Disciplined Entrepreneurship Startup Tactics

TACTIC 7Product Roadmap: Building Your Product's Roadmap

Entrepreneurs benefit from a balance between extremely detailed product plans and high-level direction to allow for flexibility in the product development process. Roadmapping helps set the plan for product development before ever building anything and that is where we will start.

The roadmap should translate the product vision into priorities for the product over time. The visual nature of a product roadmap allows you and your team to easily digest the next steps and it provides alignment for you and your team as to what is important in the product development process.

In This Tactic, You Will:

• Define your product vision and strategy to build alignment for yourself and your team.
• Build your initial product roadmap using the now, next, later approach.
• Refine the product roadmap to ensure alignment between product development and organization level goals.

Product Vision and Strategy

One of the many hats you'll wear as a founder is the role of product manager, where your job sits at the intersection of business, user experience, and technology. As a part of that job, you must set the product vision. The product vision defines what you hope for your product to achieve in the long term. The vision creates alignment so your team can build a roadmap that gets you to your shared goals.

From the product vision—which ...