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5 Essential Types of Product Roadmaps

If you’re a first-time Product Manager or an aspiring PM looking to transition into product management, the first thing you’ll want to learn is the fundamentals of the role. One of the basic elements of being a Product Manager is successfully leading a company towards the production of their product(s). To accomplish this feat, you’ll need a great Product Roadmap. However, it’s not as simple as that. There are several main types of product roadmaps that all have different functions and serve different purposes.

What roadmap should you create out of the many different types of product roadmaps available to you? The specific product roadmap type that should be enforced will rely heavily on not only the type of project being worked on but also the team that will be using the product roadmap alongside the available assets. Here are the top 5 fundamental types of product roadmaps you need to be familiar with to successfully lead your team.

5. Market and Strategy Roadmap

A market and strategy roadmap paints a picture of which market or markets you’re targeting. This roadmap also details how you’ll specifically develop each product in retrospect to the target market.

4. Visionary Roadmap

A visionary roadmap describes the trends in the industry and the societal changes in recognition of it. This allows you to take advantage of certain trends and monetize off them, or generate momentum and propel into an economy at specific intervals.

3. Technological Roadmap

A technological roadmap shows trends happening within an overall industry in terms of technological feats. This allows you to ready your products and adjust to the varying technological trends in society, and allows for your company to take full advantage of opportunities that gets presented by future technological advances.

2. Platform Roadmap

A platform roadmap relies heavily on having an overall strategy that revolves around showing what’s happening and will be happening with the core platform software, as well as outline the system requirements that will be required to deliver the product.

1. Product (Internal and External) Roadmap

Product Roadmaps are useful for showing when a product release will be available, the overall theme, and the features of the product. An internal roadmap communicates with the teams working on the product and communicates what needs to be done. An external roadmap communicates with the executives, and the stakeholders, and explains why the product would be good; all the while being vague in comparison to the internal roadmap.

Any Questions?

If you’re learning the ropes of product management, it helps to have some support. Product Gym is a lifetime membership program for PMs, PM job hunters, and product people of all sorts. Getting people jobs in product management is our area of expertise: that makes us very good at assessing where you’re at in your job hunt and equipping you with the knowledge and skills you need to kickstart your dream career in product management. And that includes necessary information like learning how to recognize and use the different types of product roadmaps.

If you want to learn more about the ins and outs of Product Manager skills and job search tactics, get in touch with us! We’re offering free career coaching sessions with our in-house team of PM Recruiter experts. We’d love to hear from you.