Get started on the Roadmap board
Ever feel like the roadmaps you make in Excel or Powerpoint are out-of-date the moment you finalize them? Are colleagues always stopping by for status updates? Do they understand what's coming next, let alone where you'll be in six months?
As product managers, we've long envisioned a dynamically updating roadmap that we can use to communicate the plan and rally everyone around where the product is headed and why.
Meet the Roadmap board.
In this article:
- Key takeaway
- Create your roadmap
- Understand roadmap types
- Customize your roadmap
- Share your roadmap
- Next steps
Key takeaway
The Roadmap board is an interactive visualization of your plans that you can share with colleagues across the organization. Here you can create different roadmaps for different audiences and they'll all automatically remain up-to-date.
Create your Roadmap
Each roadmap can be configured to group features by when they'll be released or their current status.
- Click the + button next to your teamspace or folder name.
- From the drop-down menu, select Roadmap.
- Then choose which type of roadmap you'd like to create:
Understand roadmap types
Features by release roadmaps
Grouping by release is helpful for communicating when features may be available. The way you name releases is up to you, and can be adapted to fit your team's conventions.
Learn more:
- How to create a Release plan roadmap
- How to create a Sprint plan roadmap
- How to create a Now-next-later roadmap
Features by status roadmaps
Grouping by status is helpful for seeing what phase a feature is in today: New idea? Under consideration? Candidate? In discovery? In delivery? Ready for launch?
Status values are customizable and can be updated by an admin in workspace settings.
Learn more:
Features in time roadmaps
Timeline roadmaps are helpful for visualizing when you might tackle various objectives or work on features that will be part of more granular releases. Backwards-plan from date-based milestones like analyst briefings, marketing launches, or industry events.
Of course, in an Agile environment, you expect to adapt your plan as you learn along the way. That means it's best to avoid setting expectations with stakeholders around when precisely a feature will be delivered when that's subject to change. This also gives your team the leeway they need to ensure they're learning and adapting as they progress, so they can deliver the right feature, even if at a later date than initially planned.
Learn more:
- How to create a Releases timeline roadmap
- How to create a Features timeline roadmap
- How to create an Objectives timeline roadmap
Customize your roadmap
When you're using your roadmap for planning purposes, it can be helpful to display additional values on roadmap cards, like effort, owner, team, and priority.
You can also decide whether to show hidden cards or underlying subfeatures.
Hidden cards are those that have been manually hidden (by selecting the eye icon beside a product, component, feature, or subfeature.) When a card has been hidden, it won't be visible to any contributor/viewer viewing the roadmap but it will still be visible to other makers. It will also be visible to you unless you choose to hide it with this setting (e.g. if you're doing a live Roadmap presentation via screenshare).
Create multiple roadmaps
Once you have made some adjustments to a roadmap, such as changing how features are grouped or applying a filter, you'll see the option appear to save the roadmap. (You can also use the dropdown to save as a new roadmap.)
Just like saved boards on the Features board, any updates that aren't saved will be treated as ad hoc changes and the roadmap will revert to the last saved version once you navigate away.
To create a new roadmap from scratch, click the + button next to the teamspace or folder name and select Roadmap.
Share your Roadmap
You can opt to share a roadmap with other makers, contributors, and viewers.
When you invite colleagues from across your organization into Productboard as contributors or viewers, they'll see whichever roadmaps have been shared with them. They won't see any roadmaps that are private or that have only been shared with makers.
To grant your colleagues access to a roadmap, click the Share button in the top right:
You'll have the ability to grant roadmap access to a specific person, or to any users with a certain type of role:
You can click into the menu to print your roadmap, or export it to a PNG.
Next steps
✅ Invite a test viewer
If you're an admin, invite a colleague into your workspace as a viewer to see what they'll be able to see and do on your roadmap.
school Productboard Academy Webinar
Learn best practices around visualizing your roadmap and sharing it with colleagues across the organization in our on-demand webinar. A member of team Productboard will explain key concepts, share tips, and answer all your questions so you feel prepared to hit the ground running.
Watch "Align Around the Roadmap"
Note: Webinars are available for trial users and paid customers only.
Wrap-up
We've covered our auto-generated Roadmap, best for sharing plans with internal stakeholders. Now let's move on to the Portal, where you can get feedback on ideas and share high-level plans with colleagues as well as customers.
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