A framework for repurposing your [broken] product roadmap

Most product roadmaps suck. 💩

Throughout my PM career, I hated them with a passion. They’re full of broken promises and disappointment.

And I’m relieved to say that I was not alone.

A poll I ran (546 responses) shows that less than 8% of product teams feel like they are getting it right.

But why is that? And what can we do to fix it?

Before we confront this abomination 👺, we need to get its origin story.

The Roadmap Origin Story

Product roadmaps were invented by Motorola [a.k.a Dr Jekyll] in the 1980’s.

They were meant to “inform” stakeholders of major upgrades so they could plan out their purchases many months in advance.

And the traditional “features on a timeline” approach was a concise format that became generally accepted.

It worked well back then [or so I’ve been told] because product releases were done infrequently.

The “Modern” Product Roadmap

Fast forward to today, this approach does not work for most industries.

And that’s because modern product teams face one constant: Uncertainty.

The rapid pace of technological advancement forces teams to continuously consider “What should I build? How should I build it? & How long will it take?”.

To succeed, product teams need flexibility to adapt.

The development function recognized this problem and shifted from waterfall to Agile. As a result, teams today run short sprints, release more frequently, and course correct often.

But the planning function seems to have missed the memo. 📝 They’re still stuck in the old-school way of putting “features on a timeline”.

Why is this? Maybe because longer-term planning is done by executives.

And they are more used to giving memos than getting them.

But jokes aside, the reality is that old-school roadmaps give product teams no flexibility and set them up for failure.

Is my product roadmap broken?

Here are some signs that your product roadmap needs to be rethought:

• You struggle to keep promises made to stakeholders [dates slipped again]

• You stick to plans that no longer make sense [sorry, features are locked in]

• Stakeholders have lost trust in you [history of poor planning]

• The product roadmap is used mostly by “management” types [builders do not rely on it]

What can I do?

I put together this “1-hour” framework to help PMs audit their current roadmap.

The output of this play should [hopefully] be a more useful roadmap template that can then be socialized within your company.

Step 1: Choose your format

To get started, you may want to reconsider the format currently used.

Action: Select the best format for your roadmap based on 1) the tool you prefer to work with and 2) what is used in your company. If you’re unsure, default to a simple Now / Next / Later layout in a doc, you can always graduate to a dedicated tool later.

Step 2: Check your roadmap components

Action: Check if your current roadmap is missing any of these components.

A) The primary components

These are the “must have” bits in your roadmap. A good product roadmap will contain:

i) Product Vision: A short, inspiring statement describing how your customer will benefit from your product.

❌ Is the highest-paid person’s opinion

✅ Is clear, inspiring & customer-driven

ii) Business Objectives: This is the “why” of your roadmap. It’ll help you measure your progress.

❌ Is ambiguous and hard to track

✅ Is exciting and rallies stakeholders

iii) Timeframe: These should be broad timeframes [don’t overcommit].

❌ Is Nov 18, 2024

✅ Is 3rd quarter 2024, or “now / next / later” format

iv) Themes: Themes focus on outcomes, not features.

❌ Is “import contacts from iPhone”

✅ Is “make onboarding effortless”

v) Disclaimer: A reminder to the reader that “things can change without notice”.

❌ Is in “tiny” legal language, hidden at the bottom

✅ Is in a visible location, in simple language

B) The secondary components

These are the “nice to have” bits that build trust and save you a hundred status questions:

vi) Confidence labels: Tag each item as committed, likely, or exploring so readers instantly know what’s solid and what’s still a bet.

❌ Everything looks equally certain

✅ Readers can see what might move

vii) Success metrics: State how you’ll know each theme worked.

❌ “Ship the new dashboard”

✅ “Cut time-to-first-insight from 5 min to under 1”

viii) Links to detail: Connect each theme to the underlying spec or JIRA epic for the people who want to go deeper.

❌ A flat picture with no way in

✅ Clickable themes that lead to the real work

Step 3: Swap features for outcomes

This is the heart of the fix. A broken roadmap lists what you’ll build. A useful one describes what will be true for customers and the business.

Action: Take your top 5 roadmap items and rewrite each one as an outcome, then drop it into Now / Next / Later:

• Now — the outcomes we’re actively driving toward this quarter

• Next — what we’ll likely tackle once “Now” lands

• Later — directional bets we’re not committing to yet

“Build SSO” becomes “Enterprise admins can onboard their whole team in one click.” Same work, but now anyone reading it understands why it’s on the list, and you keep the freedom to change how you deliver it.

Step 4: Socialize it

A roadmap nobody trusts is just a document. The last step is winning buy-in.

Action: Walk one or two key stakeholders through the new format before you publish it widely. Explain three things:

1. Why you moved from dates to time horizons

2. What the confidence labels mean

3. That the roadmap will change, and that’s a feature, not a bug

Get their feedback, fold it in, then share broadly.

Roadmaps don’t have to be a graveyard of broken promises.

Audit what you have, strip out the false precision, rebuild it around outcomes, and bring people along. Do that, and you’ll land in the 8% who actually get it right.

See you next week. 👋🏼