They know that project roadmaps are one of the best ways to get stakeholders and executives on board quickly. While it's important to get down to the nitty-gritty and fine-tune your strategy down to the hourly task, the value of how you present your overview of the project should not be overlooked.
In this article, we'll teach you how to make your own project roadmap. We'll explain what a project roadmap is, when to use one, and how to make one with project roadmap tools in 2022.
What is a project plan?
What is a project roadmap?
You can see the project's goals and deliverables on one page in a project roadmap. It is a picture that shows how long it will take and what it will look like. It is a very good way to keep people's expectations in check while also letting other teams know about the project's goals and schedule.
People who work on a project will have a better idea of what it will take and what to look out for when they have a map.
What should a project plan have?
A project roadmap gives a big picture view of the main parts of a project. It should also include goals, milestones, deliverables, resources, and the project timeline. Here is some more information on those, as well as a few more things you might want to add:
It's important to write down the answers to "What is the goal of this project?" and "What does it look like to be successful?"
Milestones: Key milestones are the dates in the future when the project's main events or achievements will happen, such as important delivery dates.
Deliverables: This term refers to all of the outputs, tangible or not, that are given to a project at any point in time.
Resources: You should include costs or estimates for labor and things like technology that you'll need to finish the project.
This is a high-level overview of when projects will start and finish. There's no need to go into detail about each day (often shown on a Gantt chart).
Dependencies: List any relationships that could affect the completion of important tasks and deliverables.
Key contacts: Make a list of the people who will work on the project and their phone numbers.
Tip: You can make a project roadmap even if you don't know all of the dates for the start of the project. In this case, you can use the monday.com Projects Overview template to show the number of weeks or months instead of putting in specific dates. You can do this by using the template.
Maps are different from plans.
People often mistake a project roadmap for a project plan. This is the main difference between the two. A project roadmap is more general than a project plan, which tries to be more specific.
Roadmaps tell you why, who, and when; plans show you how. In monday.com Work OS, both can be customized, but here is how the two are different.
When you use our Project roadmap template, we start with the basics, so that only the things you need are included in it.
In our project planning template, however, we also cover things that aren't on the roadmap, like:
Tasks
It takes time for a customer to be approved by the company
Possible problems and risks.
Phases
Teams
To know when to use a project plan.
It's best for project managers to use a project roadmap when they want to quickly share important information like project goals with the people who work on the project without getting them bogged down in the small, messy details.
A roadmap is a great way to quickly show executives and other stakeholders what the project is about and how it's going to work. They don't need to know all the little details. In the early stages of a project, when you haven't worked out all the details, it's also very useful. IHI Corporation used a map to help them plan for the future and improve their organization and collaboration.
On the other hand, it's important to note that a project roadmap isn't a great way to keep your project team up to date when your project is in progress. People who do the work should know what's in the roadmap, but their main focus should be on the tasks at hand. Seeing the project's nuts and bolts is important, like what you'd find in a daily task list.
How to make a project plan that works
Work must be done before you can make a project plan. First, let's look at the first two steps. Then, we'll look at the roadmap.
1. Make a business case.
For example, when writing a roadmap, a company will want to know the most important things first. Describe the project and explain why you're taking it on. Outline the benefits, costs, and risks of what you are going to do. High-level: This isn't too in-depth. The goal is to get people to agree and support you first.
It's possible that you haven't written your business case yet. You can use our project proposal template to get it done.
2. Decide what the project will be about.
After you get the go-ahead, the charter will lay out the project's major milestones and deliverables, key stakeholders, assumptions, a schedule overview, and how much time and money you'll need.
People who write business plans and charters often put a lot of the information you need for your road map in them. So, once you have these documents, you can start making your visual map. As a result, some businesses might not need a charter. Most or all of this information will be in your roadmap plan, but in a different way.
3. Use a template when you start making your own clothes.
You can save time by building your project roadmap from a template. It also makes sure that all of your project roadmaps will look the same. Take a look at the project roadmap template from earlier in this section to get things going.
4. Put in the important information about your project.
Your project roadmap is now ready for you to add all of the information we talked about above! This also has:
These are the goals or objectives for your project (along with potential risks)
The benefits or potential ROI of reaching these objectives/goals
A high-level timeline that shows the whole scope of the project with possible delivery dates.
Each of the teams that are working on the project has a work stream that they follow (marketing, IT, sales, etc.)
The tasks that need to be done at a high level (think overall weekly/monthly tasks, not daily/hourly)
Defined project milestones (getting funding, finding a vendor/contracts, completing the code, and so on) were written down.
5. Work together with stakeholders.
You should get help even if you're just pulling information from a pre-approved charter when you build the roadmap. They can help you fill in the blanks, and getting their approval in advance will help you get the job done more quickly.
This means that you should always stay on top of things.
Projects change all the time, especially if you use an Agile method. A roadmap can be changed to show changes in the timelines, resources, milestones, and dependencies. This is how it works: This is where a Work OS really comes in handy. It's a lot easier to update than a paper or spreadsheet-based roadmap.
In the monday.com Work OS, there are a lot of project management tools.
Project approvals: Teams can use standard forms to get the information they need for quick and easy project proposals and work requests. This is all added to a board, where you can use automations and statuses to speed up the process of getting things done.
Project planning: Team members can assign project owners and contributors, set clear deadlines, and keep an eye on the progress of each project. A project's scope, budget, milestones and more can also be managed by teams at any point in the process.
When teams pull data from all projects across different programs into one high-level Dashboard View, they can see the big picture. Teams can also connect budgets, timelines, actual costs, risks, and progress right away to find bottlenecks and trends.
Monday workdocs lets you move even faster by making your own documents on the platform. You can add text, images, boards, and dashboards right from your workspace.
To figure out where you are now and how to get there, you might need to make a road map. It's very important for getting clients and other people on board.
To make your project plan work, you need it to be flexible, clear, and easy to share. Using project management software is a great way to make sure this happens. Explore our project plan template to see if it's right for your next project.
