What is a product roadmap? How to use product road mapping in mobile app development? If you are looking for the answer to these questions, then kudos – you’re at the right place.
As we live in a world full of modern technologies, companies focus on developing internet applications such as mobile apps and websites for brand marketing and to solve user’s queries.
To outrank the competitors, every organization strives to launch their products quickly to become the first one in their industry niche. However, mobile app development is not easy as it sounds – and there are more than 3 million apps in the stores.
Mobile app development requires a lot of time and is a risky process. That’s the reason why it is important to have a product manager on the product and use a product roadmap.
What Is a Product Roadmap?
A product roadmap is a strategic document that highlights the essential stages of a product development process. It is created to tell you the “why” behind what you’re developing.
Roadmapping is all about prioritizing and planning. It gives you a deep insight into what features should be added to the product, and which features should be removed. Additionally, roadmapping can help you evaluate and minimize difficulties in the long run.
Why Is Product Road Map Important?
Product roadmaps offer strategic business planning through which you can focus on the process that needs to be followed while other teams focus on achieving the one-centric goal.
A digital product involves several parts of a business. To get buy-in on features and key priorities, it’s important to leverage opportunities like the product road mapping process to get feedback and agreement on the product’s trajectory and regularly communicate the process.
Product roadmaps always change based on the resources you have, company priorities, and market situations.
How To Use Product Roadmapping In Mobile App Development?
First of all, you need to understand your product goals and define a clear development strategy.
It is a good practice to create a plan before road mapping to align everyone in the organization and keep them focused on the work that holds great significance.
Roadmapping contains both executive planning as well as overall product goals. A product roadmap focuses on:
- Product vision
- Strategy
- Goal
- Initiative
- Feature
- Time frame
- Status marker
- Metrics
That said, let’s delve into how to create a successful roadmap to achieve your goal:
1. Planning
First of all, planning before execution is important. Similarly, the first step is to define your strategy. You need to focus on how the product roadmap will fit a strategic path for your business.
Having the right plan by your side will help you define your product’s mission, the problem it will solve, its target audience, and its unique selling point (USP). Hence, you don’t want to waste time on developing a product that doesn’t serve any purpose.
Do thorough market research, understand your customer personas, listen to your customers, and talk to your stakeholders.
2. Define Your Audience
Always remember that a roadmap is not made for everyone – you should be careful while designing its format, type, and content. The format must be fit for your targeted audience.
Roadmaps are custom-built for a specific audience and with a specific set of information. There are different types of roadmaps which include:
- Strategy and Market Roadmap
- Visionary Roadmap
- Technology Roadmap
- Technology Across Product Roadmap
- Platform Roadmap
- Internal & External Product Roadmap
3. Choose Metrics And Modify Them As Per Actual Features
No matter what you do, you need to measure the metrics to get a deep insight into what’s working and what is not. When you define your KPIs on time, you will understand which areas of development need your attention. If you’re developing a minimum viable product (MVP), focus only on a confined number of metrics.
You can also create a list of all features you want to include and then start organizing and prioritizing them to keep your product development strong.
4. Leverage The Power Of Roadmap Tools
Gone are the days when Excel was the ideal tool for building a roadmap. After the introduction of modern tools and technologies, there are cloud-based road mapping tools that allow you to increase efficiency and update it easily along the way.
Some of the best product roadmap tools are:
- OpenProject
- Roadmap Planner
- ProductPlan
- Aha!
- ProductFolio
- Roadmunk
These are the best tools which you can consider depending on the budget and the company’s requirements.
5. Update The Roadmap With Relevant And Important Information
A strategic roadmap focuses on prioritizing product development actions. To maintain the functionality, you need to focus on providing a comprehensive strategy, not an approach.
Try to avoid adding too much information or unnecessary data. Instead, keep your roadmaps updated with relevant and important information. Keep track of your changes to successfully deliver the information to all the teams and stakeholders.
6. Understand Your Users
Always welcome user feedback – it will help you identify areas that require improvements. Analyze user feedback as it will show you a clear picture of what they want from your product.
Understanding your users will not only help you improve the areas but also which technology to use. For example, suppose your specific audience is iOS users, in that case, you’ll know which technology to go with to satisfy your audience.
Treat users like your customers – they must feel that you value your customers by welcoming their feedback. There are tons of ways you can leverage customer feedback to make improvements in your existing development strategies. Top performing companies understand that feedback from various resources plays a crucial role in business. To leverage this advantage and manage feedback, make use of the customer feedback software available in the market.
Businesses use a customer feedback tool to gather, categorize, and analyze feedback from various sources, and enhance their user experience and overall performance. Feedback from your specific audience has the potential to influence your product roadmaps in a direction that will make your customers happy.
7. Leverage SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. SWOT is a scientific framework that helps you examine the situation and find the most suitable solution. It identifies internal as well as external factors that make an impact on your product roadmap development process.
Most companies leverage SWOT analysis to assess the nature of their business and it is possible to do the same for your product development.
Is It Worth Investing In A Product Roadmap?
Investing in a product roadmap is worth it as it is made to meet the company’s goals, which also regulates the development team’s efforts and the market needs.
That said, product road mapping has several key goals, including:
- Puts everyone around your goals and strategy – especially for internal and external stakeholders that might lack insights into the product goals and strategy.
- Aids discussion with teams – it offers an opportunity to get valuable feedback from stakeholders, developers, UX designers, product owners, and testers.
- Communicates the progress and current status of product development.
- Motivates team members, it shows them the clear path to follow and where they should focus on.
A product roadmap is also important for developers as they provide a clear understanding of the process, expectations, steps to follow, deadlines, and other essential factors. It also encourages developers to work regularly and focus on important tasks first – eliminating less important tasks.
Summing Up
Mobile app development is never easy and it’s not going to get easier anytime soon. Product road mapping plays a crucial role in mobile app development. Not only it helps to communicate the strategic purpose of your mobile app, but it also helps you make thoughtful decisions on how you can enhance the user’s experience.
However, a product roadmap might sound complicated, but it is easy to understand. Therefore, investing in a product road mapping is worth it as it helps businesses to get their upcoming strategies streamlined and managed along with offering the flexibility to make changes as the specific audience and market demands.