A roadmap is a visualized plan of what you want to build overtime. A great product roadmap communicates the ‘why’ and the ‘what’, whereas a product backlog communicates the ‘how.’

What is a Product Roadmap? 

<ul><li>They provide vision and direction to your team</li><li>They ensure all teams are on the same page when it comes to product priorities and provides transparency to all stakeholders. </li><li>They allow for feedback and consensus so all team members and stakeholders can buy in to the proces</li></ul>

Why Are Product Roadmaps Important?

A roadmap is akin to using a compass to figure out which direction you need to travel. Roadmaps provide vision and clarity but by no means are they inflexible or the answer to everything. A great PM has the ability to adapt to and/or foresee market shifts happening and make changes to their roadmap and strategy accordingly.

Can Roadmaps Change/Evolve? 

<ol><li>Evolving customer, business or industry needs may require changing up your roadmap in order to address them in order to get the most impact.</li><li>Analytics Data - You may think that the feature you’re working on will revolutionize the customer experience, but if the metrics show otherwise, you have to evaluate whether or not to go back to the drawing board or to scrap the idea altogether. </li><li>Early Stage Product Idea - Similar to evolving needs, early stage products can sometimes change strategy and direction overnight due to unforeseen circumstances (similar to a startup).</li></ol>

Few Reasons Why Roadmaps Can Change... 

There are many different ways you and your team can build a product roadmap. Each type of product roadmap serves a specific purpose that should match the needs of your team, stakeholders, and customers.<ol><li>Status-Oriented</li><li>Theme-Oriented</li><li>Outcome-Oriented</li></ol>

Types Of Product Roadmaps

A status-oriented roadmap allows everyone to better understand where the team is currently at, without necessarily committing to any kind of time frame. It’s organized into three columns that are based around the status of each deliverable—now, next, and later. It helps with prioritization. It also gives room for the next and later columns to change. Each item (typically an epic) shown on this roadmap should align to a higher level organization goal or strategic objective (e.g. Increase ARR by 5%).

Status-Oriented Roadmap

Theme-oriented roadmaps are a way to communicate the value that will be delivered to the users, without describing exactly what the team will deliver within that theme.This keep the team focused on solving the larger problem at hand, and anytime something else is brought up, it’s easy to ask one another if it fits into the theme of the current time period. Theme-oriented product roadmaps are quarterly based.Once your stakeholders align on those themes, you can nest epics beneath those themes. This allows team to get a better understanding of how the work ties to the larger business goals.

Theme-Oriented Roadmaps

Where it differs to theme-oriented roadmaps is what’s at the highest level: an outcome. An outcome is defined as “something that follows as a result or consequence.” By agreeing on the outcomes you will be driving toward, it leaves full power to the team to define the solution. Most stakeholders don’t really care about a specific feature you are working on. But, what problems the team is working to solve. e.g., an outcome that a product team may be working to solve could be, “Improve our day-7 app retention rate by 10%.” Then, it’s up to the team to figure out how to make that happen.

Outcome-Oriented Roadmaps

No matter the approach you choose for your roadmap, you’ll follow a general roadmapping process to get the ball rolling. <ol><li>Establish organizational and product goals with your team</li><li>Determine how your product can achieve said goals (this should be a group collaboration with your team)</li><li>Create a draft roadmap</li><li>Ask for feedback from your team</li><li>Get stakeholders’ buy-in to the roadmap</li></ol>

How to Build a Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is a visualized plan of what you want to build for your set of features over time.

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

timemanagement

Time Management

teamwork

Teamwork

Product Roadmap Guide: Why It’s Important And Types 

Usability is “the extent to which a product helps users achieve goals in a specific use case with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.”

What is Usability? 

A good user experience = More satisfied users + less errors/mistakes + more revenue for the businessAs designers, we want the products we build to be satisfying and easy to use, but how can we know that’s the case? We start by measuring the user experience with evidence rather than opinions and evaluate the outcome with UX metrics.What do we do with the data obtained? We refine products iteratively and impact users for good.

Why measure usability of a product? 

UX metrics are a set of quantitative data points used to measure, compare and track the user experience of a website/app over time. UX metrics measure success towards higher business goals called KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as revenue growth, retention, increased user numbers.

What are UX metrics? 

Before collecting data, it’s a good idea to outline a basic measurement strategy.<ul><li>Decide which metrics to measure.</li><li>Establish clear timeframes in order to understand the trends that emerge. The metrics gathered in a single day may tell a much different story than those gathered over the course of a week.</li><li>Use both qualitative and quantitative metrics</li></ul>

But First..... 

There are 2 types of UX metrics:<ol><li>Behavioral metrics - that study how people interact with the product </li><li>Attitudinal metrics - explore how people feel and say about the product before, during or after using it</li></ol>

Types of UX Metrics

<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">Task Success Rate - what percentage of users complete each step in a user flow.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Time on Task - how long a user spends completing a specific task (on first attempt and on repeat attempts)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Conversion Rate - % of users who took a certain action ( e.g. subscribed or bought something)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Retention Rate - what percentage of users continue using your product long-term.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Search vs Navigation Pattern - This ratio can provide information about the pages/features most frequently used.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">User Error Rate - how often users make a mistake during a specific task. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Abandonment Rate - % of users abandoning a task</li></ol>

Behavioral Metrics

<ol><li>Net Promoter Score (NPS) - On a scale of 0-10how willing they are to promote you to their network</li><li>System Usability Scale (SUS)- one of the most popular questionnaires used to assess the usability of a product. It consists of 10 statements that users need to rate on a five-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.</li><li>Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) - measures users’ satisfaction with your website or webapp. After they attempt a task, regardless of whether they manage to achieve its goal or not, have them answer one or a few questions about how difficult the task was.</li></ol>

Attitudinal Metrics

https://sematext.com/blog/ux-metrics/

More on How to Calculate these Metrics... 

As designers, we want the products we build to be satisfying and easy to use, but how can we be sure that we’re actually solving the problems users face? It all starts by measuring the user experience with evidence rather than opinions.

Product Roadmap Guide: Why It’s Important And Types

Important UX Metrics to Measure User Experience

Ayesha Dar