Product Roadmap

Product Roadmap

The product roadmap provides a multi-generational view of the offerings within a product line.

When to use

The product roadmap is used for strategic planning of the product line and to develop the scope and schedule boundaries for new product development projects. These are set to create a new product offering on the desired roadmap date.

Instructions

The product roadmap is presented as a timeline with key milestones associated with critical events in a product line. Examples of critical events are new product offerings, entry into new markets, or production transfer to a different manufacturing facility. The roadmap is used by product development and the functions to plan their short range and long range activities. This includes new product development projects, capital expenditures, and hiring personnel for a new operation.

With respect to the launch of new products, the product roadmap is integrated with product lifecycle planning to ensure new products launch before existing products drop into decline. Each new product launch is a new generation of the product line. The new product generation is typically described in terms of features and functionality, launch date, the goal for market positioning with that product, and a high-level financial assessment of costs and benefits from that generation Often these new generations have an organizing theme that aligns the development with the product line objectives. While the roadmap normally shows major launches, minor upgrades, bug fixes, and productivity improvements can be occurring at any time and normally are not reflected on the roadmap.  

There are a number of terms that are often used when describing the generations of a product roadmap.

• Product Mix: The total assortment of products and services offered by a company
• Product Mix Width:  The number of different categories of goods and services offered by a company.
• Product Mix Length:  The number of total products in all product lines within the product mix.
• Line Depth:  The number of subcategories within a product line.
• Line Consistency:  How closely related the products that make up the line are.
• Line Vulnerability:  The percentage of sales or profits that are derived from only a few products in the line.

Hints & tips

• Periodically review the product roadmap (quarterly?) and update for changes in market and industry conditions.
• Product roadmaps are not precise project charters. Once the decision is made to start a new product development project, the project initiation processes are started and a project charter is then created. Don’t spend too much time trying to make the descriptions of each generation perfect.