Okay, so you’ve got BIG ideas for this year for your web platform or app, right? And you’re feeling a mix of overwhelm and excitement? We know that feeling! As business owners, the new year feels like a fresh start, and a time to put your goals into action.

So where do you start? And how do you communicate all of your big picture visions to your team without overwhelming them?

The answer lies in two words: product roadmaps.

It is the absolute KEY to getting anything done within your company without overwhelm. And the start of the year is a fabulous time to get a product roadmap started.

Here’s a quick guide on how to get yourself organized and move quickly into action:

Step 1: Gather your wishlist items

Take all of the items you’ve discussed with your team, or items that may have lived in your head for the last year and get them all in one place. This is a master list of everything you hope and wish for in your web platform or app. Make sure wherever this list lives is easily accessible to all of your team members.

Step 2: Prioritize your wishlist items

It’s time to take all of your items and assign it a priority based on perceived impact: High Impact, Medium Impact or Low Impact. Try to think of how this will affect your customers and consider customer feedback when assigning these priorities.

Step 3: Start roadmapping!

In the previous step, we recommend honing in on what will make the most impact in your business. In this step, focus on editing your list and thinking about the level of effort some of the items may take to accomplish.

Here are the 4 categories you’ll want to lay out:

• Must Have

• These should include Low Effort and High Impact items

• Important

• These should include Medium/High Effort and Medium/High Impact items

• Delightful

• These should include Low Effort and Medium Impact items

• Can Happen Later

• These should house anything that is deemed Low Impact

The biggest mistake we see is people putting everything into the Must Have or Important. We recommend no more than 5 items in Must Have and 5 items in Important. This helps you prioritize what you really want done in the short-term while still maintaining your long-term goals. And remember, just because it’s in the Delightful or Can Happen later categories doesn’t mean it isn’t important, it just means other items have fallen higher on the list of priorities.

Giving this simple roadmap to your team can help them understand your long-term vision as well as knowing your short-term goals for your business! We’ve found that this exercise really gets people thinking about goals in a different way.

Liked our roadmapping skills? Contact us to talk about how we can help you product roadmap on your next project by emailing info@irisdesigncollaborative.com.