9 Steps To Clarify Your Roadmap

Q: How do you plan a roadmap?

‍

Let's take a clinic management system as an example.

1. First, your product needs to have some vision in place

This is the "Why" of your existence. The long-term plan.

Ex: A world where patients get consistently delightful experiences at clinics.

2. Decide on a product strategy

This describes how you plan to achieve the vision. Typically, the term is shorter (quarter/year) & changes over time.

Ex: Delight patients (customers of our customers) by offering an exceptional appointment scheduling experience for users of all kinds of abilities that gets meetings setup effortlessly.

3. Elect broad problem themes that need attention

Now, we're thinking about high-level areas that will enable the strategy.

Ex:

a- Improve the appointment scheduling UX.

b- Make the UX inclusive.

c- Redo the notification & alert system.

d- Enable bookings via a mobile app.

4. Setup goals

Build some OKRs or a set of KPIs that will define success for you while pursuing these themes.

See more: How to write OKRs that work: 8-step guide

Ex:

• Increase appointments for top 5 customers by 7%
• Generate 10% of appointments through mobile app for top 10 clinic customers

5. Compile opportunities to focus on from various sources

Run through your backlog, customer research notes, feedback surveys, sales requests, competitive research, product analytics etc. to see what opportunities align best with the strategy, themes & target metrics.

Ex:

• The scheduler flow is very long and clunky. How can we shorten the flow?
• There are no integrations with personal calendar systems and hence, no timely reminders
• Make it easy for the hearing-impaired?
• We need to block-off no-shows somehow (SMS reminders?)
• Patients aren't clear about how to reschedule last minute
• Patients get confused about which doctor to pick

Some opportunities were interesting but didn't make our shortlist:

• Leave doctors a review after the appointment
• Allow patients to book an Uber to the clinic from the app

6. Use a prioritization framework to organize

Conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Use a framework like RICE to order the opportunities.

7. Categorize in Now, Next, Later

Don't develop a project plan Gantt chart out of this. Instead, split the roadmap into categories like Now, Next, Later. Spread your ordered list across those groups based on engineering bandwidth & priority.

The "Now" segment is usually the most concrete and typically reflects the next 60 to 90 day window. Adding rough dates there to set expectations with stakeholders is reasonable.

8. Communicate

Package this into a linear timeline and a presentation for both internal (e.g. dev teams) & external parties (e.g. customers). Share this across.

9. Keep it updated

As you tick off milestones and ship releases, keep coming back to the roadmap. Although your "Now" segment should remain the most stable, market conditions/demands & competitive forces might affect the "Next" and "Later" groups.