The Benefits of Adding More Product Roadmap Viewers in ProductPlan

Product leaders across industries—software, finance, and healthcare—want a centralized location to house product initiatives and updates. However, many waste valuable time updating inflexible spreadsheets or slide decks that fail to capture a product strategy effectively. Instead, product leaders can transcend the confines of these antiquated tools by using a purpose-built roadmap solution to add roadmap viewers.

A Single Source of Truth

As a product professional, your product roadmap is your single source of truth. Your roadmap enables you to present your team’s big-picture goals to internal stakeholders. However, to ensure you don’t silo stakeholders or overwhelm them with unnecessary information, you must provide each department with a customizable view of your roadmap. It’s a balance to share the product strategy in a clear and easy-to-digest format for all audiences.

This article covers the benefits of using a product roadmap to break down the naturally occurring silos amongst teams. When you add more product roadmap viewers, each stakeholder comes with a unique perspective. You also encourage open communication and collaboration, which pushes your product to new heights.

Cultivate Collaboration and Communication

Your roadmap serves as the single source of truth to gain buy-in from these stakeholders. Yet, how do you create transparency during a product launch and present the correct information to the right stakeholder?

You can empower them by granting them access to view your roadmap to achieve these beneficial outcomes. Directly viewing your product roadmap provides transparency and lets stakeholders stay up-to-date on the launch process.

The Benefits of Adding More Viewers to Your Roadmap

When communicating product initiatives to executive stakeholders, the inclination toward transparency may not be every product leader’s first choice. Most importantly, more viewers lead to more opinions and a push away from the organization’s original product vision. Or so you may think.

If done correctly, adding more viewers to your roadmap can assist you in guiding your team through the launch. Product leaders who incorporate a roadmap into their workflow reap the many benefits of adding more viewers, which include:

• Empowerment + alignment
• A more credible roadmap
• Roadmap accountability

Your roadmap becomes a self-service tool for cross-functional teams

We live in a busy world, where 24 hours is nearly not enough time in the day. Consequently, product teams have relied on asynchronous communication to inform stakeholders of updates to their product roadmap. Admins can add an unlimited number of viewers to their roadmap, allowing these stakeholders to access important product information in their free time. A “self-service” roadmap provides customers with a quick, easy solution to their problems.

Save time with asynchronous communication and fewer meetings

Asynchronous communication is necessary, especially in a remote work environment. But what about asynchronous video communication capabilities within your roadmap? Well, wouldn’t that be a dream?

Guess what? It’s a reality with ProductPlan’s Vimeo integration. Product leaders can now communicate with their product team and stakeholders via recorded video. You can now walk individuals through your roadmap.

Our integration allows you to provide targeted details to specific stakeholders, which gives them greater context about the product lifecycle.

Increase the ease of communication and collaboration with stakeholders

Asynchronous video communication may not be for everyone. Many product professionals prefer to communicate within the product roadmap. Moreover, with our roadmap-level conversations, product leaders, product teams, and stakeholders can provide detailed comments relating to status updates, roadblocks, requests for information, or the state of initiatives.

Roadmap Level Conversations

Roadmap-level conversations allow you to tag essential stakeholders within the comment section. Product leaders can use this feature to pinpoint particular areas within the roadmap that needs stakeholder attention. On their end, they will receive an email notifying them that their attention is required. But what about standardization?

Shared Legends

Product leaders understand the struggle of ensuring multiple product portfolio views have a standardized legend. Our shared legend feature promotes consistency and ease of communication throughout your product-led organization.

Furthermore, those granted access as “Viewers” can make comments and tag roadmap editors or owners. The function assists them in making an inquiry or asking for more context. Adding viewers supports your product launch and helps you gain stakeholder buy-in.

Free-up time to focus on what matters most

We understand that product leaders wear many hats. They not only advocate for the needs of the customer, but they also serve as a deal-maker with executive stakeholders. Though you don’t directly manage these individuals, you serve as a facilitator of information.

Adding viewers to your roadmap can help you communicate asynchronously and effectively. Not only can you save time, but you can create an environment that supports two-way communication.

Customize Your Viewers’ Experience with Custom Views

The ProductPlan roadmap platform allows you to create custom view roadmaps that help keep your team in sync. Moreover, product leaders can align their teams with a product strategy that empowers them to make the right product decisions. The platform offers unlimited free viewer accounts that allow stakeholders to ask questions and provide feedback.

Product leaders find our Custom Views feature supports their efforts in effectively communicating changes in the roadmap.

Custom view for development

Your development team focuses on the granular details of your product. Developers’ tasks range from bug fixes to testing and making minor tweaks. Consequently, these tasks occur over a short period of time.

As a product leader, providing a custom view roadmap for developers should show the product’s more significant big-picture objectives. Therefore, roadmap conversations allow developers to give feedback and align behind the big-picture strategic view.

Custom view for customer success

In contrast to development, customer success understands the current and future needs of the customer. Product leaders can provide a custom view for CS that gives them a specific idea of upcoming initiatives and features. CS can use the tagging feature to ask questions or provide feedback to other viewers or editors.

Custom view for marketing

The marketing team wants to know what features are coming down the pipeline, so they can begin to prepare a product narrative for a new release. A custom view for marketing can give them enough insight to craft messaging for the sales team. The deeper insight creates further cross-functional alignment around a shared product strategy.

Custom view for sales

The custom view for your sales team will focus on more high-level detail than your development team. Your sales teams will want to know what upcoming features will impact customers. A sales-focused custom view roadmap gives further context to the prioritization of a feature. Finally, the sales teams can use this information to help develop curated pitches for potential prospects.

Creating Transparency and Customizing Viewership to Serve Your Roadmap

ProductPlan’s Custom View feature aims to empower “Viewers.” Furthermore, adding viewers and utilizing the Custom View features can save you time by providing only relevant stakeholder information.

The ability to tag these stakeholders within the roadmap ensures that they are immediately aware of roadblocks or updated initiatives. In addition, adding viewers to your roadmap and allowing them to provide comments ensures your stakeholders are always up-to-date.

Two-way communication across departments fosters cross-functional alignment. Therefore, with ProductPlan’s purpose-built roadmap app, you can help your team develop a roadmap that supports your product strategy, and your organization’s overall product vision.

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