How to write a really clear roadmap, the goal to achieve with the roadmap, the optimal format, and examples of this being done well across the project/industry.
- IPFS Team Coordination Toolkit
- On writing product roadmaps
- Filecoin Project Roadmap
- Roadmap Examples and Templates
What: Take as input a Vision doc and a list of Requirements, and output a path and rough schedule to achieve that Vision by completing the Requirements in a series of milestones.
How:
- 👂🏼 Gather Ideas: Collect inputs and data from across your project. Ex. what do our stakeholders need? What does the data tell us about our project’s progress? What are our project’s objectives?
- 🎯 Draft top-level goals: Create a vision statement with the top problems you aim to solve. What is important to achieve? For whom? Why?
- 🗓 Chunk progress into milestones: Define the incremental targets to hit in order to accomplish the top-level goals. What must be true to reach this milestone? On what timeline? With what dependencies? What does this unlock?
- 🗂 Assign projects to milestones: Fill in key projects that are necessary, nice to have, and out of scope to reach those milestones and bucket them accordingly. Why is each project important to achieve that milestone? Which are highest priority? Do they have any dependencies? Approx how hard/big is each project? (This likely involves iterating on or shuffling the milestones themselves based on capabilities/effort.)
- ♻️ Iterate iterate iterate: Review this draft with stakeholders to assess whether cross-cutting dependencies can be met, if you’re prioritizing the right work, which gaps or open questions you haven’t thought of yet.
- 🏁 Finalize (for now): Get sign off on this version of the roadmap for the upcoming time window. Present it to cross-functional partners and start using it as a communication device to align effort, priorities, and cross-team information sharing.
Why:
- Ensure that incremental work builds up to the desired goal
- Create stages of improvement / functionality to ship incrementally to users
- Document dependencies and how progressive milestones build on each other
- Align expectations about which capabilities will be available in a given time window
- Be a communication tool to async answer questions like “when will we work on X”, “what is shipping this quarter”, and “what’s the status on feature/capability X”
- Milestone 1 (ETA)
- Project / Feature / Capability 1
- Expected impact / use cases
- Project / Feature / Capability 2
- Expected impact / use cases
- Expected impact / use cases / partners
- Project / Feature / Capability 3
- Expected impact / use cases
Milestone 2 (ETA)
- Project / Feature / Capability 1
- Expected impact / use cases
- Project / Feature / Capability 2
- Expected impact / use cases
- Expected impact / use cases / partners
Milestone 3 (ETA)
- Project / Feature / Capability 1
- Expected impact / use cases
- Project / Feature / Capability 2
- Expected impact / use cases
- Expected impact / use cases / partners
- Project / Feature / Capability 3
- Expected impact / use cases