How to use roadmap slides in presentations

Roadmapping doesn’t end once you’ve built your roadmap. The purpose of your roadmap is to visualize a transparent plan across your organization.

To ensure your roadmap is effective (and actually, you know, executed), you’ll need to align each team in a roadmap presentation.

Basically, your roadmap is just words on a page (or screen or whiteboard or wall) until it’s been validated in some form of roadmap presentation or meeting. During a well-executed roadmap presentation, you have the chance to show stakeholders that you understand their motivations — and they have a chance to publicly affirm their alignment. But if your presentation flops, so might your product or marketing strategy.

Wanna learn about the entire roadmapping process from beginning to end? Check out our roadmap guide here to learn the definition, why roadmaps are important and how you can use them to ✨shine in front of your decision-makers

What is a roadmap presentation?

The most important point to remember before your roadmap presentation: this is not the place to get buy-in for your plans. That might seem contradictory. (After all, we just described roadmap presentations as an opportunity for stakeholders to “publicly affirm their alignment.”) But it should be just that: an affirmation of alignment that was already established prior to the meeting.

(If you’re butting heads over the alignment process itself, we’ve written about how to get roadmap buy-in from each department in our product roadmapping guide. And, more specifically, how to get buy-in from executives.)

A roadmap presentation is far more than the words you actually say. Think of it as an alignment exercise whose success depends on what happens before, during and after you take the stage.

This is an essential chance to understand stakeholder motivations and forge consensus before moving forward with your plans.

To get nuts-and-bolts-y, we’ve found that roadmap presentations generally fall into one of two categories:

Short-term updates

Taking place weekly or biweekly, these frequent syncs tend to get in the weeds, covering the particularities of what’s getting built and how that affects other departments. This type of sit-down would be more common on smaller teams. And because these catch-ups happen regularly, formal buy-in before the presentation is not imperative. But the roadmap still needs to be communicated prior to the meeting to avoid any major surprises or backlash.

Long-term updates

For bigger organizations and teams, the roadmap presentation will likely happen monthly, bimonthly or even quarterly. For these conversations, buy-in before the meeting is critical. These meetings can often involve high-stakes projects that rely on massive alignment and dependencies. Show up to your presentation without everyone on board, and you’ll probably leave feeling pretty beat-up.

Before your roadmap presentation: How to prepare

When it comes to roadmap presentations, the pre-game is just as important as the main event. There are three areas you should learn inside-out to ensure a productive meeting:

Know the high-level strategy

Let’s use a product roadmap as an example. You’re going to build feature X, Y and Z — but what’s the big-picture goal those features address? Without being able to speak to the high-level strategy — and the tradeoffs that must be made to prioritize within that strategy — everyone will just start asking for whatever is most advantageous to them. Be able to speak to product vision and company vision — and how your roadmap aligns with both targets.

Check out Roadmunk's free, ready-to-use product roadmap template and make it your own.

Know the stakeholders

We mean actually get to know them: their motivations, their deadlines, their pressures, what’s keeping them up at night. Again, trust is crucial. For example, marketing and sales needs to feel that product decisions are sound — otherwise they might go rogue. This won’t happen overnight. But it’s important to invest the time.

Know the resource constraints

One of the most common (inevitable?) pushbacks you’re going to get is related to time. “Why can’t we move faster?” To counter this complaint, it’s absolutely crucial that you have an inside-out knowledge of your resources at any given time. You must be able to clearly articulate the resources required to execute a given task — and the tradeoffs that will be made if you swap in something else. It can also be useful to discuss historical timelines, reminding the room of how long things have taken in the past.

How do you structure a roadmap?

To structure a technology roadmap effectively, start by defining your key objectives and the audience it will serve. Next, organize the roadmap into distinct sections, such as goals, initiatives, timelines, and milestones, to create a clear flow of information. Use visual elements like timelines, charts, or color coding to make the roadmap easily digestible and engaging. Finally, ensure regular updates and iterations to reflect changes in priorities or progress, keeping the roadmap relevant and actionable.

What should a roadmap presentation contain?

There’s no one way to slice your roadmap. So what should you actually show during your roadmap presentation? We can’t tell you exactly how to build a roadmap that suits your particular organization (that’s where our template library comes in handy), but we do recommend that you aim to meet at least a few of the following criteria:

1. Flexibility: Does your roadmap distinguish between what’s planned and what’s still TBD?

2. Personalization: Does it address the individual needs of each department and/or stakeholder?

3. Collaboration: Can you iterate on the roadmap during the presentation itself?

4. Clarity + Attractiveness: Does it look good? Is the plan visualized in a clear manner? Don’t underestimate the power of good design.

Below, we’ve included some options for structuring your roadmap for your presentation. With a dedicated roadmapping tool like Roadmunk, you can easily create and present multiple pivots of the same data.

1. Flexibility

It’s helpful to communicate which initiatives are actually in the pipeline, and which are still subject to change. One of our favourite ways to structure a roadmap is to organize items by In Progress, Scheduled and Proposed. If your organization works on a timeline, you can simply color code the items on your roadmap.

If your organization prefers to avoid timelines, you could also create a Swimlane View with the headers In Progress, Scheduled or Proposed.

Like the way this roadmap looks? It's a Roadmunk template. Check our library of 25+ templates.

We’ve found this roadmap structure very effective for reducing backlash during a roadmap presentation. Stakeholders get a clear and immediate visual indication of which features are actually committed, and which are still being decided. Overall, it means you’re less likely to hear knee-jerk peanut gallery protestations.

2. Personalization

As we mentioned above, it can also be effective to visualize ownership during your roadmap presentation. A great way to do this is to organize your roadmap by department or even by the individual responsible for each task.

The roadmap below includes the same data as the roadmaps above, but we’ve included subheaders indicating individual ownership over each project.

If you really want to get granular with ownership, you could create a Swimlane View roadmap that highlights department, resource or individual owner. This puts the focus on who’s doing what for which department — not the timeline.

3. Collaboration

There’s a reason why the sticky-notes-on-a-wall method is such an enduring way to make a roadmap: it’s easy to change things up on the fly. Although you’d ideally have buy-in for your roadmap before the presentation, your meeting will go much smoother if you are also able to update your roadmap during the conversation.

With a tool like Roadmunk, you can easily add comments or adjust your roadmap directly within the app during the meeting. This makes for a much more dynamic and participatory presentation.

4. Clarity + Attractiveness

The core purpose of your roadmap is to visualize your strategy and make it crystal-clear to everyone in your organization. “Make something pretty!” may sound trite, but you’ll undermine your end-goal if your roadmap is unattractive or unclear.

Start building beautiful + collaborative roadmaps with Roadmunk. Signup for a free trial here.

Obviously, the content of your roadmap is more important than the appearance of your roadmap. But it will be a lot easier to highlight key information — no matter how complicated — if your visualization is easy on the eyes. Also recommended: custom branding.

What pushback should you prep for?

No matter how much you prepare, there are some common points of friction that come up again and again in roadmap meetings. A great way to ace your presentation: prepare for the pushback before it starts pushing. Here are some common questions to expect.

Are you actually going to achieve this timeline?

You’ll most frequently hear this from sales or execs. They want to confirm that your roadmap is realistic so they can plan accordingly. If you have a history of late delivery, be prepared to address why this time will be different. (Then make sure you deliver.)

How can we scope this down?

Just because stakeholders are skeptical that you can hit your deadlines doesn’t mean they don’t want things to go faster. One way to ship features quicker: scope them down. Especially at startups, executives might push the “M” in MSP when they see scope creep getting out of hand. Be prepared to answer why you’ve scoped each feature to its current specs — and be flexible when it’s possible to scope things down.

What’s the value of this roadmap?

Don’t just speak to the qualitative value of each new feature. Be prepared with hard numbers. How will this roadmap help achieve your revenue targets? What specific clients or market segment does it address? You should be able to tie items on your roadmap to specific dollar-sign potential, and articulate value vs. effort.

What are the maintenance costs going to be?

The cost of maintenance is one of the things most commonly neglected on the roadmap — even though it’s one of the most important and resource-draining aspects of any organization. Expect more technically inclined team members to pipe up with maintenance questions, or simply visualize maintenance initiatives directly on your roadmap.

Where are the risks or dependencies?

Sure, the roadmap looks great. But what factors could derail its execution? What risks does each stakeholder need to be aware of, and how will that affect their department’s ability to reach their targets? Also, what steps can stakeholders take to pitch in and mitigate those dangers? The more honest you are about the realities facing your roadmap, the more likely you’ll build trust — and get buy-in for your plan.

What happens after the presentation?

Alignment is a continuous process. It doesn’t just end when your meeting is finished. Make sure you follow up your roadmap presentation with thorough meeting notes and the updated roadmap. Create a concrete space — whether it’s within an email, a shared document, or your roadmap itself — where stakeholders can share feedback.

Reminder! The Number 1 way to fail your roadmap presentation is to not talk to anyone beforehand. Your presentation is all about alignment. Set the tone before your presentation by talking to — and, more importantly listening to — each stakeholder.

“I spend all this time working on my product roadmap, then it gets picked apart. How can I wrangle execs in the roadmapping process?”

It’s one of the questions we hear most often from product managers and other roadmap-ers when it comes to roadmapping. A product manager, for example, has one plan but executives see things differently. They butt heads, tweak plans, shift priorities, and ultimately who knows if the right thing gets executed. Or gets executed well.

The process isn’t easy, but we wanted to delve deeper into executive buy-in, since it can be particularly challenging. Here’s a quick survival guide for your next exec meeting.

Managing executives is only one part of the roadmapping process. To learn more about what roadmaps are, why they're important and how you can plan and make your own, check out our guide here.

Pushback isn’t a bad thing

It can be frustrating when your airtight roadmap gets punctured by an exec. But the goal of the roadmapping process isn’t to present a perfect plan that everyone immediately loves. Getting feedback — even negative feedback — is the goal. The purpose of presenting your roadmap, then iterating (and iterating again) is to get everyone on the same page. It’s about managing and aligning expectations. Yes, the snags can be defeating. But if no one is criticizing, no one is listening. Think of it as a opportunity to fill gaps in your knowledge about the other departments you work with.

Before showing your roadmap to an exec…

There’s no point in showing your roadmap to an executive until you have a shared understanding of where you want the roadmap to take you. Generally, this means that everyone in the room understands:

Company vision

What’s the longterm goal of the company? Is it to grow as big as possible, or is it to get acquired? Are you after exponential growth or a more gradual trajectory? Have there been significant changes in company vision lately? These are the types of questions that should be understood before the roadmap meeting.

Long-term strategy

Let’s use product as an example. What problem does your product solve for? What’s your plan of attack or differentiation in the market? Is your goal to have 10 customers paying $1,000,000 per year, or 1,000,000 customers paying $10 per year? These questions will heavily impact what’s on your product roadmap.

Prioritization method

How do you prioritize? Do you have an established prioritization method like RICE or value vs. effort? Having an established prioritization method, and being transparent about that method, is essential when explaining how you built your roadmap in the first place.

Each of these points is an article unto itself, so we’re not going to get into too much detail here. (The purpose of this post is to discuss what happens when you show the first iteration of your roadmap to an exec.)

Just keep in mind that you’ll need a strong sense of these three items to productively communicate with an executive.

Know your audience

Speaking of executives, remember that they are not all clones of each other. The CEO does not have the same concerns as the CPO, who does not have the same priorities as the CMO. Yes, you’re all working towards the same company vision — but you’re each chipping away at different areas of that vision. Your roadmap discussion should be tailored to the specialization of whichever exec happens to be in the room with you.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when addressing a few different types of execs:

The CEO

Especially at startups, the CEO tends to be pretty hands-on with most facets of the company, and especially with the product roadmap. CEOs think high-level and inter-departmental. To continue with the product roadmapping example, the CEO is not just going to want to see what features you’re adding, but rather how the evolution of the product will touch the other teams and grow the business. They also want to understand risk and internal efficiencies (or inefficiencies).

The sales exec

Sales tends to be more timeline-focused. And they have lots of competing demands. Come prepared to show what they’ll be able to offer customers or how your plan will affect what they can offer customers, how you arrived at that decision (including any tradeoffs that were made), and how you’re allocating resources (in case they make demands). Be sure to unearth any promises sales has made to customers (that’s one of the main reasons roadmaps get bumped off course).

The marketing exec

They don’t need to know every detail of how a feature, for example, is going to get built, but they do need to know the stories they can tell. As best you can, flag what’s coming up in the long-term so they can prepare.

The product exec

Roadmapping is always about getting feedback, but that’s especially relevant when the exec is a fellow product manager. Here’s where you can really get in the weeds on your market. Explain what direction your market is going, and how your roadmap builds a competitive advantage.

Along with not telling each exec the same thing, you also don’t have to show them the same thing. We recommend tailoring your roadmap to its specific audience.

For example, your complete product roadmap might look something like this when plotted on a timeline:

However, when showing your roadmap to an exec in marketing or sales, you could show the same data plotted according to what’s in progress, in design or in the backlog. This is a simple framework that can go a long way when it comes to managing expectations.

Psst... make this roadmap your own by getting Roadmunk's free product roadmap template here.

Regardless of how you build or format your specific roadmap, remember: tailor it to your specific audience. Our template library can help with creating the right roadmap for the right audience.

Common reasons for pushback

Why would an executive question your roadmap? A good way to prevent pushback: be prepared for some of the obvious points of contention.

1. They don’t think the roadmap is aggressive enough

Is that all? Shouldn’t you be able to complete, oh, at least three more features this quarter? Obviously, everyone wants more and they want it last week. Executives are highly incentivized to over-deliver—and they won’t be timid about asking for “extra.”

Quick tip:

Be very transparent about resourcing. Explain how your available manpower will be used to execute each item on your roadmap. In fact, show resources right on your roadmap. Also, show history. Remind them how long past features took to execute, and how the new items will compare.

2. They think the roadmap is too aggressive (i.e. unrealistic)

One thing you don’t want to do: over-promise and under-deliver. If an exec sees a roadmap that just isn’t doable, they are likely to push back. Especially if sales will be sharing their roadmap with clients.

Quick tip:

This is most commonly a problem for more junior PMs who don’t yet understand the cadence of their team. Take the feedback, apply it… and learn for next time.

3. They have their own agenda

Each member of the exec team has their own goals they have to achieve. This is the filter they’ll view your roadmap through.

Quick tip:

Long before you present your roadmap to an exec, make sure you know if they have any unspoken-for priorities. That way these items can be properly assessed and prioritized, without derailing your plans.

4. Specifically for PMs, they don’t understand the technical side

This often goes hand-in-hand with number 1. A non-technical executive might look at your roadmap and wonder: why is everything taking so long? Do we really need that many resources allocated to technical maintenance and debt?

Quick tip:

From Day 1, explain the process. The explain it again. If an executive doesn’t have a technical background, they probably have never been exposed to the huge amount of resources that must go into simply maintaining a system. Remember, product managers are translators: it’s your job to interpret your roadmap for each department.

5. They want to see more of the big picture

Really early products and plans can get away with a roadmap that’s just a list of features or projects. But once your strategy begins to mature, you’re going to have to account for other departments, dependencies and risks, and be able to position your roadmap within the wider market. If an exec doesn’t see this on the roadmap, they’ll probably ask about it.

Quick tip:

Check yourself on granularity. Yes, you need to know every detail about how a feature will be built. But does the executive? Be able to explain your roadmap not just in terms of how/why you prioritized the way you did, but how this will lead to your specific goals within your specific market.

6. They’re jerks: Sometimes people just suck

It wouldn’t be the first time an executive was confrontational or egocentric. It can be very challenging when someone pushes back on your roadmap because they just, well, want to be difficult.

Quick tip:

Fight aggression with questions. Ask what they would like to be different. This doesn’t mean saying yes, but make yourself open to the conversation — then explain the tradeoffs if you execute “their” way.

A few more things to keep in mind

Seasoned product managers are world-class communicators. But it takes work to get there. Here are a few key points to keep in mind when presenting your product roadmap to an executive.

1. Know your market better than anyone else

At least, that’s the goal. Executives will often “win” a roadmapping debate because they have been in the business longer and simply know the landscape better. Your goal: learn everything you don’t know, everything they know, and more. Talk to more customers than them, keep tabs on your competitors more closely than them, and be the expert on your market.

2. Be radically transparent

Don’t just show your roadmap. Explain how you got there. Resourcing, risk and prioritization should all be crystal clear. Then you’ll be able to show how all the pieces will move if anything changes.

3. Show tradeoffs

When a change to your roadmap is suggested, make sure you articulate the tradeoffs. Sure, we could do X—but we’d have to sacrifice Y. What will the domino effect be from that? Be open to any change—but make sure you articulate the full picture of the consequences.

4. Remind them of history

Not sure how long something will take? Look backwards. Due to the cost of maintaining your existing tech, features often take longer to build over time, not faster. Come to the conversation with both a strong sense of where you’re going, and knowledge of your past.

5. Tailor what you show

Not all execs are the same. And they shouldn’t all see the same version of your roadmap. To ensure a successful roadmapping process, show each stakeholder the information that best applies to them.

Remember: feedback isn’t a bad thing! Feedback is what you want when presenting a roadmap. If you’re not getting feedback (even bad feedback), no one is listening.

https://roadmunk.com/guides/managing-executives-in-the-roadmapping-process/