Product roadmaps and release plans are interrelated but are different tools. They serve different purposes and should not be confused with each other. A product roadmap visualizes the high-level strategic initiative while release plans look into the details of how to reach each short-term goal.

In other words, the product roadmap answers the ‘why’ and ‘how,’ and release plans answer the ‘when’ the product will be delivered. It’s necessary to have both before you start implementing the product.

Let’s dive deeper.

Product Roadmap

Do you think having a central overview makes it easier for everyone? Roadmaps answer the question as it acts as a single reference strategic tool designed to achieve long-term or short-term business goals. Product managers are responsible for creating and maintaining roadmaps with different engineering, sales, marketing, and management teams. It helps all the members be on the same page in context with the vision, objective, and timeline.

Importance of Product Roadmap

• Priority: There are numerous paths available that we can take to reach our final product. With a clear vision and roadmap of our product, it is easier to prioritize decisions.
• Visibility to stakeholders: Your goals must be accessible to everyone in the organization and its progress. This transparency increases the involvement of everyone.
• Adaptability: A good roadmap tells you if you have reached your goal or still need to boost the product’s commitment. According to this, you can refine the features, and sprint’s goals, make decisions based on data, or, at least, realize beforehand that some desired outcome is not going to be achieved, enabling you to look for another plan.
• Connects you to the bigger picture: It’s significant to know what your team will provide as a whole product. The roadmap gives you a clear picture of how you will deliver the product at the end.

Release Plan

A release plan is a document designed to trace the planned features of an upcoming release. The course of a release plan is only for a few months. It is an excellent tool for communicating product status and progress with cross-functional teams, leaders, and stakeholders involved in a project with aligned requirements for product development.

In Agile release planning, staged releases are prepared that are further disintegrated into several sprints or iterations. It prioritizes responses from previous iterations and sets out the scope, timeline, and resources for each release.

Careful planning, combined with an iterative schedule, increases your chances of success. The release planning system must be agile to adapt to changes and act on data and feedback. Reprioritize the project tasks to provide maximum value to your customers. It can include:

• Establish measurable goals that describe the outcomes or benefits of your product
• Set a high-level estimate for the development team.
• Keep track of progress from sprint to sprint and make adjustments as required.
• Make data-driven decisions on actionable feedback.
• Set clear expectations between invested stakeholders and the development team.
• Ensure that each release builds on the previous one.

Though product roadmaps and release plans are different, both are important in product development. It’s necessary to understand the difference between them.

Differences

• Purpose

The product roadmap shows the direction of the product to accomplish the business goals. It’s a tool with a high-level initiative that also serves for communicating among the team members. Teams can share the roadmap to keep the internal and external groups informed.

The release plan works on the details that the team needs to build the product. It shows different stages of the work and their impact on release dates. It helps the teams to get align with customers’ experiences.

• Course of time

Product roadmaps should not go on for years as the market is likely to change in the years. We recommend that for most products, a product roadmap lasting about a year (4 quarters) is more than sufficient.

Release plans lay out a shorter timeline. It mainly depends upon how frequently a company launches its new features. No matter the time, as the roadmap updates, release plans need to be updated as well.

• Audience

Product roadmaps can be tailored according to the internal members- management, sales, and engineering teams, or the external stakeholders- executives, advisory boards, and customers.

Release plans are for the internal team members and contributors. A thorough plan that elaborates on each release phase minutely helps the team plan and track the details and avoid sudden revelations.

• Central Elements

Product roadmaps include the following elements:

• Business outcomes the product aims to achieve
• Strategic initiatives or bets that will help achieve those outcomes
• Sometimes it may have features that flesh out those strategic initiatives
• Status

Release plans include the following elements:

• Features
• Phases
• Dates
• Status

Suppose you consider product development as a journey. In that case, the product roadmap provides the direction to the destination, and the release plans give minute details on how to reach the destination. However, they are interrelated but serve different purposes.

How do you design the product roadmaps and release plans of your product?