this capability is interesting if you find yourself spending a lot of time crunching numbers in spreadsheets.

Limitations – Cons

• Single item roadmap hierarchy: Even with Aha!’s Now-Next-Later roadmap, there is only a single level hierarchy. This prevents you from capturing the problem area as the Initiative and nesting different ideas within that. That, unfortunately, means you will end up just pushing features around a board view rather than managing a truly agile, lean roadmap. 
• No goal management: With Aha! you cannot set and manage specific goals, relevant to each Objective. This means you will be without the SMART goals that will help you understand if you have achieved your Objective. 
• Next to no AI: Aha! is yet to release any AI capabilities in their roadmap tool

Pricing

Starts at $74 per user, per month on their monthly plan, however, they do have annual plans available too. 

G2 Rating

4.3/5

3. Productboard

Who is it for?

Productboard is worth considering if you’re looking for a complete platform that will help you manage your roadmap, ideas and customer feedback. The setup is rather complicated but if you think you might need deep customization and configuration Productboard should be on your list. In fact, Productboard can be so complex that the team there offer a professional services level of support that you can purchase to help you grapple with the setup.

Best features – Pros

• Integrations: Productboard have a robust offering of integrations from whiteboarding tools like Miro right through to AI analysis tools like Cobbaï
• User access levels: Productboard, like ProdPad, is another tool that provides you with a lot of control over the access levels and permissions that each of your users has. This can be very important in larger organizations or where sensitive projects may be in play.

Limitations – Cons

• No strategy capture: Productboard does not have an area for you to document product vision, values or add narrative to your product strategy. 
• No OKR or goal management tool: Productboard does not offer an in-bulit tool to help you set and track your product objectives making it harder to align your roadmap with priority outcomes. 
• Single item roadmap hierarchy: Like Aha!, Productboard only provides a ‘feature board’ by way of a time-horizon based roadmap, preventing you from communicating larger initiatives with multiple features ideas within them. 
• Basic reporting: Productboard’s reporting features are minimal, which can limit how well you track progress or demonstrate strategic alignment.
• Complexity: The user interface can feel cluttered and difficult to navigate, and many users complain about the level of decision that have to be made before you can get started.
• AI only available on the highest price plan: The AI assistance that comes with Productboard is only available with the top tier plans, making the tools less integrated or integral to the overall experience. 

Pricing

Starts at $19 per user, per month for their Essentials Plan.

G2 Rating

4.4/5

4. ProductPlan

Who is it for?

ProductPlan is a good option for teams that want a super simple, visual tool to present their roadmap. 

Best features – Pros

• User-friendly: ProductPlan’s drag-and-drop interface is simple to use and great for teams looking for a quick visual solution.
• Launch project management: ProductPlan also has an adjacent tool for managing launch plans and collaborating with GTM teams. It helps you create and track tasks and assign due dates for the launch phase of a feature release. 
• Sharing: Decent for sharing roadmaps with non-technical stakeholders, they allow for easy external link sharing. 
• Great resources: ProductPlan has a great resource center to help you navigate your way around the app and tackle general product management problems. 

Limitations – Cons

• No customer feedback management: ProductPlan doesn’t have tools to help you collect or prioritize customer feedback.
• No idea management: ProductPlan is a roadmap only tool, so you won’t be able to manage your backlog and easily link ideas and their related documentation to your roadmap items. 
• No AI assistance: ProductPlan doesn’t have any AI-powered tools to lighten the load.

Pricing

ProductPlan no longer advert their pricing on their website and seem to be offering custom enterprise packages only that necessitate a call with the Sales Team. 

G2 Ratings

4.5/5

5. Roadmunk

Who is it for?

Roadmunk is a decent option for teams that need flexible roadmap views. If you are forced to balance unwavering stakeholder demands for timelines with a desire to work more flexibly then Roadmunk may be the solution that gives you both avenues. 

Best features – Pros

• Multiple views: Offers flexibility in how you display roadmaps, which can be useful if you’re battling with different stakeholder preferences.
• Portfolio level roadmaps: Allowing you to have different levels and roadmap effectively across your organization.
• Prioritization: Provides some fairly robust prioritization features, so you’re able to assess your product ideas against a range of different criteria.

Limitations – Cons

• Limited integrations: There are only two integration options with Roadmunk – one for Jira and the other ADO, meaning you’re going to hit roadblocks when trying to sync data from other platforms like CRMs or Support tools.  
• Weaker strategic focus: Roadmunk focuses more on visuals than on providing the tools needed to build a strategy that drives outcomes.
• No Now-Next-Later roadmap: Although you can do a swimlane roadmap, Roadmunk don’t offer a proper Now-Next-Later roadmap format. 
• Limited customer feedback management: Roadmunk is primarily a roadmap-only solution but in recent years they have added some basic ways to add feedback into the tool, however they aren’t as robust as other product roadmap tools.  

Pricing

Starts at $19 per user, per month. However, this is only for the single user, you’ll need to upgrade to the Business Plan at $49 per month for your team to get access.

G2 Rating

4.3/5

6. Jira Product Discovery

Who is it for?

Jira Product Discovery is best for teams that are already deeply integrated into the Jira ecosystem and are struggling to find budget for a more robust roadmapping solution. Like ProdPad, Jira Product Discovery only facilitates the Now-Next-Later roadmap format so it’s a solid choice if one of your priorities is keeping your team working consistently and in line with best practice. 

Best features – Pros

• Easy Jira integration setup: If your team is already using Jira Software for development, the integration here is obviously set as standard. You won’t need to set it up and confirm authorization between the two tools. 
• Now-Next-Later customization: Offers flexibility to play with the Now-Next-Later structure and adapt it (although…beware you don’t end up with something that doesn’t fulfill the outcome-focus of a true Now-Next-Later)

Limitations – Cons

• Single level roadmap hierarchy: Like a couple of other contenders on this list, Jira Product Discovery does not allow you to nest Ideas within Initiatives on your roadmap, therefore limiting the flexibility you have to remain agile and adapt to your discovery findings.
• Fewer ways to gather feedback: Although Jira Product Discovery does allow you to capture feedback to inform your roadmap, the tool is missing the integrations that would make this feedback flow consistent and effortless.
• No feedback analysis tools: There are no tools to help you uncover insights from your feedback to inform your product thinking.
• No AI assistance: Jira Product Discovery is yet to offer an AI assistance. 
• No roadmap publishing: You cannot publish your roadmap externally meaning all viewers will need to have their own login. 
• Lack of collaboration tools: You won’t be able to integrate other communication tools and have your stakeholders contribute to your roadmap planning without actively logging into Jira Product Discovery and using the tool directly. 
• Limited standalone value: It’s a good add-on for Jira users but doesn’t stand alone well as a comprehensive product roadmap tool.

Pricing

Starts at $10 per user for teams of  1 – 25

G2 Rating

Oh sorry, Jira Product Discovery isn’t actually represented on G2.

7. Dragonboat

Who is it for?

Dragonboat is a solid choice for large teams managing multiple products or portfolios. It positions itself as a Product Operations platform and has a focus on portfolio decision making and business leadership considerations. 

Best features – Pros

• Portfolio management: Great for multi product organizations and portfolio managers looking to make strategic decisions across multiple product lines. 
• Outcome-focused planning: It offers good tools for linking initiatives to business objectives.

Limitations – Cons

• Complex interface: Dragonboat’s UI can be difficult to navigate, especially for new users. Users have been known to crumble about the outdated UI.
• Overly robust: The feature set may be too much for teams that aren’t managing portfolios or large-scale product organizations.

Pricing

Dragonboat no longer advertises their pricing publically, you can contact their Sales team directly to discuss options. They have a Standard Plan and a Business Plan available. 

G2 Rating

4.5/5

What now?

Think there’s a couple there that could work well for you? The next steps are to book yourself a demo and let the expert teams behind these tools show you how they work in detail. Then you’ll have all the info you need to make the right decision.

Why not start with ProdPad?

The post 7 Best Product Roadmap Tools in 2024 appeared first on ProdPad.

There are many different product roadmap formats, and everyone’s got their favorites. You probably already have a certain product roadmap format that you live and die by, but we urge you not to be stubborn. Many alternative product roadmaps might be a great match for you, you may find one that’s better suited to how you work. Just because you’ve been doing things a certain way for years doesn’t always mean it’s the best. That’s how you get stuck in bad habits. 

All we’re saying is: maybe it’s time to break up with your current product roadmap format? Maybe, like a bad relationship, it’s holding you back. 

To help you explore your options, here’s a complete list of product roadmap formats. Have an open mind, you may find your perfect fit.

Why is it important to choose the right product roadmap format?

We get it, change is hard. But if you’re using the wrong product roadmap format, then we also think change is necessary. The product roadmap you use will massively affect how well you and your entire team can plan, communicate, and execute your product strategy. If it’s off, you’re not going to excel. 

We’re firm believers at ProdPad that certain product roadmap formats can make you become a better product manager. By getting it right, you’ll ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page about what’s being worked on, and crucially why. Your team will have a transparent view of the product’s direction, boosting communication while also driving focus on the same aligned goals. Most importantly, a well-aligned product roadmap will help you remain flexible and responsive to changes in market conditions and your customer needs. 

By the way, there’s a lot more to product roadmaps than just the format you can choose. If you’re looking to absorb knowledge of everything you need to know about these tools, we’ve got an ultimate guide to keep you busy. It covers all the theory to help you build one, manage one, communicate one, and use one effectively. Click the link below to explore our guide. 

Now, we’ve already picked our no.1 product roadmap format (no prizes for guessing what it is – after all, our Co-Founders here at ProdPad actually invented it). The Now-Next-Later product roadmap format works for us and for most modern organizations, but we’re also aware that it’s not the only option out there.

Each alternative product roadmap format will have its pros and cons and its ideal use cases. That’s why we’re putting them in a lineup for you to find the perfect one.

What are the two main types of Product Roadmap formats?

Essentially, most product roadmap formats fall into two categories: 

Agile or timeline. 

These two ways of running your roadmap are like two warring wolves, opposites of each other fighting for your favor. We think there’s a clear winner between the two, but we’ll get to that in just a bit. 

The most common product roadmap formats can be grouped into these two camps based on their principles, the way the roadmaps are presented, and what’s being explored. Let’s dive into what makes these two main types of product roadmap formats so different.

What is an agile product roadmap format?

The tech world is super fast-paced. The need to adapt to change increases every year. As such, Agile has become the favored approach to product development in recent times. By introducing an Agile Product Development process, organizations become more flexible, more adaptive, and able to continuously improve their products.

If you’re a business working with an Agile methodology, you’re going to need an agile roadmap that matches it. 

Agile product roadmap formats promote iteration and a focus on customer value. They don’t emphasize specific features but instead are structured around themes or customer experiences. 

By staying away from a feature-oriented focus, teams that use agile product roadmap formats can easily shift gears and priorities when working out which specific initiatives best achieve the goals they want to hit. 

Agile roadmaps often have broad time horizons. This means that instead of strict dates and deadlines, things can be fluid, and ordered in priority of what’s coming next. Instead of “this is getting done by the 1st of the month” it’s more “this is getting done first, then this thing next.”

Now, let’s get this out upfront – agile product roadmap formats, are far superior to their old-fashioned timeline forefathers. That’s right, we’re not beating around the bush here! Agile roadmaps aid with faster delivery and provide higher quality outcomes when compared to output-focused timelines.

What is a timeline-based roadmap?

Ah, timeline roadmaps. The roadmap only a mother can love. Sorry to be harsh, but we really think you can do better than a timeline roadmap. We just can’t hide it, they’re icky and don’t offer as much value as agile product roadmap formats. 

A timeline roadmap lays out what you have planned for a product on a chronological timeline. It shows what features or changes are planned and when you plan on making them. Nine times out of ten, a timeline roadmap will look like a Gantt chart, showing a clear linear view from the product’s current state to its future state.

On the surface, that looks like a pretty neat and tidy way of mapping things out. So, what’s the problem?

Well, when is Product Management ever that simple? By setting deadlines on your roadmap, especially on potential ideas planned way in advance, you may be going too granular too early, as you’re unlikely to have all the knowledge you need to make a good estimation. That results in deadlines getting pushed back or changed. Being so linear and rigid adds the pressure of hitting those deadlines. You can overpromise and underdeliver, which can result in your pushing out features that may not be ready or that may not have been 100% needed. That’s a textbook example of a feature factory. 

By being so focused on dates, you zone in on getting things done for the sake of doing them. There’s less freedom for exploration and discovery and less flexibility. That’s why you need to move away from your Timeline Roadmap. Here are some steps on how .

Of course, there are situations where you want to present things as a timeline. Your release planning is one of them, where you come up with how and when you’re releasing new features, updates, and bug fixes. You may also want a timeline-based plan for any work that’s immediate, but you certainly don’t want it for your roadmap. Your product roadmap is all about your long-term vision and strategy. Don’t compromise it with a timeline.

Now, timeline-based roadmaps are becoming less and less popular (yay!), and we like to think that the Now-Next-Later roadmap has played a big part in that. You’ll find that most of the product roadmap formats we explore will be more agile in their approach – that’s just the way the industry is evolving – but we have also provided examples of timeline roadmaps, too. It wouldn’t be a complete list without it. 

Naturally, we urge everyone to move away from the restrictive, old-fashioned timeline roadmaps, but we understand you’re adults and can make your own decisions about what’s best. Love comes in all shapes and sizes, so let’s explore all the possible product roadmap formats to find you the ideal partner for your product planning.  

The complete list of product roadmap formats

Are you ready to go product roadmap speed dating? Here’s our complete list of the product roadmap formats to help you find your perfect match. 

Now-Next-Later roadmap

The Now-Next-Later roadmap is the best example of an agile product roadmap format. It was created by our very own Co-Founders Janna Bastow and Simon Cast, so we know a thing or two about it. 

Also known as a lean roadmap or time horizon roadmap, its whole principle is stripping away deadlines and strict timelines and instead replacing them with broader timeframes. In this product roadmap format, you’ll group your product initiatives and ideas into three columns, one for ideas you’re working on now, one for initiatives to be tackled next, and one for all the long-term stuff you’re going to look at later on. 

It’s a product roadmap format designed around outcomes, built to enable more flexibility, allowing more time  to put toward product discovery and experimentation. It’s not a to-do list; instead of organizing tasks to complete in order, you’re declaring the problems you want to solve, giving your team more space for creativity on how they solve that problem. 

Now-Next-Later is a very visual roadmap and is designed to be easy to understand at a glance. You can get a good overview of what you’re working on, with the ability to dive deeper into each Idea. It’s an excellent way to see what you’re working on without getting overwhelmed by dates and deadlines that you’ll never hit. 

It works as an agile product roadmap format because it accommodates change. Prioritizes can shift, and blockers can be introduced. This approach lets you move things around and suits teams that value being nimble and responsive. The Now-Next-Later roadmap gives your entire team transparency on what they should be focusing on in the short term (everything in the Now column) while also giving them a heads-up on what’s planned for Later.

Overcommitting to deadlines can lead you to push products out the door, focusing on just getting things done instead of getting good things done. The Now-Next-Later roadmap prevents that from happening. 

Our CEO Janna has talked loads about why Now-Next-Later is the way to go. It is her baby after all. You can learn more about why Janna invented Now-Next-Later, and how it can benefit you. 

To fully understand how Now-Next-Later works, access our dynamic product roadmap template. Explore the key features of Now-Next-Later, and learn how to deploy this product roadmap format for your own products.

Feature-based roadmap

Feature-based roadmaps are a pretty straightforward option. They focus on organizing your product development around the specific features you want to build. When working with a feature-based roadmap, you’ll map out your features in priority order. You can choose to set specific deadlines for them (and make it a timeline roadmap) or position them across a Now-Next-Later format and use broad time horizons.

Having said that, if you’re using a feature-based approach but laying out those features across a Now-Next-Later roadmap format, you won’t technically have a Now-Next-Later product roadmap. Fundamental to the Now-Next-Later roadmapping approach is structuring your roadmap items around problems to solve. The Now-Next-Later product roadmap format should have roadmap initiatives and within each Initiative, you have a few different Ideas that you will experiment with, test, and evaluate. If each roadmap item is a specific feature rather than a problem to solve, you have a feature-based roadmap, not a Now-Next-Later roadmap. Just having three columns labeled now, next, and later, does not make a Now-Next-Later roadmap. 

A feature-based product roadmap format can provide a clear plan of what you’re working on, but it can be pretty limiting. There’s little flexibility and can cause you to focus on just getting features out there instead of solving user problems. 

A feature-based roadmap can work if you have a clear understanding of what needs to be built and when, but can struggle to support product discovery and user objectives. This product roadmap format has a lot of the same pitfalls as a timeline roadmap and makes you far less adaptable to new ways of thinking to improve your product. 

Goal-oriented roadmap

Using goal-orientated roadmaps helps you rethink the way you perceive your product development and approach it from a different angle. Also known as the GO Product Roadmap format, this roadmap is structured around your business and product goals – not features, or themes. 

In the roadmap, you’ll be inputting the desired outcomes and benefits that you want your features to achieve. This helps you justify the changes you’re making and dive into why you’re making them. By focusing on goals rather than features or output, you’ll be driven to make stuff of value. 

Created by Roman Pichler, the roadmap is built around three main elements:

• Your Goals: The high-level achievements you want to achieve. These are often ambitious statements. 
• The Objectives: These are the specific, measurable metrics and KPIs that once hit show that you achieved your goal.
• Actions: This is where you detail the tasks and features you need to create to achieve the desired objective.

This approach helps you avoid feature creep, where you’re making more and more features for the sake of it without much rhyme nor reason. By adopting this product roadmap format, you’re forced to have a justification for every Idea you have. It ensures that everything you do is aligned with your overall objectives. 

By being focused on goals, it gives you the flexibility to try different ideas to hit those goals. It’s far less rigid, making it a good example of an agile roadmap. 

The drawback of these roadmaps is that they’re a tad less granular than other options. It’s harder to see the specific requirements of what you need to do, especially from a higher-level view. 

To effectively use a goal-based roadmap, you’re going to have to first set your OKRs and the metrics you want to track. Goal setting can be tricky, especially as there are so many metrics you can choose to track. Want to make things easier? Check out our eBook that details 25 ready-made OKRs that you can adopt. 

Goal-oriented roadmaps vs. outcome-based roadmaps

You may have come across the term outcome-based roadmap. This type of product roadmap format is essentially the same as a goal-oriented roadmap –  the term describes the same thing. They both organize your roadmap into the problems you want to solve and the goal you want each Idea on your roadmap to achieve. 

If you want to get super picky about things, you can choose to use the goal-based roadmap term to be super explicit about the link to your strategic product goals. Outcome-based roadmaps may refer to roadmaps that are a bit more broad with what you’re hoping to achieve and may not be as closely tied to your company objectives.

The Now-Next-Later product roadmap format is both an outcome-based format and a goal-oriented format. On a true Now-Next-Later roadmap, every item should declare a problem to solve and the desired outcome, as well as being linked to a specific product objective and key result. You can see how this works in real life by visiting the ProdPad sandbox environment, which is pre-filled with a host of example roadmaps that follow this structure. 

Theme-based roadmap

As the name suggests, a theme-based roadmap is organized around high-level themes instead of specific features or dates. These themes can be considered as broad areas of focus. By using a theme-based roadmap, you’re given better flexibility on how to meet your objectives. 

For example, a theme may be something like, “improving user onboarding”. Within that theme, you can explore the various features you can add, the experiments you can try, and the enhancements you can make to make that happen. 

Now a theme-based roadmap is pretty similar to a goal-based roadmap. In fact, you’ll find that most agile roadmaps have a lot of similarities and crossover. The difference here though is that a goal-based roadmap is focused on specific results aligned to business goals and metrics. A theme-based roadmap uses much broader areas of focus.

One of the reasons to use a theme-based roadmap is because it provides overall freedom while maintaining strategic alignment. You can communicate the overall direction of a product and explore new ideas without getting bogged down by specifics. 

Theme-based roadmaps are interesting, as they can be used in an agile way or a timeline way. Typically, they’ll be agile, allowing you to figure out what features or tasks best fulfill a theme through ongoing learning. That said, you can make them timeline-based if that’s what you really want to do (please don’t). 

This is done by mapping out the themes into their own swimlanes on a timeline roadmap so that each feature that belongs to a theme is grouped together. You’ll be working to rigid deadlines, but linking ideas and tasks to the broad themes that connect them. 

Release roadmap

Well, this is awkward. Release roadmaps are a weird one because we don’t really think they should be considered roadmaps at all. Instead, they’re more of a timeline that shows your deliverables. 

This way of planning your releases details the timing and scope of the upcoming product features you have planned. They’re used to break the development process into specific release schedules. 

Release roadmaps – let’s call them release plans because they ain’t roadmaps – they may be great for immediate planning, but not ideal for communicating longer-term strategic thinking. 

This ‘roadmap’ is extremely timeline-focused, making it rigid, especially for fast-paced environments where priorities can shift on a dime. 

Although many other people call this way of organizing your releases a roadmap, we think it’s better to see it as a way to plan your upcoming launches so that your entire team is coordinated with what’s due out. It doesn’t work as a roadmap because it’s so focused on the short term. 

By using this as a roadmap, you’re sacrificing your long-term decision-making and planning. It’ll also force stakeholders to judge you on output, not outcomes. If your roadmap is filled with releases, it suggests that you only value getting those new features out, and not the outcomes and effects of those releases.

Epics roadmap

If you’re working on huge tasks that span multiple sprints and require input from multiple teams, then you may be drawn to the epics product roadmap format. An epic is a large chunk of work that encompasses many smaller tasks within it. It’s the War and Peace of Product Management: long and tough to get thorough. They’re the big accomplishments you want to achieve on your roadmap.

To make any sense of epics, you’re going to need to cut it up into smaller pieces, known as user stories. An epics product roadmap format allows you to do just that. 

With an epics roadmap, you’re turning this whale of a task into more manageable chunks. By using this roadmap format, it helps you better keep track of your overall progress and maintain direction and strategy. All the ‘chunks’ (user stories) you create will be connected to your larger theme. Everything you complete within an epics roadmap will benefit the larger goal. 

The main purpose of an epics roadmap is to help you prioritize the different tasks that make up the epic, and work out what you need to do first. By visually breaking things down, it allows you to see what is more critical, helping you to have more of a solid plan for completing the epic.

When using an epics roadmap, it works best to take your overarching goal and place all the tasks and things that need to be done within that. You can then track the progress of each task, moving it into a done or ready state when completed. As epics often span across multiple teams, it’s good to assign responsibilities to create a sense of ownership and accountability to each task.  

Portfolio roadmap

If you’re a Senior Product Manager, Product Director or CPO overseeing multiple product lines, then it may be best for you to use a portfolio product roadmap format to give you greater visibility of all the products. 

Whereas a typical roadmap concentrates on one product, a portfolio roadmap shows the entire portfolio of the business. It lets you see everything that you offer. The benefit of this is that you’ll be able to get a better strategic overview of how each product relates to one another, helping with high-level decision-making. 

By seeing what’s being worked on for each product, it makes it easier to allocate resources, work out dependencies, and highlight potential conflicts. In this view that covers all your products, you can see the interdependencies, priorities, and timeframes of different initiatives, helping stakeholders understand how these projects align with the overall business strategy. It’s essential for organizations that have more than one product. 

Now, you can’t just have a portfolio roadmap and get away with it. With it being so top-level, you’re going to miss out on a lot of detail. Not all objectives in a portfolio roadmap will be in each product roadmap. The goal you want to achieve with one product may be different from another. That’s why you need to have your portfolio roadmap working alongside your more singular product roadmaps. 

Consider the portfolio roadmap an additional one that supports your product roadmaps to guide your entire product organization. 

In ProdPad, we make portfolio management easy, allowing you to create Portfolio Roadmaps that are either rolled-up overviews of your individual product roadmaps, and/or customized versions in their own right. 

Choose wisely

It’s so important that your chosen product roadmap format is a good fit for your business. Your roadmap is the blueprint of your Product Management processes and greatly influences the approach you adopt. 

We’ve laid out all the common product roadmap formats you need to know about to give you complete transparency of the options you can go for. That said, only one has truly captured our hearts: The Now-Next-Later Roadmap. 

This isn’t because of blind loyalty to our Co-Founders and its creators. We find it super effective and have seen, firsthand, how it’s helped thousands of people become better Product Managers. But, we get it, you can’t just take our word for it. 

ProdPad is designed around the Now-Next-Later roadmap, it’s one of our key features. Why not give it a try in our sandbox environment for a first-hand experience of how it works and how it can improve the way you do things? Go on, give it a whirl.

The post The Complete List of Product Roadmap Formats: Find Your Perfect Match appeared first on ProdPad.

• What a roadmap presentation is
• How to prepare for one
• How to give your roadmap presentation
• How to align stakeholder expectations during the presentation
• How to handle feedback during the presentation
• Common mistakes and how to avoid them
• How detailed your presentation should be
• How to follow up

What is a roadmap presentation?

Presenting your product roadmap is your chance to share with everyone, from your team to stakeholders and even your customers, the exciting directions your product is heading in. It’s about painting a picture of what’s to come and laying out how and why you want to get there.

What are the key elements of a product roadmap presentation?

These are the core building blocks of your presentation. Once you’ve got all of these clear in your mind, you’ll already have the foundation of your presentation at your fingertips.

You’ll need to include:

• Vision and strategy: Everything starts with a clear product vision. What are you aiming to achieve? What’s your game plan? This vision sets the foundation for everything that follows in your presentation. It’s your North Star, guiding every decision and strategy you discuss.
• Key objectives: Here, you spell out the major goals. What milestones do you need to hit along the way? What outcomes do you expect from your work? These objectives should mesh seamlessly with your overall business goals and help bring your vision to life.
• Initiatives and features: This part gets down to brass tacks – what specific actions, features, or enhancements are you planning to tackle these objectives? It’s about connecting the dots between your grand strategy and the tangible steps you’ll take.
• Metrics: How will you know you’re on track? By setting specific metrics or KPIs to measure your progress. These metrics are crucial for keeping the presentation grounded and focused on tangible outcomes.

Why present your roadmap?

This is your best chance to get everyone on the same page. A well-delivered roadmap presentation ensures that everyone, from your development team to your executive board, understands and supports the direction you’re taking.

It’s your platform to talk strategy and progress. It’s where you manage expectations and keep everyone informed about where the product is headed.

With a clear and concise presentation, you help the senior decision makers what you think needs to be done and why. Knowing what’s important will help them make better-informed strategic decisions – so tell them what resources are required, what challenges you might face, and how you plan to tackle them.

A roadmap shouldn’t be set in stone. This presentation is also a great opportunity to gather feedback, making it a dynamic tool that adapts and evolves based on real input from those involved. There are few things worse than a roadmap made behind locked doors – you need to have your assumptions challenged!

Nailing your roadmap presentation will do more than just give everyone an outline of your plan – it’ll build trust and confidence among your stakeholders as they get some transparency on what you’re doing and, importantly, why you’re doing it. It ensures everyone is committed to the strategic path laid out and understands their role in making the vision a reality.

So when you step up to give a roadmap presentation, you’re really setting the stage for the future success of your product.

How to prepare for your roadmap presentation

The key to a successful roadmap presentation starts long before you step into the meeting room. It’s all in the preparation. In the words of Shakespeare, “All things are ready, if our mind be so.”

Here’s how to set yourself up for a successful presentation:

Understand your audience

First things first, know who you’re talking to.

Is it your Tech team, the Marketing department, or perhaps senior executives? Each audience has different interests and concerns.

Tech teams might look for technical challenges and milestones, whereas executives are more interested in strategic alignment and ROI. Tailoring your presentation to the specific interests of your audience will make it more engaging and relevant (more on this below).

Set clear objectives for the roadmap presentation

What do you want to achieve with this presentation? Are you looking to gain approval, solicit feedback, or simply inform? Much like with product initiatives and ideas, make certain you know the outcome you want to achieve before you begin work.

Setting yourself clear objectives will help you structure your presentation more effectively and guide how you interact with your audience during the session.

Structure your content

A well-structured roadmap presentation helps your audience follow along and absorb information. 

Start with the big picture – where your product is headed. Break down the roadmap into manageable parts, explaining the why behind each step. This will help you demonstrate how each part of the roadmap contributes to the overall strategy.

Keep reading for a full breakdown of what to include in your roadmap presentation and in what order. 

Rehearse and revise

Never underestimate the power of rehearsal. Practice delivering your roadmap presentation a few times to smooth off any rough edges. Rehearsing will help you refine your messaging, adjust the pacing, and get comfortable with the material. As you practice, you might find areas that need simplification or more detailed explanations – perfect for fine-tuning.

Use tools for clarity

This is where ProdPad can be your best friend: it helps you visualize your roadmap in a way that’s easy to understand and engaging. You can use its features to highlight different aspects of the roadmap depending on your audience’s interests. For example, filtering capabilities allow you to show only the most relevant information, keeping your presentation focused and on point.

Although it’s useful to have a presentation deck for your introduction – somewhere you can map out what you’re going to cover, it’s always best to then move to the live environment in which your roadmap lives.

This will not only make your life a lot easier and cut down on the work involved in preparing a deck, but it will also help your stakeholders get familiar with your roadmapping tool and how to navigate it. 

With ProdPad you can save filtered views of your roadmap that contain the exact level of detail that you require. So when you’re preparing for your presentation for the first time, simply set up the view you want to present and it’ll be there each and every time you need it. 

Using ProdPad, you can even publish this view and embed it on your intranet or somewhere else that your stakeholders can easily find it. This means they can self-serve the updates they need and you might find yourself having to do fewer roadmap presentations in future! 

What to include in a roadmap presentation

Ok, so you know how important getting your presentation right, and some useful tips on how to do it, let’s get into the real nitty gritty: what you need to actually put in the damn thing!

Here are the ten things you’ll want to make sure you include when you present a product roadmap:

1. The agenda

Set out what you are going to cover and the outcome you want from the session. Also, consider defining the scope of the presentation so people also understand what you won’t be covering and where they can go to get that information should they need it. 

2. The bigger picture 

Whether you’re introducing it for the first time, or reminding everyone in the room, make sure to outline your Product Vision to set the stage. Also include your value proposition, target audience, and differentiators.   

3. An overview of your objectives

Whatever goal-setting framework you use (here at ProdPad we use OKRs), include a slide where you outline the main objectives you are focused on as a Product Team.

4. The roadmap (obviously!) 

Start by introducing the full roadmap. If you’re using Now-Next-Later (and we recommend that you do), now is the time to define your time horizons so everyone is clear and expectations are aligned. 

5. What’s coming up ‘Now’

Go through each Initiative in your Now column, introducing the problem to solve, the objective this will impact, and the target outcomes. Then briefly introduce the Ideas you are tackling as part of this Initiative, and give an update on their status in your workflow, taking time to explain how you will measure results. 

6. What you’re doing ‘Next’

Do the same with the Initiatives in your Next column.

7. What you’re planning ‘Later’

Here you shouldn’t go into each and every roadmap card, but rather list out the key problems to solve you will be tackling in the future. 

8. How they can stay updated

Be sure to include a slide that tells your stakeholders where to go to stay up-to-date with roadmap progress. Give them a link to your roadmap tool or the location of the appropriate published view.

9. Submission guidelines

It’s worth including this in every presentation you give – a short, fast reminder for everyone on how to submit feedback (either their own feedback or feedback from a customer) and how to submit product ideas. Briefly remind people of the process you go through to review incoming feedback and ideas. 

10. A Q&A session

Once you’re done talking, open it up to the floor! Hopefully, everyone’s still awake.

Right. Now you know what to include in your roadmap presentation. Great stuff! But… how should you deliver it? 

How to give your roadmap presentation

When you’re gearing up to deliver your roadmap presentation, think of it as your moment to shine and really connect with your audience. Here’s how you can make that connection meaningful and impactful:

Kick off with the vision

As we’ve suggested above, start strong by sharing the overarching vision and strategic goals of your product. But make sure you deliver this with some passion! Hype it up and get your audience enthusiastic about what you’re building here.

Starting with the vision sets the stage and helps everyone understand the ‘why’ behind the roadmap, which can often be one of the hardest things to get across.

You’re setting the context for the rest of your presentation – think of it as giving your audience the destination before you show them the path.

Customize your content

Remember, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to presentations. Who you’re talking to should shape what you’re talking about:

• Executives: For the C-suite, keep the altitude high. They’re keen on seeing how the roadmap aligns with broader business goals, the return on investment, and market positioning. Focus on key milestones that impact business outcomes and support strategic objectives. They’ll appreciate concise, data-backed arguments that reinforce the product’s contribution to the company’s success.
• Technical teams: Your tech folks need the down-and-dirty details. They’re looking at what’s under the hood—technical requirements, specific features, and the challenges those features might bring. Share details about technical dependencies, resources needed, and potential hurdles. Using time horizons like in the Now-Next-Later roadmap will help them see when things need to happen and why.
• Sales and Marketing: These folks need to know all about how the product can be sold. They want to know about new features, enhancements, and how these changes solve customer problems or add value. Explain how these features will attract new customers or improve retention. This perspective helps them craft compelling narratives for their campaigns and pitches.
• Customer Support: Support needs to brace for the influx of customer queries each new update might bring. Give them a heads-up on new features and any anticipated issues or common questions these might trigger. They need this info to provide stellar support and keep customer satisfaction high.
• External stakeholders: Partners and investors are eyeing the bigger picture – how the roadmap influences growth and stability. Highlight aspects of the roadmap that show promising market expansion, risk management, and long-term profitability. They’re particularly interested in how strategic initiatives align with market opportunities.
• Customers: Yes, your customers! They’re your audience too, especially if you’re a SaaS company, in a B2B space, or launching a major update that might significantly change how customers interact with your product. Show them directly how the updates will improve their experience or solve problems they care about. This builds trust and reinforces their loyalty to your product.

Bring in the visuals

A picture speaks a thousand words, as the old saying goes, so let them do the heavy lifting in your presentation. Use clear, straightforward diagrams and charts to map out time horizons, dependencies, and major milestones. This can make complex information more accessible and easier to grasp.

If you’re using ProdPad, you can tailor what you are showing to your audience, and use it to demonstrate the linked Ideas and customer feedback that you used to determine why an initiative is worth the resources it will need. This can make communicating the “why” a lot easier!

Ask for feedback

Who says presentations have to be a one-way street? Sprinkle in some interactive elements like live polls or as I mentioned above, a short Q&A session to keep things lively. It’ll keep your audience engaged and make them feel like part of the conversation.

It’ll also give you a chance to test your assumptions about your roadmap, and to ask more questions. This is your chance to get everyone on the same page.

Don’t limit the conversation to the presentation. Be sure to ask for any further feedback when you follow up after the presentation (again, more on that below).

How do I align stakeholder expectations during my roadmap presentation?

When you’re rolling out your roadmap presentation, making sure everyone’s expectations are in sync can be a bit like herding cats – everyone comes to the table with different ideas and hopes.

But don’t worry, there are some solid ways to get everyone on the same wavelength:

Communicate transparently

Start with the basics: be crystal clear. Share where your product stands today, where you plan to take it, and why. Being upfront about potential hurdles and limitations is also crucial. This kind of open communication prevents misunderstandings and helps everyone understand what’s realistic and what’s not.

Set realistic goals

It’s tempting to promise the moon to please everyone, but resist the urge! Overselling what you can deliver only leads to disappointment and erodes trust.

Aim to set goals that are within reach – achievable and manageable. This way, you can avoid the pitfalls of expectations that outpace your actual capacity.

Explain how you prioritize

Sometimes, people’s frustration can stem from not really getting why you’re doing things in the order you’ve picked. Take some time to explain the logic behind how you’ve prioritized your roadmap.

Show how the sequence of initiatives and features ties into the broader business goals. This transparency can help soothe any irritation about timing or perceived oversights.

Engage in interactive discussions

Get everyone involved in the conversation. Interactive sessions, like workshops or games like “Prune the Product Tree,” can be great for this. It’s engaging and fun, but importantly you’ll be giving your stakeholders a firsthand look at the constraints and trade-offs you have to juggle. Basically, you’re getting them to manage their own expectations.

Regular updates

Keep the communication flowing even after the presentation. Regular updates on your roadmap’s progress help keep everyone informed about how things are evolving based on their feedback and market changes. Closing your feedback loops fosters trust and keeps everyone committed over the long haul.

Aligning stakeholder expectations is less about managing demands and more about building a shared commitment to the roadmap. By fostering this shared understanding, you’re not just smoothing the way for your plans; you’re also strengthening relationships with the people who help make your product a success.

How to handle feedback during your roadmap presentation

Alright, so you’re in the middle of nailing your roadmap presentation, then someone asks a cutting question that challenges everything you’ve shown them so far. Do you curl up in a ball on the floor and panic? Hopefully not!

How you handle feedback, both during and after, can be as crucial as the presentation itself. It can really shape how your product evolves, so let’s dive into how you can manage it smoothly:

Encourage open dialogue

First up, make sure everyone knows their feedback isn’t just welcome, it’s wanted. Set the tone from the start by creating an environment that values input.

You’ll gather a wider range of viewpoints, and it helps your stakeholders feel like they’re a meaningful part of the process. Remember, the more involved they feel, the more invested they’ll become.

Listen actively

Now, when you’re in the thick of getting feedback, focus on really listening. This means tuning in closely, asking questions to clear up any doubts, and repeating back what you’ve heard to confirm you’ve got it right.

Active listening takes more than just hearing the words coming out of people’s faces – you need to make an effort to understand the deeper concerns and ideas behind them. This can lead to richer, more productive conversations.

Prioritize feedback

Not all feedback is created equal. Some of it will be spot-on, aligning perfectly with where you want your product to go. Some might not fit the bill as closely.

Get good at spotting the feedback that aligns well with your strategic goals, and prioritize that. It’s not about ignoring the rest, but rather focusing on what will really push your product forward.

Manage conflicts

Sometimes, feedback will clash. When it does, it’s on you to steer these conversations toward a common ground. This part can be tricky – it might mean making tough calls or finding compromises, but keeping your strategic goals in sight can help navigate these waters.

Again, keep asking questions. You might feel like the moderator in a debate, but you’ll probably generate some really useful insights if you can get everyone involved to help you find a solution to their disagreements.

Document and analyze

Here’s where tools like ProdPad come in handy. Use it to collate all the feedback you get, and attach that to each initiative on your roadmap. This helps you organize it and think it over later, especially when you need to share or revisit insights with your team.

Common roadmap presentation mistakes and how to avoid them

Roadmap presentations can be a tightrope walk – get it right, and you align your whole team; slip up, and you could end up faceplanting on the sidewalk.

Let’s talk about some of the usual suspects when things go awry and how you can dodge these common pitfalls:

Information overload 

Ever sat through a presentation that felt like drinking from a firehose? Yeah, not fun. It’s easy to want to show off everything you’ve planned, but too much information can confuse your audience.

Stick to the essentials: key milestones and strategic goals. Keep it tight and make sure everything you mention connects clearly to your bigger picture.

Ignoring audience needs

This one’s big: not tuning your presentation to the vibe of the room. Who’s listening matters. I’ve covered this already, but it bears repeating – know your audience, and adjust accordingly.

Lacking flexibility

If your roadmap feels like it’s carved in stone, people might hesitate to give you honest feedback – they might think it’s just shouting into the void.

Show that you welcome their ideas and that you’re ready and willing to make adjustments. This doesn’t just make your plan better; it also makes everyone feel like they’re truly part of the process.

Overpromising

We all want to be the hero who says yes to everything, but overcommitting can backfire. If you promise the moon without a rocket, you’re going to lose trust.

Be realistic about what your team can deliver. Clear, honest communication builds credibility and trust, and it helps everyone plan better.

Neglecting follow-up

Sure, cool guys don’t look at explosions, but if you just walk away after dropping your presentation bomb on your audience, you miss the chance to deepen both your and their understanding.

Send out a summary, highlight the next steps, and keep everyone in the loop as things progress. Regular updates not only maintain momentum but also strengthen your team’s commitment to the roadmap.

How detailed should a roadmap presentation be?

Figuring out the right amount of detail for a roadmap presentation can feel like you’re trying to hit a moving target. It’s all about understanding your audience, the purpose of the presentation, and just how much information you need to share without leaving your stakeholders feeling swamped or scratching their heads.

Here’s how you can find the Goldilocks zone and get your presentation just right:

• Keep it clear and simple: Start with the basics. Your roadmap should easily communicate where your product stands now and where you hope to take it. Avoid complex jargon or acronyms that could confuse people who aren’t familiar with the daily grind of your product development.
• Focus on what matters: It’s easy to get lost in the weeds with too many details. Highlight only the key milestones and significant updates. This keeps your presentation from becoming overwhelming and helps your audience focus on the strategic objectives that matter.
• Streamline your content: Aim to fit your roadmap on a single page or screen. If you find the content spilling over, it might be a sign that you’re diving too deep. Keep it concise to maintain a strategic overview.
• Adjust the depth: Different audiences need different levels of detail. For internal teams who are more involved, go a bit deeper. For external stakeholders or less technical audiences, keep it high-level to ensure it’s digestible.
• Use the product line view: If you’re discussing multiple products, integrate these into a unified presentation using ProdPad’s Portfolio view. This will help your stakeholders understand the broader strategy without the need to jump between different documents.

Remember, the goal is clarity and relevance, making sure everyone walks away with a good understanding of your product’s direction.

How to follow up on your roadmap presentation

Alright, you’ve just wrapped up your roadmap presentation and it went great! But what now? Well, the journey’s only just begun. Here’s how you can keep the momentum going and make sure all that planning doesn’t just sit on a shelf gathering dust.

Send a thank-you note and recap

Kick things off by shooting a quick thank-you email to everyone who attended. Attach the presentation slides, links to the appropriate view of your roadmap in ProdPad, and any extra materials that could help them remember the key points. This isn’t just good manners – it’s also a gentle reminder of the discussions and commitments from the session.

Gather and organize feedback

You probably got a lot of feedback during your presentation. Make sure it doesn’t slip through the cracks. Write it all down, categorize it, and maybe even use ProdPad to help you track and organize it all. 

This organized approach means you won’t miss out on any nuggets of wisdom that could make your roadmap even better.

Set up a feedback review session

Now, pull your core team together for a deep dive into the feedback. This isn’t just a casual chat; it’s a strategic session to sift through the insights and figure out what changes need to be made. It’s your chance to align everyone’s understanding and decide on the next steps together.

Update the roadmap

Here’s probably the most important step – now you’re armed with all that feedback, you’ll need to go ahead and adjust your roadmap. Maybe some time horizons need shifting, or priorities need tweaking.

These updates are really important – they show that you’re responsive and that your plan isn’t etched in stone.

Communicate the updates

Once you’ve made your changes, let everyone know. A quick update, whether through an email blast or a short meeting, can do the trick. It’s about keeping everyone in the loop, so they see how their input has shaped the roadmap.

Keep the check-ins coming

Finally, don’t just set and forget. Schedule regular check-ins to go over the roadmap’s progress. These can be as formal or informal as you like, but they’re essential for staying on track and making any necessary adjustments along the way.

And map’s a wrap!

Remember, it’s all about how clearly and engagingly you communicate your roadmap. Whether you’re mapping out your plans in ProdPad or diving into strategic discussions, you have to adjust your presentation to your audience.

Make your roadmap presentation not just accessible but truly engaging, and then watch the magic happen as everyone pulls together, rallying behind your vision. Get ready to see your project spark to life as everyone jumps on board, filled with enthusiasm and understanding.

Your roadmap presentation is more than just a one-off event. It’s the beginning of a dynamic roadmapping process that keeps everyone engaged and drives your project forward. So keep the communication clear, the feedback flowing, and the updates coming – your roadmap’s success depends on it!

The post How to Nail Your Roadmap Presentation appeared first on ProdPad.

What’s an initiative?

An initiative is generally a larger-scale effort that aligns with your strategic goals for your product or your business. Each initiative is most commonly based on a problem area to solve, an opportunity to tackle, or an area to go after.

People sometimes call them “themes”, but this term is a little bit outdated now. You’ll still hear people (even us, occasionally) talking about theme-based roadmaps because it’s such a common term.

But, as I’ll go into a bit more, themes have somewhat evolved into the concept of initiatives because there’s generally some confusion about whether themes meant objectives, which are not initiatives. Speaking of which…

What’s an objective?

In the ProdPad world, and as I’ve seen in lots of other companies out there, objectives represent your higher-level goals, sitting above your initiatives. They’re there to guide the Product team, to help them decide what they should focus on over a particular period.

Your objectives will have various initiatives that you take on to achieve them, and any one initiative might be linked to multiple objectives. Each initiative could help you move the right needles for your business by solving one or a few different objectives.

There are a number of different goal-setting frameworks that organizations subscribe to – for example, here at ProdPad, we’re fans of the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) model. Other frameworks include Balanced Scorecard, BHAGs, Strategy Maps, and GSM. What all these frameworks have in common are top-line objectives – so whichever framework you favor and whatever terminology you use, you should have ‘objectives’ in the sense of the core pillars of your overall strategy – the most important things you want to achieve.  

What’s an epic?

Epics are at one level down from initiatives on the roadmap cards that you see in our famous Now-Next-Later (NNL) roadmap.

If the objectives are like saying “Why should we do this initiative?”, and an initiative is asking “What’s the problem we’re solving?”, then your epics are where you ask “How might we solve this problem?” Epics can still be considered large bodies of work, but they’re related to a particular feature, a particular solution, or a particular way of tackling things.

Your epics can then be further broken down into user stories, and once you have those user stories, you might even break those down into different tasks (though we don’t feel the need to get quite that granular at ProdPad). How you approach that is highly subjective and is based on how your team works and their suite of task management tools.

Epics should be experiments

When talking about where epics sit vs initiatives, I like to think of epics as experiments you could run. In the ProdPad world, we call epics Ideas (and those Ideas sync directly with JIRA epics). But I like the term “Idea” because it’s pretty all-encompassing for the number of different things that an Idea could be.

It’s a potential solution, or it’s a new feature, or it’s a change in pricing or packaging. By thinking of your epics/Ideas as experiments, you’re actually outlining what might be done to solve a particular initiative. “Will implementing single sign-on reduce friction on our sign-up page? Let’s find out!”

I also like the term “experiments” when talking about epics, because an experiment could be something like building a feature, which might be a great way to solve a problem. But the best way to solve that problem could also be to take away a feature or change a feature.

By looking at your epics and Ideas as experiments, you’re not constantly driven towards just having a bunch of features on your roadmap, and building new stuff all the time. Rather, you’ve got the flexibility to find new, innovative ways to solve your customers’ problems. Your roadmap itself can then act as a tool for experimenting.

It’s about understanding what you already have and adjusting that. You want to find ways that you could solve those problems for your product, your business, and your customers… and that doesn’t necessarily just mean having to create new code!

Can epics span multiple initiatives?

Epics normally fall under one initiative. That said, you might have an epic that is related to multiple initiatives for various reasons. Perhaps part of that epic solves for the desktop version of your app, while another part of it solves for the mobile –  you could have those as two different initiatives on two different roadmaps.

Generally speaking, though, you have initiatives covering wider time spans, and then the epics underneath relate to those initiatives. But here at ProdPad, we’re not dogmatic about it! If you have a reason to connect an epic to multiple initiatives, then you can put it in there and do just that. That way you can work on one epic and make progress against multiple initiatives. 

How do larger initiatives fit into your roadmap?

While an initiative could be big enough to span various time horizons, you would typically look to either bind it to just one or break it up into smaller pieces that still represent initiative-level stuff.

If you’re looking at an initiative that’s going to take you the whole year, then sure, you could just make it one big initiative, with all the things that you’re going to tackle… and it’ll just be super slow moving. It’ll be stuck in the Now column for quite some time because it’s a big thing to take on and you’ve got to take your time over it.

What often makes more sense is to take that initiative and articulate it into three or more smaller initiatives. You might call each part V1, V2, V3, and so on.

You might say for V1 you want to create the space for somebody to join this new community you’re building. And then V2 is about having people expand their usage of that community. And then V3 is about monetizing the usage of it.

It’s a more effective approach than just having an initiative saying “build a profitable community” – it’s too big. In this situation “build a profitable community” might actually be your high-level objective that feeds into all of those initiatives.

In ProdPad you can use tags to link those initiatives together, and that way you can filter down, and even create a version of your roadmap that just looks at that initiative. You can get an expanded view of the initiative, and all the objectives that are tied to it, all in one place.

How do you ensure that your initiatives and your efforts are aligned with your business goals, customer needs, and objectives?

By cascading things down. You should be able to read your roadmap from the top down and bottom up.

A big hat tip here to Martin Eriksson’s work on the product decision stack – As ever, the terminology differs, but the concept is simple and effective, and is a good way to visualize where your initiatives sit vs your epics.

You have your vision, your strategy, and your top-level goals. Below that you have your initiatives, then you have your epics, and finally, you have the user story-level stuff. The idea is that you go down the ladder from one level to the next, simply asking “How?”

Say your objective is to get more revenue.

Okay, how? Build a profitable community. – There’s your objective.
Okay, how? Start by building this part of it – There’s your initiative.
Okay, how? Well, let’s start with this experiment. – There’s your epic.

It also climbs up the ladder too, by asking “Why?” 

Why are we doing this login field? Because we’re building the front-end of our community… and so on up the ladder again. It’s a great way of understanding and communicating how and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

It also helps people align around how what you’re working on is going to impact the right areas of the business, and it allows you to show your work at a level of granularity that’s appropriate to the stakeholder you’re talking to.

Your execs probably don’t care about your epics, they don’t care about the future-level stuff. But they do want to know whether that initiative is making progress, whether that initiative is happening now, next, or later… But really, it’s about how that reflects back to the overall goals.

They don’t care that you’re working on features, they just care that you’re making an impact, so show them the level of work that will speak to that. 

How should you prioritize your initiatives vs your epics?

It should all be driven by the business outcomes, the business objectives, and the outcomes that are desired. So this actually takes a different turn.

Other product management tools (mentioning no names) call themselves “customer-driven” or “data-driven” or, you know, “whatever-else-driven”. I’d argue that the point is not to be driven by these things. It is to be informed  – by data and by your customers.

Ultimately, you should be business-driven, objective-driven, or outcome-driven (which is the term that I like to use).

What that means is making sure that your outcomes, the things that you’re doing, align back to the overall company goals, which is why the Now-Next-Later framework is so powerful.

What Now-Next-Later allows you to do is to very easily capture your high-level goals and objectives as they relate to your initiatives and vice versa. And then to break those down into how you’re going to do those and how you’re getting on with that, which is your ideas and the workflow status information.

You’re able to get that all visible on one page, so if anybody’s wondering what you’re working on, why, and how it’s going to impact things, it’s there at their fingertips.

Show your work!

ProdPad is the only tool that directly connects your Now-Next-Later initiatives to your OKRs. That’s really helpful because you need to make sure that the work that you’re doing, the initiatives, and the epics that you take on, are actually going to contribute to that all-important level of business goals. Whether you’re trying to build the bottom line or to get market share or whatever is important for your business, you need to be able to show the work that you do.

That’s why ProdPad has a view that shows your completed initiatives and epics (Ideas). Not only are you able to outline what you’re actively working on and what you’re seeing in the future for your initiatives and their related epics, but you can show off by saying “Here’s what we’ve already done, and here’s what we got out of it.”

The Completed area of your roadmap shows you quite clearly what’s been worked on, and what worked and what didn’t. It’s just as important to show what didn’t work for your initiatives as what did work. It’s a little bit like math class, when you still get half the points for showing the workings, even if you didn’t get the answer you were looking for.

If you want to be outcome-driven, it’s essential to be able to look back on what you did and say whether you got good outcomes or not. It helps provide transparency and it helps to prove the ROI of your Product team, which is especially important in today’s world when businesses are becoming more and more focused on showing how you’re contributing to the bottom line.

Your product is not just a sum of the features that you’ve launched or the features that are in there. It’s a sum of all the learnings that you’ve had that have led to you choosing the right features for now and for later.

Don’t be afraid to fail, and importantly, don’t be afraid to communicate your failures. Do not sweep your failings under the rug.

Themes are out, initiatives are in

As I mentioned before, the term “initiative”, in its current context, is a newer concept that’s started to solidify around what people have previously been calling themes. “Themes” is a very popular term in the Agile world, but it can easily be misconstrued. Even theme-based roadmaps are falling out of favor and initiative seems to be taking its place.

You could call it an initiative-based roadmap, but people don’t call them that (probably because that’s just way too many syllables!). Hey, though, I don’t want to invent another new term!

Even a very popular roadmapping book I wrote the foreword for in 2017, Product Roadmaps Relaunched, talked more about themes as a concept. But, over time, the words we use evolve, right? We’ve learned some stuff in the last seven years!

Using initiatives vs epics in the real world

Here’s a direct example for you: on ProdPad’s public roadmap, we break things into initiatives and Ideas (AKA epics as we’re talking about here). I have seen literally thousands of people move towards this way of working – having a roadmap that lines up your initiatives and your epics as opposed to having a feature-led roadmap.

And that’s not just our users. I talk to a lot of people who are trying to get away from timeline-based, feature-led roadmaps, to move into a more Now-Next-Later style. In fact, we created a course on that very subject since we were always being asked how to make the transition from timeline to Now-Next-Later. You can see just by the popularity of the Now-Next-Later framework, and how people are thinking more about initiative-level stuff, that it’s had an astounding effect on how people are working.

Another big hat tip here to Teresa Torres’ Opportunity Solution Tree, whom we had a great chat with for one of our webinars. It’s a great way to work out a hierarchy for your ideas, which then maps to your initiatives and epics.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you do everything you come up with when making your tree, and call everything that you pull out of the top of it an initiative, and therefore everything under it is an epic… But these are certainly things that could become candidates for it.

Initiatives vs epics – A rose by any other name…

So, my final thoughts on initiatives and epics:

• Make sure to use them!
• What you call them isn’t as important as how you use them.
• Don’t think of epics as just features to build but as experiments to conduct.
• Make sure that everything you’re doing is linked back to your objectives. 
• And if you’re using ProdPad, don’t forget to integrate it with Jira, or whatever dev tool you’re using!

I hope this run-through of my personal take on initiatives vs epics has helped you to reach your own understanding of how it fits with your product, and how your team can use them more effectively.

If you want to learn by doing, I’d highly recommend taking our live Sandbox for a spin, so you can see how it all fits together in terms of your initiatives vs your epics, how they help you realize your strategy, and how ProdPad can make you a better Product Manager.

The post Initiative vs Epic – What’s the difference, and how do you use them? appeared first on ProdPad.

I’m also assuming, since you’re here, that you know why the Now-Next-Later roadmap, and lean, agile roadmapping in general, is a much better approach. But again, if you want a refresher on that, lesson 2 in the course will see you right. Alternatively there’s a short, sharp explanation on the benefits of the Now-Next-Later framework in our Ultimate Guide to Product Roadmaps.

In short, the Now-Next-Later helps you stay outcome-focused and not out-put focused. Rather than a roadmap populated with specific features, you will have a strategic planning tool that prioritizes broader Initiatives, articulated as problems to solve, across three time horizons.

Within each Initiative are different Ideas, or experiments, you are exploring and validating as possible ways to solve that problem. In this way, the Now-Next-Later roadmap framework affords you the flexibility to experiment, learn and iterate to find the most successful solution that will drive your desired outcome. You are not committing to an exact feature too early, nor are you giving exact dates until you know for sure what you are going to build. But you are making a clear and easy to understand declaration of the important problems you are going to solve (for the business and/or the customer) and in what order you are going to tackle them.

Sounds good right? You want that for yourself don’t you? But if right now you’re sat in front of a well-established timeline roadmap around which all your product processes and stakeholder expectations are centered, how on earth do you get there? How do you go from that, to the better way of working that I’ve described? 

After all, a lot of work will have gone into that timeline roadmap, however troublesome it might be. So how do you transition to the Now-Next-Later roadmap without completely throwing out all that work and starting from scratch? Well, don’t despair, it is possible. Just work through the steps I’m going to walk you through in this article.

Let’s get started…

The 8 steps to converting your timeline roadmap to a Now-Next-Later  

1. Go get your Strategy and Vision
2. Check your OKRS
3. From features to problems 
4. Creating your Initiatives and Ideas
5. Aligning to your Product Objectives
6. Defining your time horizons
7. Getting your Initiatives in the right columns
8. Reviewing your Now-Next-Later roadmap

Step 1. Go get your Strategy and Vision 

Before we pick up your timeline roadmap and start the transition, we need to make sure you have solid foundations in place. The outcome-focused nature of the Now-Next-Later framework means it is intrinsically linked to the value your product is trying to drive for both your customers and your business. As such, any good Now-Next-Later roadmap is grounded in a strong Product Vision. 

We won’t dive into the art of creating a compelling and effective Product Vision here, but if you don’t have one, or think yours could do with a refresh, then be sure to check out our Product Vision Template for guidance on how best to create one, and our collection of good Product Vision examples to help spark ideas.

But if you have one, go get it and just double-check that your Vision…

• Is inspiring and motivating
• Includes details on your buyers and users
• Covers your value proposition and links back to the desired outcomes 
• Is unambiguous and not open to multiple interpretations

Step 2. Check your Objectives

The second pillar of your Now-Next-Later roadmap foundation is your Product Objectives. Regardless of the goal setting framework you favor (be it OKRs, a Strategy Map, GSM, Balanced Scorecard, or any other), you should have a set of things that you are trying to achieve as a product and a business. You may or may not have drilled down further to specific, measurable goals with exact targets, but at the very least you should have around 3 to 5 core product objectives. 

Again, if you think you’re lacking here, then it’s a good idea to work your way through our course on how to create Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). That is our preferred goal framework here at ProdPad and the one that most closely aligns with the Now-Next-Later approach. 

Gather your Objectives and have them to hand as you work through the next steps.

Step 3. From features to problems

The chances are, if you’re currently working with a timeline roadmap, the items you have on there are specific feature ideas, rather than broader themes, areas of focus or problems to solve. 

Structuring your roadmap as a series of specific feature ideas is a bad idea. Among other things, it creates an output mindset instead of an outcome-focused one. Why is this so important? Because measuring output isn’t relevant to a product’s success – you need to measure outcomes and have the confidence that you’ve solved the problem you intended to solve.

A Now-Next-Later roadmap should never be populated with a series of cards or items that are specific feature ideas but is, in fact, structured around a two level hierarchy –  namely, Roadmap Initiatives and their corresponding Ideas. 

These Initiatives are focused on the problem to solve – the broader customer or business value you’re trying to deliver – and the Ideas within each Initiative are the possible ways you could go about solving that problem and delivering that value. Depending on where the Initiative sits on your roadmap those Ideas will be a list of possibilities that still need to be considered, researched, and explored. Or they’re Ideas you have run discovery on, validated, and are ready to proceed with.

So, how do you take a bunch of feature ideas from your timeline roadmap and convert them into this Initiative > Ideas structure? Get yourself a whiteboard (virtual or otherwise) and follow these steps.

Firstly, make a sticky note for every item on your timeline roadmap and stick them on your board. Now you’re going to do an Affinity Mapping exercise.  

Gather your team around (or do this on your own if you’re so inclined) and group these sticky notes by theme. Don’t be tempted to consider certain areas of the product a theme, or particular user personas. Those examples are not outcome-focused – and being out-come focused is key to the Now-Next-Later roadmap framework! The Now-Next-Later is designed to keep you results-orientated and make certain you’re prioritizing what will create the most value and building things that will help you succeed and grow. 

In order for your NNL to be most effective, you’ll want to group your feature sticky notes based on the problems they are trying to solve. That problem could be related to your customers, or even to your business.

For example, you might have a bunch of features on your timeline that are ideas related to helping your customers share content more easily, or features that are all attempts to improve collaboration for your users. In these cases, your problem to solve could be ‘How can we help customers collaborate more effectively?’ 

So have a look through all the sticky notes on your board and think about the value the feature would bring (to the customer and/or the business) if it were successful. Now think about that value as the solution to a broader problem. Now articulate that problem in a short sentence – we find questions work well, particularly for things in your Later column (but we’ll come back to that). That is your theme/problem to solve title. 

Now continue through all of your sticky notes and when you identify a problem to solve that is already captured on your board, move that feature sticky note over to that group. Remember to keep your problems to solve broader than the specific solution that one particular feature would bring. For example, you might have a feature which is a Slack integration – at this stage, keep the problem to solve much broader – in this example it could be something like ‘How can we help our customers increase collaboration with other departments?’ Later on we will come back to each problem and get more specific – but more on that later.  

Step 4. Creating your Initiatives and Ideas

The groupings you’ve created with your Affinity Mapping session are going to become your Roadmap Initiatives with their related Ideas. With just a little more work, we’ll get you from a board of stickies to a list of Initiatives ready to start mapping onto your Now-Next-Later roadmap. 

Let’s start with picking off any groupings on your board that have a lot of feature sticky notes within them. If you don’t have any groups with more than 4 or 5 features, then you can go ahead and skip to the next step! But if there are one or more groups with 5+ features within them, you’ll want to spend some time looking at those. 

You’ll need to break down any problems where you have a large list of features all trying to solve that issue. Let’s use an example to illustrate this….

Once you are happy that you have your problems-to-solve broken down to the right level, you have successfully reframed a bunch of specific feature-related roadmap items into a series of broader initiatives. 

The feature roadmap items that you have in each grouping then become your Ideas for how to solve each of those problems. 
 

Step 5. Aligning to your product objectives

The last step in finalizing these Initiatives is to map them back to your Product Objectives. This is an essential component of the Now-Next-Later roadmap format. The outcome-focused nature of the Now-Next-Later roadmap framework requires that everything on your roadmap is not only focused on delivering value in the form of solving a problem, but also by contributing to the achievement of your Product Objectives. 

So, looking back to step 2, grab your core Product Objectives (that no doubt align to some extent with your overall business objectives) and give each a color, icon, or flag of some sort. 

Now go back to your Initiative groupings, one by one, and determine which Objective each of them is helping to achieve. Color code the grouping (or add the flag or icon to the group) with the relevant Objective or Objectives (remember, it can help you achieve more than one of your objectives). 

Now you have a set of nicely agile roadmap Initiatives that are outcome-focused and linked to your Objectives. 

Next up is the timing. How do you now take what was once mapped out on a timeline and translate it into the Now-Next-Later framework?

Step 6. Defining your time horizons

The first stage is to define your time horizons. This is important because everyone can have different interpretations of what now, next, and later mean. You need to be explicit about how you’re defining these horizons so you’re setting the right expectations with your stakeholders. 

A good option for when you’re weaning a team off a timeline roadmap is to use more exact time parameters like fiscal quarters.

Remember, you don’t even have to stick to Now, Next, and Later as your time horizon headings! You can adopt the process and principles of the Now-Next-Later without being tied to those exact terms.

In fact, even in ProdPad, we allow our customers to customize the column headings and call them whatever they want. You might want to be more explicit about the time brackets for each and call them ‘This quarter’, ‘Next quarter’, and ‘The future’.

Once you’ve decided what you mean by Now, Next, and Later, you’ll be able to roughly map the periods on your timeline to these horizons.

Step 7. Getting your Initiatives in the right columns

So now you have a bunch of Initiatives with their Ideas, and a set of well-defined time horizons, now you need to combine the two and distribute those initiatives across your Now-Next-Later roadmap. 

Here are the steps to follow:

1. In order to roughly match the priority order you had on your timeline roadmap (so you’re not completely dismantling all the stakeholder expectations that already exist), take each Initiative and look at the Ideas. Find the Idea that was place soonest on your old timeline roadmap – now assign the entire Initiative to the time horizon column that corresponds to that date on your timeline
2. Once you’ve been through each Initiative and placed it based on where the earliest feature was on your previous timeline, then you need to go back to each initiative and sense-check whether those feature ideas are actually right for the NNL stage you’ve placed them. You want to do this based on the stage each feature is at. How validated is this feature? How confident are you that this feature is going to solve that problem? Place in now next later based on that- does it need more discovery to validate it? Then put it over in next or later. Have you done a lot of that validation work? Are you pretty confident it’s the right thing to do to solve that problem? Then put that in now – it’s ready. 
   
   Essentially, the placement on the NNL roadmap should correlate to the degree of confidence you’ve reached for the Ideas within each Initiative. And the level of confidence you have will be influenced by the work you’ve done and the amount of time you’ve spent on the idea. 
   
   Broadly speaking, the placement of Initiatives on your NNL should look something like this. 

3. You’ll notice that the Initiative title is different for each time horizon column. As your Initiatives move from right to left, working through your process and maturing, you’ll be able to narrow the problem down and get more specific. It’s also helpful to update your Initiative titles and descriptions to reflect that. 
   
   So, based on these maturity stages, do any of the Initiatives on your NNL need to shift? Is there an Initiative in the Now column with Ideas that haven’t been validated yet? Are there feature ideas that need more discovery done before you can confidently say that they are the right solution to that problem and are what you should be building? If so, move it back to the next column to allow time to do that research and validation work. 
   
4. Remember to watch out for any hard deadlines that need to be hit. If it’s important that something is shipped by a certain date, then you won’t have the flexibility to move it back. Make sure you’ve checked through everything for any hard dates like these and have your Initiative in the relevant time horizon column.

If something has to move (and there’s no hard time sensitivity to prevent that), remember to make a note of the change so you have a list of where you’ve significantly diverged from the priority order as it appeared on the previous timeline. You’ll likely need to communicate those changes to your stakeholders when you present your new NNL roadmap. But do not fear, you have solid reasons for pushing it back – it will enable you to validate the idea, ensuring you’re spending expensive development time on something that stands a better chance of driving the results that are strategically important.

Step 8. Reviewing your Now-Next-Later roadmap

For the most part, where your Initiatives are placed is based on where they were on your timeline. Now it’s time to sense check that placement now that they are reframed around problems to solve and linked to your objectives. 

So take a step back and look at what you have. Are these the most important problems to solve? Did you struggle to associate any of these Initiatives with your Objectives? If so, should you be doing them at all?

At an Initiative level, are these feature Ideas still the right ones to work on? Now that you’ve grouped the feature ideas under the problems to solve, have you got multiple features that are working to solve the same problem? Do you need all of them? Or is one likely to prove far more effective than the others? In which case, consider ditching the other feature Ideas so you’re being as efficient with your resources as possible. If you can solve the problem with one feature rather than three, great – build and measure that one feature and then move on to the next problem to solve.

This is one way in which the Now-Next-Later format helps you solve more problems in less time! Deliver more value, faster. You’re more efficient and effective working in this way and staying focused on the problem to solve rather than being a feature factory.

Of course, if you’d like to try out Now-Next-Later for yourself before making the switch, you can in our Sandbox. Consider it a try before you buy. Here, you can access a dynamic Now-Next-Later product roadmap format, helping you to learn the fundamentals while seeing the value of it in real time.

It’s pretty cool, and extremely useful, so go give it a go today.

The post 8 Steps to Convert Your Timeline Roadmap to a Now-Next-Later appeared first on ProdPad.

Where did Jira Product Discovery come from?

So, as you all know, Jira Software has been around for a long time. It’s been a lynchpin of the Atlassian offering for many years. The original Jira tool was built as a project management tool specifically tailored to tech delivery, sprint planning and dev ops. The tool is for engineering teams, but as product management developed as a discipline, some product managers found themselves trying to bend the tool to their roadmapping and backlog management needs. And, again, as I’m sure you know, that never ends well.

Jira Product Discovery therefore, represents Atlassian’s realization and acknowledgement that Jira Software is not the place to run product discovery and strategy planning. It is a system for delivery and release planning and Product Managers need a space to do their ideation and prioritize what to work on next. 

Product Managers within organizations who used the Atlassian suite would typically either struggle along with Jira Software or they would get themselves a purpose-built product management tool like ProdPad with deep integrations with Jira Software so they could run their strategy and discovery in ProdPad and push things over to the engineering team, via Jira Software, when something was ready to be built.  So the creation of Jira Product Discovery is an attempt to get a piece of that latter pie and give PMs a dedicated space for their product management… 

But does it go far enough? 

Does Jira Product Discovery go far enough in providing a dedicated strategic space for product managers?

In short, no. Jira Product Discovery facilitates a new issue type of Ideas and allows you to prioritize those on a Now-Next-Later roadmap, attaching feedback and creating tickets to pass over to Jira Software… but it’s a very manual tool that does nothing to free up your valuable time or guide best practice. Neither is it the tool to help you establish a product culture outside of your immediate team and foster collaboration across the whole organization. 

ProdPad, on the other hand, is the only complete product management platform focused on saving you time and getting you to impactful product decisions faster. Through advanced AI, deep integrations and best practice workflows and suggestions, ProdPad helps Product Managers not only enjoy their own dedicated space, but actually save time, move faster and deliver more. 

What is Jira Product Discovery missing?

Jira Product Discovery is a tool to help you tack roadmapping and backlog management in front of the sprint planning and release planning the engineering teams might be doing in Jira Software. 

It delivers a smooth and efficient process for moving Ideas from the product backlog into delivery, but discovery, validation and the customer feedback loop appears not to be part of their focus. 

Jira Product Discovery is missing some of the most important features to help you:

• Develop a solid strategy both top down and bottom up
• Easily communicate that strategy with all stakeholders 
• Enjoy the benefits of a single source of truth for all things product
• Successfully facilitate collaboration across the organization

Jira Product Discovery has…

Feedback

• No integrations with CRMs or support systems to automatically (or manually) route feedback from customer-facing teams
• No feedback portal or widget to gather feedback from your users
• No tools to surface the themes in your feedback
• No easy way to distinguish between the feedback you have triaged and the feedback still to look at

Strategy

• No strategy canvas or place to describe your overall strategy or capture your product vision
• No OKR, product objectives or goal management tool

Roadmapping

• No hierarchy or nesting ability to the roadmap items – just one flat issue type
• No external roadmap sharing or embedding
• No portfolio management or view across different roadmaps
• No in-built document creation for specs, PRDs, designs or anything else – all that must sit externally 

Other

• No email notifications to help you drive action from the team and collaboration
• No AI assistance to help lighten the load and unlock more time for the most valuable work

Is ProdPad the best Jira Product Discovery Alternative?

Spoiler alert: everything listed above, that is missing in the Jira Product Discovery tool, is available in ProdPad

But let’s map that out for you feature-by-feature. 

Jira Product Discovery vs ProdPad feature comparison

	Jira Product Discovery	ProdPad
Roadmapping
Now-Next-Later roadmap
Completed and candiate roadmap columns by default
Toggle to view roadmap grouped by Product Objective
AI Roadmap Initiative and Idea generation
Porfolio management and roadmaps
Roadmap publishing and external sharing
Initiative > Ideas hierarchy
Strategy
Product Strategy Canvas to map out Vision, value and more
Central documentation repository
Full OKR management with goal setting
Personas
AI Product Coach
Idea Management
Idea management
Jira Software integration with 2 way sync
Impact vs Effort prioritization chart
Customizable prioritization scales
Confidence rating mapped to prioritization chart
Unsorted and backlog lists for refinement and triaging
Idea Canvas to guide your ideation and discovery
AI Assistant to automate backlog refinement
Bulit-in product specs and document creation
AI Assistant to automate backlog refinement
Generative AI for idea descriptions, etc
Workflow management for pre-delivery planning – discovery & validation
Feedback Management
Chrome extension for feedback capture
Slack and Teams integration
Customer feedback portal & widgets
Integrations with support systems and CRMs to pull in feedback
AI feedback theme analysis
AI feedback summarizer
Collaboration
Free, unlimited contributors
Email notifications
Comment discussion board integration with Slack, Teams & email
And there’s more!
Customizable automation rules
Comprehensive API access

Let’s dig into some of ProdPad’s key differentiators – the headline benefits if you will. 

Only with ProdPad will you get: 

• Effortless feedback gathering and deep AI analysis
• A home for your vision, strategy and OKRs – guiding your roadmap and prioritization
• All the tools to easily communicate a clear roadmap and keep everyone informed
• A central hub and single source of truth for organization-wide collaboration 
• An AI-powered assistant and coach to help you automate the grunt work and deliver more value

Gather feedback from more places and more people

ProdPad has the most advanced feedback gathering capabilities of any all-in-one product management tool. There are more ways to submit or automatically route feedback into ProdPad than in Jira Product Discovery. 

We’ve already suggested that feedback analysis isn’t a big focus for Jira Product Discovery, but the team here at ProdPad have prioritized the development of our feedback management tool precisely because they recognize the fundamental importance that user feedback plays in informing and shaping the product strategy and your prioritization decisions. In fact, it’s through these feedback tools that we were able to identify that effective feedback management is a primary need and problem to solve for y’all! 

In short, ProdPad’s feedback management tool is designed to ensure as many people in your organization as possible can submit feedback to the product team without having to log into ProdPad itself. Our powerful integrations, extensions and widgets mean your customer-facing colleagues can manually, or automatically fire feedback from wherever they work, directly into your feedback repository.  

With ProdPad you can gather feedback in the following ways: 

• Customer feedback portals and widgets (add your own branding) 
• Push feedback directly from Slack or MS Teams
• Integrate your CRM (like Salesforce) to easily get feedback from sales teams
• Connect your support system (like Zendesk) to automatically route feedback from your customer teams
• Email feedback directly into ProdPad
• Fast-add feedback from your browser with our Chrome extension

With Jira Product Discovery, aside from manually adding feedback directly into the tool, you can pull in feedback through:

• Slack and Teams integrations (but only from a dedicated #product-feedback channel)
• Chrome extension
• Jira Service Management integration

Jira Product Discovery has:

• No customer feedback portals
• No CRM integrations
• No support system integrations (aside from Jira Service Management)
• No email dropbox

Analyze your feedback to help fuel your thinking  

Of course, it’s not enough to just collect feedback – you need to understand what you have and use that insight in your decision making. Where Jira Product Discovery offers no feedback analysis tools at all, ProdPad has multiple ways to extract insight from your feedback faster. From the frequency charts that help you spot trends, to the AI Signals tool to surface the common themes. 

ProdPad’s AI Assistant will help you:

• Generate succinct summaries of any long pieces of feedback
• Automatically link feedback to relevant Ideas in your backlog
• Analyze your entire feedback repository and surface the themes in moments

ProdPad helps you go from a list of feedback, to strategic insights in half the time. ProdPad is the best tool to unearth insight from your feedback and feed your bottom-up strategic planning.

Where’s the why? Keep your strategy close by 

Another difference between Jira Product Discovery and ProdPad is the emphasis put on the bigger picture. ProdPad comes with a unique Product Canvas area which allows you to keep your roadmap next to a description and articulation of your wider product strategy. This is designed to ensure alignment, remind the team of the bigger picture and make sure everyone understands the context in which you are working and making decisions.

ProdPad’s unique Product Canvas provides a space to map out your Vision, value, strategy and more, capturing that all important, overarching reason for being. It’s proximity to your roadmap (the very next tab!) means you’re never more than a click away from that north star, helping to keep you – and everyone who visits the roadmap – aligned to the ultimate goals. 

ProdPad can even provide coaching to help you better align your product Ideas with this strategy and Vision. Whenever an Idea is added to ProdPad, our AI Product Coach can compare that Idea to the Product Vision and give you considered, constructive guidance on how to improve alignment and focus on your core objectives. This can be a game changer when it comes to Idea submissions from different teams and other colleagues. Rather than you having to devise appropriate feedback to give to the Idea submitter, you can let the AI Coach handle that for you. You get a backlog of better aligned Ideas and you’ve saved a bunch of time feeding back on that Idea. 

Know exactly how you’ll measure success with OKR management

To stay truly outcome-focused you need to be clear on the exact needles you want to move and the results you need to see. ProdPad’s full OKR management system goes deeper, allowing you to set specific, measurable Key Results under each of your product objectives. Our AI can even generate key results for you, getting you from broad goals to exact targets in moments. 

In Jira Product Discovery you can only list objectives and attach them to Ideas, but you cannot set and measure specific goals or Key Results, nor can you flag progress against goals or targets. 

The home of the Now-Next-Later roadmap

Jira Product Discovery is a roadmapping tool built around the Now-Next-Later roadmap – a roadmap format and practice that we invented here at ProdPad. Our Co-Founders Janna Bastow and Simon Cast invented the Now-Next-Later roadmap as a direct solution to the problems they were facing as PMs using a timeline roadmap. 

So, ProdPad is the home of the Now-Next-Later and the right place to come for the best guidance and structure to properly work within the principles of lean roadmapping and the outcome-based Now-Next-Later roadmap. 

For example, while Jira Product Discovery provides an infinitely flexible roadmap structure that you can configure however you like, ProdPad actively helps you instill good habits and best practice, driving consistency across the team by providing some unique areas of the roadmap, by default. Those include a Completed area where you move those roadmap Initiatives that have been shipped and measured – helping you demonstrate what you’ve achieved and tell the story of your product evolution. And a Candidate area for you to store those potential Initiatives that may make it onto the roadmap in time. 

In ProdPad, you can also toggle to view your entire Now-Next-Later organized by Objective, giving you a color coded view of what you’re doing to impact each of your core product objectives. 

Each of these built-in, by default, settings helps you easily tell the story of your product strategy in different ways, ensuring you have ready-made views for demonstrating what you’re working on and why. 

The Initiative > Idea hierarchy 

As we’ve mentioned already, with Jira Product Discovery you get one new issue type, not already seen in Jira Software. By default that issue type is labeled Idea, but you have the flexibility to call that whatever you want. Which is great. But…. that issue type is flat. You do not have the ability to nest a secondary issue type within it. And that causes a problem if you truly want to work in an agile way.

You see, without a hierarchy within each roadmap item, you’re doing nothing more than moving a series of feature ideas around a board. That sounds like project management, nor product management. 

To be truly outcome-focused and customer-centric requires a hierarchy that enables you to prioritize and communicate a problem to be solved and not one single idea. Then you’re free to group multiple ideas beneath that higher problem, leaving you open to explore and test each one to find the best way to solve that problem. 

ProdPad works differently. With a Now-Next-Later roadmap in ProdPad each item on your roadmap is an Initiative, within which you can add and link any number of Ideas. With the Initiative you are declaring the problem you want to solve, and with each Idea you’re putting forward a different ‘experiment’ or possible way it could be solved. 

WIth the Initiative and Idea hierarchy you are therefore free to experiment, learn and iterate to find the best solution to the problem. This hierarchy ensures you are not nailing your flag to a certain Idea or feature too soon, cutting out the opportunity to discover the best path.  

This also provides you with a roadmap format far more suitable for customer communications. With Jira’s single issue type you have no choice but to show everyone a roadmap with details of specific Ideas – that or you’ll need to build an entirely new roadmap in which you present the roadmap items as the broader problems. But now you have two different roadmaps to maintain at all times For more on the best ways to present a public roadmap, check out our guide on the topic.

With ProdPad you can keep one central version of your roadmap and simply click to publish a customer-facing version where you toggle off the Ideas and just show your top-level Initiatives. That published roadmap will dynamically update as you manage and amend your roadmap.

Which brings us onto another key way in which ProdPad is the best Jira Product Discovery alternative, solving more of your product management problems.

Effortless stakeholder comms

As the custodian of the product strategy, communicating the plan is a decent chunk of your job. But it’s also a part of the job that can get in the way of doing what you probably would rather be doing – namely, discovery, testing and making product decisions! 

It’s important that you have a roadmapping tool that prevents you needing to update documents all the time, field endless questions from people around the organization and explain your progress and decisions all the livelong day.

So how does ProdPad stack up as the best Jira Product Discovery alternative in terms of ease of communication and helping you solve this problem?

I’ll start with the bad news…. Jira Product Discovery has no ability for external sharing of your roadmap. Everyone you want to share your dynamic roadmap with will need to have a Jira Product Discovery login.

Clearly that’s no good if you need to share with leadership executives, colleagues outside of your every-day teams or even the whole company. Nor does it help you communicate your roadmap externally – to your customers, investors or even publicly on your website. So, if you have your roadmap in Jira Product Discovery, you’re going to have to continue the pain of creating slides and answering all those ‘is this on the roadmap?’ questions. No thanks.

Now onto the good news…ProdPad provides dynamic roadmap publishing, allowing you to create unlimited customized views and share externally or even embed on your website. Phew. 

Now you can manage one central roadmap safe in the knowledge that your published versions will stay up-to-date and show each group of stakeholders exactly what they need to know. Our deep and detailed filters allow you to build views that are as detailed or as top-level as you want. 

So you can quickly throw up a roadmap view for, say, your Sales Lead and not have to think about it again. That Sales Lead now has a link to their own, customized view whenever they need it. Now if anyone wants to know if something is on the roadmap, they can see for themselves. 

With ProdPad it’s super simple to publish a customer-facing version of your roadmap that is an Initiative-only, broad overview – communicating the problems you’ll solve, not the details of the Ideas. Check out our own external roadmap to see how that looks in action. 

Power a product culture with a true collaboration hub 

To recap a few of the things we’ve discovered already about Jira Product Discovery… 

• No integrations with CRMs
• No integrations with systems the Customer and Support Teams use
• No ability to email in Ideas or Feedback
• No sharing of roadmaps with people without a login

This makes it very hard for people outside of the product team to interact with what you’re doing – to contribute and collaborate. Because, let’s be honest, no one is going to bother logging into a new and different system, one that isn’t primarily their tool, to help you do your job. With the best will in the world, that ain’t happening.

But you do need contributions from other teams! Of course you do. You need feedback to be shared with you, you need input and suggestions from other teams, you need to create transparency and help everyone feel invested and involved with access to the strategy and the roadmap.  And, to get the richest backlog you can, you should be encouraging anyone in the organization to submit Ideas if they think of something good! 

If you want to foster a true product culture across the organization, you need to have a product management tool focused on providing easy access and removing all barriers to engagement by your stakeholders. So, with this in mind is ProdPad the best Jira Product Discovery alternative when it comes to getting the whole company on-board?

Yes, yes it is. You see, ProdPad is integrated with more of the tools your wider organization use. You can invite and capture discussion, ask for feedback and give people an easy outlet for their product ideas – all without needing to log in to ProdPad. This is the key to truly fostering a product culture and collaborating cross-functionally. This is the tool leadership will thank you for.

Jira Product Discovery also fails to offer a place for your documentation. Your working documents – your specs, PRDs, notes – all that decision tracking and discussion has to happen elsewhere. 

ProdPad, on the other hand, offers a central document repository per product, and built-in specification documents, design tool integrations and more, against each and every Idea. So you can enjoy a single source of truth for everything you’re working on. 

The most advanced AI capabilities of any product management tool

This one is a biggy. For many people, it’s the main reason why ProdPad is the best Jira Product Discovery alternative. I’ll cut straight to the chase… ProdPad has the most advanced AI capabilities of any product management platform. But we’re not here to compare ProdPad to all other tools, you’re looking for the best Jira Product Discovery alternative. So what are Jira Product Discovery’s AI capabilities like?

They are nonexistent. With Jira Product Discovery there is no AI assistance to help you work faster or better. You are very much on your own.

ProdPad, on the other hand, is not just a complete platform to manage your product process, it’s a team member and coach – a tool to help you and your whole organization work smarter and faster – getting to the most impactful product decisions in half the time. 

The AI tools in ProdPad come in a number of different flavors, helping you do different jobs in half the time. They include:

• AI tools to automate the grunt work and free up your time
• AI tools to do the writing for you – generate descriptions, user stories, feedback summaries and more 
• AI tools to kick-start your ideation – generating Roadmap Initiatives, Ideas and even suggesting Key Results to focus your efforts
• AI tools to coach you to do your best work – offering constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement whenever you need it
• AI tools to run analysis and suggest what to prioritize

Portfolio management

This one is pretty cut and dry. Jira Product Discovery does not easily allow for portfolio management and is ill-equipped to handle the needs of multiple product companies who need both individual roadmap views that automatically roll up to a portfolio level view. 

With ProdPad you can manage everything from a product, product line or product portfolio level. You can set OKRs and outline a strategy and Vision at portfolio level as well as at the individual product level.

Maintaining a portfolio roadmap is effortless as each product roadmap automatically feeds its Initiatives up to the higher level. 

The same also applies for product lines. Within your portfolio you can group individual products together across different product lines and easily view product line roadmaps and assign OKRs and vision statements unique to that product line. 

In short, Jira Product Discovery only facilitates the creation of single roadmap only. Any product line or portfolio roadmap would have to be manually built up in a horrible big cut and paste job. Not ideal if you’re trying to drive efficiencies and maintain a consistent picture of what’s happening across your product organization. 

But what if you need a tight sync with Jira Software?

After all, if you’re evaluating Jira Product Discovery, the chances are it’s because you’re already using Jira Software for your delivery planning and you want a smooth handover from one to the other. 

Well Jira Product Discovery aren’t the only product management tool who can provide that. ProdPad has a powerful integration, complete with two-way sync, with Jira Software. And that’s both for the Jira Software Cloud solution and the Jira Server & Data Center on-premise solutions. So it really is proving to be the best Jira Product Discovery alternative.

This tight integration means you can not only easily import your existing Jira issues when you first start out with ProdPad, but you can enjoy a two-way content and status sync from the moment you decide to push an Idea over to Jira Software to be picked up by the development team. 

In fact, if you’re currently struggling with a product backlog in Jira Software and think Jira Product Discovery would provide the easiest transition, take a look at our very own CEO and Co-Founder Janna Bastow explaining how quick and easy it is to import that backlog into ProdPad and have our AI tools clean it up! 

The final verdict

I know I set out saying we wouldn’t be bad mouthing Jira Product Discovery all over town, and I hope you think I’ve stuck to that promise, but also, the more I write out this comparison, the more I realize that there’s really no comparison. 

So the final verdict from me is ProdPad is the best Jira Product Discovery alternative.

Yeah, I know, I would say that. So if you’re not happy to take my word for it, why not take a look at what people are saying about ProdPad on G2. 

But probably the best way to decide for yourself is to start a free trial and see what all the fuss is about. Either that or book yourself a demo with one of our product management experts and get all your questions answered. 

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