Product Roadmap

Also called Roadmap

A plan of what a product team intends to build and in roughly what order, tying near-term work to the product's goals. A communication tool as much as a plan.

Why it matters

A roadmap aligns the team, and sometimes customers and investors, on where the product is going and why. The trap is treating it as a fixed promise; good roadmaps stay honest about uncertainty and change with what you learn.

For example

The quarterly roadmap shows onboarding improvements now, a mobile app next, and integrations after, tying each to the goal of lifting retention.

Go deeper

Where do product roadmaps come from? Intercom · article This is the cleanest answer we have found to your exact question: it names five buckets a roadmap actually pulls from (new ideas, iteration on what you shipped, customer problems, quality and bugs, and scale) and argues the whole job is balancing across them rather than picking one. It gives you honest language for why an all new features roadmap ships half finished buggy work, and why an all customer requests roadmap quietly stalls. Treat it as a starting point for a healthy mix, not a fixed percentage split. Open intercom.com →

Related terms

Also in Starting Up

See how founders actually handle this on Building the product, part of the Starting Up hub.

eChai Partner Brands