What’s a Project Roadmap and Why You Need One

Writing an article, planning a road trip, and managing projects all have one thing in common—they require roadmaps. When writing, this is simply called brainstorming, i.e., putting down several thoughts in one space. With road trips, you might need literal roadmaps. But with projects, you need a road map to ensure every team member is on the same page.

A project roadmap is typically an overview of the project’s goals and purposes. They help keep teams on track and ensure a project’s success. This makes them an essential part of project management online training courses.

Here’s everything you need to know about project roadmaps.

What Is a Project Roadmap?

A project roadmap is basically a high-level, graphical overview of the project’s milestones, deliverables, and other specifics on a timeline. These are different from project plans which are typically more detailed and specific. Project roadmaps should ideally be easy to navigate because these are meant to simply help project managers and stakeholders keep the project on track.

Here are some of the elements a typical project roadmap is likely to include:

• Project objectives and goals
• Timeline for the whole project
• Deliverables and important milestones
• Project risks
• Delegation of tasks
• Dependencies

How Does It Help?

A project road map can help in several ways. From making the most of team resources to solidifying goals, managing expectations, and keeping everyone on the same page, a project road map is at the core of most projects.

Here’s how it can help you.

It will help you establish goals

Every project has goals that are scattered across it’s timeline. A roadmap ensures that every team member knows the project goals, which ones have been achieved, and which ones are coming up. This improves overall efficiency and helps you determine the estimated duration for each project stage.

It’s the Best Way to Prioritize

As project roadmaps are based on timelines, they help you see how each task is related to a specific goal at a particular stage in the project. This helps you see what’s most time-sensitive and requires immediate attention and resources. Needless to say, this helps improve overall efficiency.

Communicating Tool

A project roadmap also serves as a communication tool between project managers and stakeholders. It helps stakeholders understand the essentials and different stages of the project. This way, they know what to expect and that there are no misunderstandings.

Tips to Create a Successful Roadmap for Your Project

Creating a project roadmap is critical to project management as it can seriously affect its outcomes. Here’s how you can create a successful project roadmap:

• Create the roadmap before you dive into a more detailed project plan;
• Always ensure that the roadmap is realistic;
• Use simple language to ensure perfect understanding;
• Remember that nothing is set in concrete; a project roadmap can always be edited and updated.

If you’d like to learn more about project management, you can look into online courses like the ones we offer for agile project management training, for example. We also have project planning templates that you might find helpful.

Check it all out!