How To Create a Product Roadmap In 2026 | Product Roadmap | What Is Product Roadmap | Simplilearn

Key Takeaways

Hey everyone, welcome to the Simpsons YouTube channel. So in this video we will discuss about product road map. So a product road map is a strategic guide that outlines the vision, goals and development timeline of a product. It helps align teams and stakeholders prioritize features and track progress throughout the product's life cycle. Essentially it serves as a blueprint that ensures everyone is on the same page when it comes to the product development. So in this session we will cover what is product road map, why is the product road map important, key features and functions of the product road map, types of product road maps and this most important one how to create your own product road map. So by the end of this session you will be equipped to create and manage a product road map that keeps your team focused and aligned. So let's get started. Let's start discussing on a very interesting topic. Product road maps. This is one thing learners knowingly or unknowingly we tend to do this in all products all stages of whatever we are doing in our professional life. I'll explain more how. See the question arises what is a product road map? Consider a scenario that WhatsApp has just launched. Now it is in simple words an instant messaging app. All right, consider it just newly launched an instant messaging app. Today what we see on WhatsApp, it has got variety of features, calls, video call, audio call. It has got an option of creating groups, communities, it has an option of file sharing, maybe online payment, you know, it we can share locations, photos, PDFs, so on and so forth. It's a huge platform today. Consider a scenario wherein you are the product manager at WhatsApp. Now you have lots and lots of ideas what you can do. As of now you're just an instant messaging app. You think that first thing we can add a video call. Second thing we can add another type of voice call then we can also add sharing of files. The question arises you can't do all of it at once. Therefore a product road map is like a map that shows where your product is going. Let's say today you decide to launch a new feature. Let's allow file sharing apart from just sharing messages. Okay, this is your first step. The product is now heading towards a direction of file sharing. Also, it is a plan that tells everyone what features and improvements will come and when. Now, you can tell your product development team or you can tell your tech team. First, we're going to share the file sharing system. Then, we're going to launch voice calls. Then, we're going to launch video calls. After this we're going to launch live location. After this you're going to launch groups, communities and at the end payments. Now your tech team is well aware. They can prepare their tech architecture keeping this product road map in mind. Therefore it is helping teams know hey you know what we need to build this feature next. Also it shows the big picture and important goals. Let's say in the end we want WhatsApp to become not only an instant messaging platform but also it should become something like WhatsApp business wherein people can actually order online a small e-commerce store. Now the team is well aware of the big picture and important goals. This is where your product road map comes in the picture. Now we've already discussed why product road map is important because now everyone knows including your tech team, your marketing team, let's say you have a PR team, everyone is aware this is the direction the product is headed. Therefore all your team members can focus their efforts on stages that have been defined as per this road map. Your marketing team can highlight WhatsApp business the moment it is launched. Similarly, your PR team can reach out to small businesses to show how this could be beneficial. If at all you have an option of let's say video calling, then your marketing team can highlight that do simple video calls free of cost using WhatsApp. Then they can further highlight that you can even schedule a meeting. You can then even screen share while you're doing a video call. Therefore, everyone is on the same page. Everyone has prioritized together that what is most important at this point of time. They also know that the product is going in the right direction because everyone has cumulatively decided this is the direction we're going to take. That's the reason while building a product road map there are multiple stakeholders involved. We look at key features and functions. It says what should be included in a product road map. As we discussed with WhatsApp, we must have key features that we're going to launch next or maybe some kind of improvements. For example, WhatsApp launched something called as video calling. After they launched video calling, they further enhanced it by screen sharing on video call. They further enhanced it by launching let's sayuling a video call. In this way, you're aware of the key features and improvements. Nothing works without timelines or deadlines. So if you have highlighted over here multiple features that you know you have to launch everything will be backed by separate timelines goals or reasons for each feature simple because you can't have let's say a payment option until you have a wide adoption rate. Therefore through instant measuring video calling voice calling file sharing let's have a good customer base and then launch the payment option progress status. It also covers if multiple features were to be launched at this point of time where do we stand? It says how does the road map help with planning and communication. Your all stakeholders are now well aware because they were involved in the planning stage and they're now aware on how the product will proceed. They understand what to expect. Now once the tech team knows that there are eight features being planned, they know that the payment feature is coming last. They know that immediately we are looking at screen sharing. They can keep their resources ready. They can continue their hiring depending on the capabilities needed. Therefore, it helps you to manage your resources better as your stakeholders know what is expected. And once you have done these things well, you don't waste time and resources. Let's consider this example that if you want to launch a chat feature next month, the road map will show it clearly. So, everyone prepares for it. In this way, everyone works in the same direction. There are multiple types of road maps. Let's have a look at this. Something called timeline based, goal based or featured driven. Timeline based it shows features what will be built according to dates and months. This is good one for prioritization because you've got first one month of launching just the instant messaging then next one month for file sharing then next one month for let's say sharing location timeline base helps you track and avoid delays goal focus it shows outcomes without exact dates now I'm bored let's say I'm continuously looking at this timeline related road map and I'm only chasing these is what do you say timeline based milestones okay now I'm bored because I'm continuously working on this feature or this feature that I lose touch with what is called the big picture as an employee I can lose motivation in operational task that I lose track of big picture and obviously it affects my performance this is where your goal-based road map comes in the picture it keeps the final destin ination alive for all employees and all stakeholders. Feature-driven list built focusing on what not when use feature driven for small projects of flexible plans. Let's say you know you are a newly launched at tech startup. Consider this and you have launched a brilliant platform on the app store or on the play store. Now since you're not as scaling or you're not as you don't have as wide reach as WhatsApp has you have a very simple to the point features okay add login feature add let's say a dashboard to view performance third race query that's it three features job done maybe used by 100 users or maybe used by 500 users therefore when you're working on a small scale you look more of like a featured driven because this is one feature that has to be done and since You don't have a very big team. You don't have a very big budget. You don't have good amount of resources. Your timeline in featured driven is by default a smaller one. Therefore, you don't focus on when because obviously what you're doing is on urgent basis. So, everyone knows this is going to be done sooner. Let's look at step number one which says user research. learners whatever product you're developing and you have divided let's say a product road map into various milestones as we discussed for WhatsApp you can't do that based on what you think therefore if WhatsApp wants to continuously launch new features this demand has to come from users alone if users raise a demand please allow me to let's say share my live location or my current location then only WhatsApp will start investing resources. Therefore, talking to the users, finding out their pain points helps you in doing your user research to better allocate your resources. Now, users have given a simple problem that we find it difficult to share files. Gmail is one option, Dropbox is another option, but not everyone is using email and plus it's not as user friendly to share over a email as compared to WhatsApp. So now this is a problem they have identified. It is your job to come from this problem to a feature. This is where you define what your features would be. Let's say features are things your product can do like sending messages, tracking steps or adding friends. The same thing learners let's say sharing in WhatsApp can be done through multiple ways. Maybe you can have a separate platform for this. Maybe you can have an option of choosing what file you want to send or for location you could share using Google maps. There are multiple ways of doing that. You narrow down which you feel could be the best way. It could be just adding a plus button. Click on the plus button. Go and select what you would like to share and just share it. Decides which are most important to build first. that let's build what do people share most first pictures then PDFs then links or videos okay so keep this in this order and then start development as we proceed learners many a times there are lots of answers that we can get from competitors for example remember Instagram stories initially can anyone guess where you started seeing stories first stories feature it was I believe Snapchat then it was adopted by multiple other platforms including Instagram therefore many a times what features to have inspiration can come from your competitors if competitors love story feature customers are enjoying let's say Snapchat story so why don't we implement it on Instagram that's how sometimes market trends competitors can give you a good idea on what features you need to develop. Let's create a product road map learners. Pretty straightforward. We'll begin. Let's say once we have identified the purpose, we'll identify the audience. I'll show you how this is to be done using Excel. All right. So, let's say we have identified the purpose that you need to help people share files better. Who's going to be the audience? Everyone using WhatsApp. It could be an elderly person. It could be a youngster. It could be a teenager. Could be anyone. Therefore, we have identified the audience. Now the feedback comes that it should be there very simple. I just can click on the plus button maybe attach and share. That's it. Job done. Now let's launch it and see what all themes people would like to use it. Okay, people are happy using this way. Next what we have is let us now break this entire development process into some kind of task and milestone. This is where building a road map comes in which we're going to build in Excel next step. First we'll choose a format. Let's say we can be a timeline in Excel or could be anything. And then we go to our development phase of making a road map wherein we add milestones and we break down as we saw over here. We break down into specific task and milestones are actions. All right. Let's say we need to build something like this using Excel. How do we start? Step number one would be just mention these three things planning, implementation and closing because implementation is where the work actually gets done. So let's say you divide it into phases. Straightforward you just need to enter text. When we go to the next step is we enter some kind of a timeline. We are now building learners a timeline based road map. So we enter the timeline. Let's say starting from April going till Jan. Once we have done this we'll quickly as you can see merge certain sales. Now we have got lots of open spaces to start building our road map. We took up any shape. Let's say we have taken this shape in the planning phase and then we start making it as a flow that let's say this is where your planning is going to end. This is where your next stage of planning will continue. As you can see the implementation phase has started here once majority of your planning was done. So implementation phase one when phase one is about to end phase two. Similarly, phase 2 about to end phase three and then side by side you start closing. Let's say if your phase one is complete, you start closing it once you're nearing the end of the phase three. That's how learners you create something like of a flow we call it swim lanes. Then you add some text over here to highlight what is it that you're trying to make. For example, deploying, network building, resource planning. As we go next, we have multiple options of how do you identify that this particular step or phase has ended. This is where something known as milestones come in the picture. So identify having a milestone here. Now these milestones have been identified. You have been able to complete with different phases. This is where your product road map is now completed and your work can start. There are multiple tools. Gira one Excel we saw how it can be done notion there are multiple tools freely available to make a product road map remember this as I told earlier there are multiple stakeholders to be involved you'll have the development team you'll have the product manager you'll have marketing team PR you've got options from finance you're from HR because everything depends on resources and all of these people need to be aware of what resources they have so that they can have better resource planning now when everyone's there on the same page seeing the road map. They can allocate the resources accordingly. Keep your road map simple learners so that it's easy for everyone to understand. Do not add too many technical jarens from any domain. Focus on the goals especially the milestones so that you can celebrate certain small victories. Update the road map regularly as plans change. Remember learners road map are not permanent. They keep on changing. Maybe a regulatory change comes up and you need to switch your last feature to the first one. So keep it flexible and most importantly the entire work of development will be done by the tech team. They prepare their architectures beforehand and they hate changes on the go. Therefore if you're about to make a change, please be very clear on what is the logic behind it. Staying ahead in your career requires continuous learning and upskilling. Whether you're a student aiming to learn today's top skills or a working professional looking to advance your career, we've got you covered. Explore our impressive catalog of certification programs in cuttingedge domains, including data science, cloud computing, cyber security, AI, machine learning, or digital marketing. 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