When you start a new project, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the broad scope of planning and the best execution sequence. Where should you start? What timelines are reasonable? How can you communicate your vision to the team?
These are typical questions for managers, and a roadmap presentation is a tool that many people use to convert project pre-planning confusion into clarity.
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What is a Roadmap?
A road map is traditionally used as a navigational tool, displaying all of the routes in the region for cars. However, the phrase ‘roadmap’ has lately gained traction in the corporate sector, notably in project management and software product development.
A roadmap, as opposed to more strict strategic plans, is a dynamic document. As you move forward with the execution or get new market data, it should be changed, updated, and enhanced.
The primary goal of any form of the project plan is threefold:
- Serve as a reflection of the major aims and objectives
- Notify all project stakeholders of the critical milestones.
- Demonstrate how short-term efforts correspond with long-term corporate goals.
However, keep in mind that corporate roadmaps are more than just project trackers or pictorial to-do lists. When it comes to producing day-to-day lower-level choices and defining the importance of various tasks and activities, it’s a higher-level document that acts as a ‘single source of truth.’
Roadmaps are a regular byproduct of larger strategic planning meetings. A strong roadmap presentation is visual and actionable, breaking down the broad project vision into particular goals, phases, and checkpoints. All following project planning actions must be consistent with these.
5 Super Easy Steps to Create a Roadmap Presentation
Preparing a roadmap presentation necessitates some forethought. Do you already have a defined project vision and plan in place? Did you obtain market and customer data to back up or refute your assumptions?
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When you identify your market trajectories, pre-existing business limits, intended end value, and ultimate company ambitions, you should start building a roadmap presentation. If all of them are in order, you may proceed with following step-by-step instructions.
1. Plan Roadmap Goals
A roadmap is a streamlined form of more extensive planning operations. It establishes the vector and offers guidance to those in charge of implementation. As a result, before you begin creating, you should clarify your objectives.
Your product roadmap presentation should express what requirements your customers have, the effect and value of meeting those needs, and what will be done to meet those needs — not the technical specifics of how those needs will be met.
2. Prioritize Your Goals
You should have a list of objectives. The next step is to prioritize them and plan them out on a timeline. The majority of roadmap presentations cover a quarter or a year. Few go any further since the market landscape is always changing, and company goals must alter to keep up.
As you go through your list, attempt to group all of your objectives into:
- Short-term goals (weekly/monthly)
- Long-term goals (quarterly/annually)
Then arrange them all into a visual roadmap presentation. Is your canvas overcrowded with many overlaps? Then you may need to categorize certain goals into categories and prioritize them according to strategic value.
The easiest strategy to prioritize goals on your roadmap presentation is to go back through your project vision and consider which stages would get you the closest to realizing them. Also, if you’re creating a product roadmap presentation, think about the various value objectives you will generate for existing and future consumers. Increase the importance of customer-centric things.
3. Choose any Type of Business Roadmap Template
There is no uniform pattern for creating roadmap presentations since road mapping can be used for a billion distinct projects. This implies you may try out various tactics and strategies, such as:
Gantt charts
Gantt charts are popular among managers for creating action-oriented roadmap presentations. The obvious benefit is that your team can view all of the scheduled activities, requirements, and timeframes in one location. Furthermore, such charts facilitate progress tracking.
Timeline Roadmaps
A short timeline generally suffices for creating a high-level external roadmap presentation for updating project stakeholders. A timeline template, in essence, informs about the intended tasks as well as crucial time intervals.
Metrics-based Roadmaps
Many technological teams that want more precision choose to use roadmap presentation tools. This is a suitable choice when you need to extract precise data from planned Sprints or the software development backlog. Similarly, route mapping is useful for creating your project’s work breakdown structure (WBS).
4. Define Sucess Metrics
Roadmaps include significant milestones and checkpoints that aid in the effective advancement of initiatives. However, in order to be effective, a roadmap and its users must define success and how it will be evaluated.
There are various metrics that are useful for product roadmap presentations. Here is a small list of sales and marketing indicators to consider when presenting your product roadmap presentation.
- CAC: Customer acquisition costs
- CLV: Customer lifetime value
- CSAT: Customer satisfaction score
- Average revenue generated per user
5. Always Be Ready for Changes
Roadmap presentations are never rigorous. They will alter as a result of market circumstances, internal organizational changes, and so on. As a result, you must remain flexible in adapting your roadmap presentation depending on fresh information.
As part of broader change management operations, ensure that all dependent processes and tasks on the roadmap presentation are tweaked, as well as the deadlines. Then, ensure that any suggested changes are consistent with the original project concept.
Wrapping It Up
The most crucial thing to know before delivering your roadmap presentation is that this is not the place to gain approval for your goals. That may appear to be contradictory. But it should be just an affirmation of previously established alignment prior to the meeting.
The goal of a roadmap presentation is to offer direction. It is not a comprehensive implementation plan but rather your strategic vision articulated in a sequence of phases and milestones. You may not have all of the specifics worked out yet, which is great. Share your initial intentions, and then update your roadmap presentation when new information becomes available.