5 Stages of Roadmapping Maturiy

An organization or an individual goes through 5 stages of maturity when building Roadmaps. The most basic one starts with the product manager holding the all the information to themselves to the most advanced stage where everyone in the organization uses the Product Roadmap as their North Star. These 5 stages are:

1. “I Tell You What to Do.”We don’t have any Roadmap. The product manager tosses requirements over the wall to engineering, and we don’t know why we’re building what we’re building.
2. “Our Product Team has a Roadmap.”The product manager creates an ad hoc release plan, but isn’t shared outside the circle of decision-makers. Roadmaps are only created when needed to communicate with leadership, changes frequently, and only lists features – not objectives or larger goals.
3. “Our Product Team has a Shared Roadmap about Upcoming Features.”The product team maintains a relatively stable Roadmap which is shared with other teams at our company. We know which features are being built, but we aren’t sure what those features are meant to achieve, or how they fit into our larger business goals. Sometimes our product team tells us specific release dates and can’t meet those commitments.
4. “Our Product Team has a Shared Product Vision.”The product team maintains a shared strategic Roadmap which highlights the business goals they’re focusing on, and which features support those goals. Stakeholders can dive deeper into the business context behind each feature. Nevertheless, other teams don’t look at this Roadmap often, and our customer-facing teams don’t feel comfortable speaking to the Roadmap publicly or conveying our broader goals.
5. “Everyone Rallies Around Our Product Strategy and Roadmap.”We all have access to the Roadmap we need, and we all actively refer to the Roadmap on a regular basis. Every person at our organization understands where our product is headed and why, and can evangelize this vision to stakeholders and customers.