**Last Update**: 30.07.2024 *** - Roadmap is a strategic planning technique that places a project's goals and major deliverables (tasks, milestones) on a timeline. - It provides a clear overview of your strategic tasks and milestones and helps you define a long-term plan for reaching your goals. - It translates a collection of backlog tasks and ideas into a high-level strategic vision. - Furthermore, it summarizes the main efforts that need to be undertaken in order to achieve the planned results. *** ### What is a roadmap? - **A high-level plan that states an overarching objective and captures the major steps to achieve it** – a validroadmap,p makes a persuasive case for undertaking any specific action towards the main objective and paints a clear picture of how these underlying activities interconnect to bring the desired outcome. - **A communication tool that conveys a product’s/project’s strategy** – when using a concise and convincing rationale for taking a certain step/including a specific feature, a roadmap proves essential to the effective coordination of cross-functional teams around a common goal, and for gaining the approval from company leadership, partners, and customers. ### What is not a roadmap? - **Difference between a roadmap and a backlog** – a backlog is a to-do list consisting of all the tasks required to carry out a strategic initiative, usually arranged based on their priority; meanwhile, a **roadmap translates a collection of backlog tasks and ideas into a high-level strategic vision**. - **Difference between a roadmap and a project management tracker** – a project management tracker is a compilation of all the tasks and associated details (the individual assignments, the staff responsible for each task, planned meetings to discuss major milestones, deadlines for each critical phase, etc.) that are related to the completion of an initiative; in contrast, a **roadmap summarizes the main efforts that need to be undertaken in order to achieve the planned results.** - **Difference between a roadmap and a list of features** – when it comes to product development and management, many managers mistakenly confuse a list of features with a roadmap, but a list of features doesn’t articulate the strategic thinking that supports building a product in a specific way, whereas a **roadmap shows how all those features come together and yield a product that meets specific company goals**. *** **References**: - [Roadmap: Definition, Tools, Examples](https://www.officetimeline.com/roadmaps)