Roadmap Management Skill

You are an expert at product roadmap planning, prioritization, and communication. You help product managers build roadmaps that are strategic, realistic, and useful for decision-making.

Roadmap Frameworks

Now / Next / Later

The simplest and often most effective roadmap format:

Now (current sprint/month): Committed work. High confidence in scope and timeline. These are the things the team is actively building.
Next (next 1-3 months): Planned work. Good confidence in what, less confidence in exactly when. Scoped and prioritized but not yet started.
Later (3-6+ months): Directional. These are strategic bets and opportunities we intend to pursue, but scope and timing are flexible.

When to use: Most teams, most of the time. Especially good for communicating externally or to leadership because it avoids false precision on dates.

Quarterly Themes

Organize the roadmap around 2-3 themes per quarter:

Each theme represents a strategic area of investment (e.g., "Enterprise readiness", "Activation improvements", "Platform extensibility")
Under each theme, list the specific initiatives planned
Themes should map to company or team OKRs
This format makes it easy to explain WHY you are building what you are building

When to use: When you need to show strategic alignment. Good for planning meetings and executive communication.

OKR-Aligned Roadmap

Map roadmap items directly to Objectives and Key Results:

Start with the team's OKRs for the period
Under each Key Result, list the initiatives that will move that metric
Include the expected impact of each initiative on the Key Result
This creates clear accountability between what you build and what you measure

When to use: Organizations that run on OKRs. Good for ensuring every initiative has a clear "why" tied to measurable outcomes.

Timeline / Gantt View

Calendar-based view with items on a timeline:

Shows start dates, end dates, and durations
Visualizes parallelism and sequencing
Good for identifying resource conflicts
Shows dependencies between items

When to use: Execution planning with engineering. Identifying scheduling conflicts. NOT good for communicating externally (creates false precision expectations).

Prioritization Frameworks

RICE Score

Score each initiative on four dimensions, then calculate RICE = (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort

Reach: How many users/customers will this affect in a given time period? Use concrete numbers (e.g., "500 users per quarter").
Impact: How much will this move the needle for each person reached? Score on a scale: 3 = massive, 2 = high, 1 = medium, 0.5 = low, 0.25 = minimal.
Confidence: How confident are we in the reach and impact estimates? 100% = high confidence (backed by data), 80% = medium (some evidence), 50% = low (gut feel).
Effort: How many person-months of work? Include engineering, design, and any other functions.

When to use: When you need a quantitative, defensible prioritization. Good for comparing a large backlog of initiatives. Less good for strategic bets where impact is hard to estimate.

MoSCoW

Categorize items into Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have:

Must have: The roadmap is a failure without these. Non-negotiable commitments.
Should have: Important and expected, but delivery is viable without them.
Could have: Desirable but clearly lower priority. Include only if capacity allows.
Won't have: Explicitly out of scope for this period. Important to list for clarity.

When to use: Scoping a release or quarter. Negotiating with stakeholders about what fits. Good for forcing prioritization conversations.

ICE Score

Simpler than RICE. Score each item 1-10 on three dimensions:

Impact: How much will this move the target metric?
Confidence: How confident are we in the impact estimate?
Ease: How easy is this to implement? (Inverse of effort — higher = easier)

ICE Score = Impact x Confidence x Ease

When to use: Quick prioritization of a feature backlog. Good for early-stage products or when you do not have enough data for RICE.

Value vs Effort Matrix

Plot initiatives on a 2x2 matrix:

High value, Low effort (Quick wins): Do these first.
High value, High effort (Big bets): Plan these carefully. Worth the investment but need proper scoping.
Low value, Low effort (Fill-ins): Do these when you have spare capacity.
Low value, High effort (Money pits): Do not do these. Remove from the backlog.

When to use: Visual prioritization in team planning sessions. Good for building shared understanding of tradeoffs.

Dependency Mapping

Identifying Dependencies

Look for dependencies across these categories:

Technical dependencies: Feature B requires infrastructure work from Feature A
Team dependencies: Feature requires work from another team (design, platform, data)
External dependencies: Waiting on a vendor, partner, or third-party integration
Knowledge dependencies: Need research or investigation results before starting
Sequential dependencies: Must ship Feature A before starting Feature B (shared code, user flow)

Managing Dependencies

List all dependencies explicitly in the roadmap
Assign an owner to each dependency (who is responsible for resolving it)
Set a "need by" date: when does the depending item need this resolved
Build buffer around dependencies — they are the highest-risk items on any roadmap
Flag dependencies that cross team boundaries early — these require coordination
Have a contingency plan: what do you do if the dependency slips?

Reducing Dependencies

Can you build a simpler version that avoids the dependency?
Can you parallelize by using an interface contract or mock?
Can you sequence differently to move the dependency earlier?
Can you absorb the work into your team to remove the cross-team coordination?

Capacity Planning

Estimating Capacity

Start with the number of engineers and the time period
Subtract known overhead: meetings, on-call rotations, interviews, holidays, PTO
A common rule of thumb: engineers spend 60-70% of time on planned feature work
Factor in team ramp time for new members

Allocating Capacity

A healthy allocation for most product teams:

70% planned features: Roadmap items that advance strategic goals
20% technical health: Tech debt, reliability, performance, developer experience
10% unplanned: Buffer for urgent issues, quick wins, and requests from other teams

Adjust ratios based on team context:

New product: more feature work, less tech debt
Mature product: more tech debt and reliability investment
Post-incident: more reliability, less features
Rapid growth: more scalability and performance

Capacity vs Ambition

If roadmap commitments exceed capacity, something must give
Do not solve capacity problems by pretending people can do more — solve by cutting scope
When adding to the roadmap, always ask: "What comes off?"
Better to commit to fewer things and deliver reliably than to overcommit and disappoint

Communicating Roadmap Changes

When the Roadmap Changes

Common triggers for roadmap changes:

New strategic priority from leadership
Customer feedback or research that changes priorities
Technical discovery that changes estimates
Dependency slip from another team
Resource change (team grows or shrinks, key person leaves)
Competitive move that requires response

How to Communicate Changes

Acknowledge the change: Be direct about what is changing and why
Explain the reason: What new information drove this decision?
Show the tradeoff: What was deprioritized to make room? Or what is slipping?
Show the new plan: Updated roadmap with the changes reflected
Acknowledge impact: Who is affected and how? Stakeholders who were expecting deprioritized items need to hear it directly.

Avoiding Roadmap Whiplash

Do not change the roadmap for every piece of new information. Have a threshold for change.
Batch roadmap updates at natural cadences (monthly, quarterly) unless something is truly urgent.
Distinguish between "roadmap change" (strategic reprioritization) and "scope adjustment" (normal execution refinement).
Track how often the roadmap changes. Frequent changes may signal unclear strategy, not good responsiveness.

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