In general, project roadmaps include the following components:
Project goals or objectives
Resource allocation and budget
Important phases, milestones, and high-level deadlines
Responsibilities and assigned work for cross-functional teams, stakeholders, or partners
Your project roadmap should be a collaborative and dynamic tool. You will revisit and update it as your project comes to life. Whether you are navigating complex dependencies or streamlining workflows, creating this type of roadmap will help drive a project forward.
This guide covers project roadmap concepts and breaks down how to create one for an upcoming effort. Learn how you can communicate the right level of detail for every audience — from high-level updates for leadership to actionable tasks for cross-functional teams.
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Why are project roadmaps important?
A project roadmap is a powerful tool for helping everyone understand a project's goals and your time-based plan for how to achieve them. This type of roadmap helps you with:
Accountability | Show what each team will deliver and when. Track progress, ensure folks meet deadlines, and keep everyone accountable to their work. |
Alignment and prioritization | Connect project goals to the activities and tasks on your roadmap so everyone understands their contributions to your project's success. Priorities might shift, so use the roadmap to guide prioritization decisions and ensure what you are working toward connects back to your goals. |
Communication | Keep teammates aligned and update key stakeholders on project progress. This type of roadmap communicates plans throughout each phase of a project's lifecycle. |
Coordination | Synchronize shared work, dependencies, and handoffs. This roadmap gives everyone a view of deliverables and timing. |
Visibility | Create customized roadmap views for various stakeholders to illustrate everyone's role in the project. This gives folks the opportunity to ask questions, sharpen expectations, and quickly spot problems related to scope or limited resources. |
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Which projects need a roadmap?
Any project or program with strategic goals, a budget and timeline, and multiple stakeholders can benefit from a roadmap. For example:
A manufacturing facility project manager can manage the rollout of new production lines or equipment.
A business analyst can visualize the implementation of a new business intelligence tool.
An event manager can share the event strategy and plans for the upcoming year.
Your roadmap's focus will always depend on the specifics of what you manage. Defining the project's scope, success criteria, requirements, and internal and external stakeholders will guide you toward creating a clear and actionable project roadmap.
Project roadmap vs. project plan vs. project charter
Project roadmaps, plans, and charters — do project managers need all three? The answer is likely yes, given the differences and purposes of these documents:
Project charter | A project charter is a document that summarizes project objectives and scope. Think of it like a business case for the project, with high-level goals, major areas of focus, success metrics, and budget. People typically use a charter to get stakeholder buy-in when initiating a new project. |
Project plan | A project plan guides the project team toward the specific details of how you will achieve the project objectives. It can include project requirements, tasks, deadlines, roles, responsibilities, and resources. |
Project roadmap | The project roadmap is the visualization of your project plans. It lays out your goals, the work you will do, and when you will deliver it. |
Your organization might use other terms for these same concepts. For example, a project charter can also be called a project definition, a project statement, or a project brief. The names of the documents might vary, but their purposes are similar; every successful project requires you to outline the objectives, activities, and deadlines required to move the project forward.
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Project roadmap vs. product roadmap
Related? Definitely. Essentially the same? Absolutely not. Even though there are some similarities, project and product roadmaps have several key differences. Distinguishing between the two is easier when you understand how a project and a product differ.
Project: A series of tasks or plans that are implemented over a set period of time. A project is complete when you have accomplished the goals you set.
Product: A good or service provided to a group of customers. Products can be anything from physical items to software applications that are delivered to an end user.
Take a look at this overview of the differences between a project and a product roadmap:
