Overview
The Aim & Roadmap stage translates market insights into actionable plans. This phase focuses on defining product direction, creating comprehensive roadmaps, and maintaining clear documentation to guide development efforts and ensure alignment across teams.
Guiding Principles for Project Management
Roadmap Structure and Hierarchy
A roadmap is a high-level visual timeline of a product's strategy and planned development over time. Our approach follows a structured hierarchy:
- Roadmap Level: The complete visual timeline showing the product's strategic direction and development phases
- Epic Level: Large bodies of work that are aligned with business goals and represent major initiatives
- User Story/Task Level: Smaller, actionable items within each Epic that can be completed within a sprint
- Sub-task Level: Further breakdown of user stories or tasks for detailed execution and assignment
This hierarchical structure ensures that every piece of work connects back to our strategic objectives while maintaining flexibility for agile execution.
2.1 Develop the Roadmap
How We Do It
- Log changes confirmed by R&D: Document all technical feasibility assessments and development confirmations from the R&D team
- Log improvements based on market insights: Continuously update the roadmap with findings from user research and competitive analysis
Outcome #3: Product Roadmap
A strategic document that charts the product's evolution over time, including:
- Quarterly objectives and key results (OKRs)
- Feature prioritization matrix based on impact vs. effort
- Release timeline with major and minor version planning
- Resource allocation and team capacity planning
- Risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans
- Success metrics and acceptance criteria for each phase
2.2 Manage Requirements & Documentation
How We Do It
- Curate the Backlog: Maintain a prioritized list of features, improvements, and technical debt items with clear business value
- Write & Maintain Docs: Create living documentation that evolves with the product and serves all stakeholders
Outcome #4: Requirements Docs
Comprehensive specifications that guide development and ensure quality, including:
- User stories with detailed acceptance criteria
- Functional requirements and business logic
- Non-functional requirements (performance, security, scalability)
- Technical architecture and system design documents
- API specifications and integration requirements
- Data models and database schemas
Outcome #5: Product Docs
User-facing and internal documentation that enables product success, including:
- End-user guides and tutorials
- Administrator and configuration manuals
- API documentation for developers
- Release notes and migration guides
- Knowledge base articles and FAQs
- Internal training materials for support teams
Next Steps
With clear aims and comprehensive roadmaps, we move to cross-team execution.