A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that shows what a product team intends to build, improve, or achieve over time, and why.
It communicates the direction, priorities, and progress for a product.
Think of it as a high-level guide to the product’s future, not a detailed task list.
Product Roadmap Elements
A Time Horizon: (Now/Next/Later), Quarters, Halves, …
Goals/Objectives: The "Why" (e.g., Increase user retention, Enter new market).
Initiatives/Features: The "What" (e.g., Redesign onboarding, New user flow).
Extra Categorization: A context-based categorization (e.g., (Desktop, Mobile, API), (Product, Sales, Marketing), …).
Priorities: What matters most and what comes later.
Status: (Optional) A rough indicator of progress.
The product roadmap increases the transparency, supporting empiricism for true inspection and adaptation.
It can be used for:
Alignment: It ensures that the entire company (product teams, sales, marketing, support) is moving in the same direction.
Communication: It communicates why you are building what you are building to stakeholders, investors, and customers, supporting collective inspection and adaptation.
Strategy: It connects high-level company objectives to specific, actionable product work.
What a Roadmap is NOT
It is important to distinguish a roadmap from other documents:
It is NOT a Product Backlog: A Product Backlog is a list of specific, small items, usually user stories, that are fine-grained and have enough details to be implemented. A roadmap focuses on major initiatives.
It is NOT a Gantt Chart: It is strategic, not a detailed schedule for every engineer with hard deadlines.
It is NOT a Commitment: It is a hypothesis. It is expected to change as you learn more.
It is NOT a guaranteed release schedule: It is a high-level projection of the sequence of when initiatives will be available to the market and can change over time.
AI & Roadmap
Now, let’s see how AI can help us with creating Product Roadmaps.
The AI helps you in two main steps:
- Helping you as a thinking partner to create the content of the roadmap.
- Visualize your roadmap to increase transparency.
Example (MetaLearn)
Imagine you are building a double-sided learning platform named MetaLearn that connects trainers with learners. You want to create a roadmap for the next three quarters. In quarter one, you intend to implement features for the trainer side. In quarter two, you want to implement features for the learner side. For quarter three, you want to use machine learning to make better recommendations for learners.
Step 1:
Let’s ask an LLM (ChatGPT) to create a list of features for each quarter. This is the prompt that I used:
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"We are building a double-sided learning platform named MetaLearn that connects trainers with learners. We want to create a roadmap for the next three quarters. In quarter one, we intend to implement features for the trainer side. In quarter two, we want to implement features for the learner side. For quarter three, we want to use machine learning to make better recommendations for learners.
Create a list of features (three features for each quarter)."
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The result:
Quarter 1 — Trainer Experience (Supply Side)
Goal: Attract, onboard, and empower high-quality trainers.
- Trainer Profile & Credential Verification
- Course Creation & Management Dashboard
- Trainer Analytics & Earnings Tracking
Quarter 2 — Learner Experience (Demand Side)
Goal: Make it easy for learners to discover, enroll, and succeed.
- Course Discovery & Search Experience
- Enrollment, Payments & Learning Dashboard
- Ratings, Reviews & Feedback System
Quarter 3 — Machine Learning & Personalization
Goal: Improve learner outcomes and engagement through intelligent recommendations.
- Personalized Course Recommendations
- Adaptive Learning Paths
- Predictive Engagement & Retention Insights
Step 2:
The second step is to ask AI to create a visual roadmap. I used the Gemini Nano Banana Pro model to create it. This is the prompt that I used:
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"Create a visual roadmap for a double-sided learning platform named MetaLearn that connects trainers with learners. This roadmap shows three quarters with the following goals and features:
Quarter 1 — Trainer Experience (Supply Side)
Goal: Attract, onboard, and empower high-quality trainers.
• Trainer Profile & Credential Verification
• Course Creation & Management Dashboard
• Trainer Analytics & Earnings Tracking
Quarter 2 — Learner Experience (Demand Side)
Goal: Make it easy for learners to discover, enroll, and succeed.
• Course Discovery & Search Experience
• Enrollment, Payments & Learning Dashboard
• Ratings, Reviews & Feedback System
Quarter 3 — Machine Learning & Personalization
Goal: Improve learner outcomes and engagement through intelligent recommendations.
• Personalized Course Recommendations
• Adaptive Learning Paths
• Predictive Engagement & Retention Insights
Use icons, clear phases, and a clean layout."
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See the result:
Hopefully, you enjoyed the process.
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