All product roadmaps are unique to the product goals, needs, and priorities. That’s why it can be intimidating to create a roadmap from scratch even if you’ve made one in the past.

The good thing is: you can take inspiration from a product roadmap template. Whether you’re scaling a product portfolio or launching your MVP, there’s a product roadmap example for your needs.

What is a Product Roadmap?

A product strategy roadmap outlines the course for creating your product while keeping the big vision in mind. It aims to align your team and tasks towards your product’s long-term vision.

When creating a product roadmap, ask questions like:

What is our big vision for this product that we want to achieve?
What things need to be prioritized to achieve our goals?
How exactly will we move from point A to point B?

A good product roadmap is flexible and adaptable to iterations. As your startup move forwards, your roadmap should have room for user feedback and a change of plans.

Key Components of a Strong Product Roadmap

Each product roadmap is different and serves a unique goal. However, there are several components that are essential for every roadmap. These include:

Goals and vision: The bigger picture of your product goals and milestones
Current tasks: Prioritized features that need to be created
Release dates and timelines: Deadlines for key milestones, features, and product versions
The ‘why’ of your priorities: How each step ties to your product vision
Who is assigned: The resources you need to complete the task
Metrics: The success metrics you’ll use to measure impact

7 Best Product Roadmap Examples

There’s no template to create an effective roadmap. However, having a product roadmap example can ease the process when you’re measuring the effectiveness of your current roadmap.

Here are seven of the best product roadmap examples for you to try:

1. Goals-based roadmaps

Goals-based roadmaps are focused on your strategic goals, organizing everything around them. This includes planned features, release dates, and metrics — all of them tied to your product’s vision.

They’re a form of internal roadmap, best for aligning strategic objectives and your vision. Generally, goals-based roadmaps are used by executive stakeholders as they create a great space for investor support.

Goals-based roadmaps are especially beneficial for agile framework-based startups. Since these roadmaps are flexible, you can always change the plans without losing the bigger picture.

2. Features-based roadmaps

A features-based roadmap, as the name suggests, is centered around the specific features being developed for each phase. These roadmaps still tie back to high-level goals. However, the goals aren’t the focus of a features-based roadmap.

Unlike goals-based roadmaps, features-based roadmaps are more granular. They work best for product teams, development teams, and engineering teams to align them on the timelines of each feature.

You can expect this type of roadmap to have details on:

Prioritized features
Release dates for each feature
Priority level for each feature
Ownership
Expected timeline and resources needed
Dependencies

You can create these roadmaps as a timeline view or a Gantt chart. They can also be grouped into cards or boards. Since features-based roadmaps are tangible, they are also excellent as a product launch roadmap.

3. Timeline roadmaps

Timeline roadmaps focus on the product development process and its stages. They show the journey from your MVP to the final version of your app.

They are typically created as a timeline view with the upcoming releases and milestones. If needed, you can also make the roadmap more granular by including dependencies, features to be released, and release dates.

Timeline roadmaps are typically used for complex products with multiple aspects. It’s mainly because you can view both the long-term vision and short-term plans within the same roadmap. Thus, it stays accessible for cross-team collaboration as well as for stakeholders.

4. Portfolio roadmaps

Portfolio roadmaps are an essential for teams with multiple products. These roadmaps become one detailed roadmap for all of your products. Hence, every product stays organized and on the map.

With multiple products, these are high-level roadmaps. Portfolio roadmaps typically include specific releases and milestones, with high-level initiatives for each product.

These are especially useful for strategic planning to ensure that your entire product portfolio is aligned with the key business goals and objectives. In addition, a clear picture allows teams to avoid any unnecessary efforts.

5. Scrum roadmaps

A scrum roadmap, also known as an ‘agile roadmap’ or ‘sprint plan roadmap’, is best for teams working in an agile environment. It is a tactical, agile product roadmap that details project-level tasks.

This type of roadmap is great for project management due to its granular nature. These roadmaps usually organize development plans, epics, and milestones in timeboxed sprints. Each sprint represents the tasks for a specific time period.

Built for agile environments, scrum roadmaps are more focused on short-term plans and goals. That’s why they’re best for development teams who aim to build and iterate.

6. Epics roadmaps

Similar to scrum roadmaps, epics roadmaps work best for agile environments. The difference lies in the way the two roadmaps work.

Unlike a scrum roadmap that focuses on sprints, an epics roadmap focuses more on the high-level strategic view. It shows how upcoming development connects with the larger product goals. The vision of an epics roadmap goes over months rather than days.

These roadmaps work well for executive teams to visualize and communicate upcoming plans. Since an epics roadmap provides the vision for a scrum roadmap, they can be used in tandem.

7. Theme-based roadmaps

Theme-based roadmaps are one of the highest-level roadmaps that help you organize everything into prioritized themes, also known as “buckets” for the upcoming tasks. They are flexible and thus, great for startups that are just launching their MVP.

You can develop a theme-based roadmap by creating themes for your product work. Specify these themes around your product area, but not the features.

These roadmaps are great excellent for high-level communication between teams. But since they don’t organize specific features or timelines, they aren’t as actionable as other roadmaps.

Turn your roadmap into an app

Once you’ve created your product roadmap, it’s time to work on it. Generally, it will take you months to launch your app’s V1 as you build it from scratch.

However, AI app builders like Natively cut the timeline to just a few hours. You can build an app and launch the first version in a few hours with Natively — all without writing any code.

To build an app with Natively, you need:

A good prompt for your app idea

And with an idea, you can build an app, validate your idea, and iterate on user feedback. Make your roadmap useful all by yourself — build your app now.