Product Roadmap Template for Excel and Powerpoint, for Google Sheets and Google Docs [FREE DOWNLOAD]
How-To Template

Download a free product roadmap template for Excel, Powerpoint and Google Sheets/Docs. Easy to customize and present in your next meeting. Including step-by-step instructions for choosing the best flavor for your product.

This article provides a free product roadmap template together with an introduction to product roadamps and usage tips. The free template can be used to show a product outlook to partners and customers. Just copy the template, customize content and styling to your needs, then publish for your product.

Recommended reading: for managing and building a roadmap our articles on product roadmap voting, product backlog prioritization and tips for running a user group may also be of interest.


Intro: what is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap displays direction and progress of product enhancements over time. A roadmap serves two goals:
  • Internal:
    It’s a set of milestones for reaching strategic goals in the product. Development, marketing and product management align on the product roadmap.
  • External:
    It provides guidance to customers. Users and buyers can plan with future product functionality, engage with the product owners and provide feedback.

When showing a product roadmap to customers and partners, try to answer the following three questions from a customer's perspective:

  • When will my favorite feature be available?
    This usually is the reader's primary concern. 

  • What are the next features? 
    This will spark their curiosity and provide a sense of transparency and visibility.

  • What is the overall product direction?
    With higher the product pricing comes an increased desire to understand the product's direction. Especially in B2B environments, purchasing the product is a significant investment and a directional statement is required because it provides certainty to the buyer. A good product roadmap is the best way to meet this desire, better than marketing statements. Eventually, your customers may even buy the roadmap and not only the current product.


How does Productific relate to this?

Productific is a SaaS to display a product roadmap and prioritize roadmap items with user feedback. Besides running the roadmap and voting online, sometimes it may be necessary to use a stored document - a presentation or a spreadsheet. For this purpose Productific also provides document templates. You are free to use and change the templates provided here, also when usage is not related to Productific. Just remember to remove any yellow text which is included to explain the template.

The following templates are provided: 

2-column layout, 3 column layout
For most products the 2-column layout will work best. When there is increased certainty in planning, e.g. for B2B products, the 3-column layout can provide additional details. 

A version-specific roadmap with 4 columns
In enterprise environments with a high degree of customer engagement, committments and detailed release planning this version specific layout can be beneficial. It comes with three or four columns.


Additional info
In case you're using Productific you can link the online feedback page and individual feature listings, to increase feedback engagement. You can also work without links.

Roadmap templates are provided for the following tools:

Recommendation
Our recommendation for creating a good product roadmap:

  • Avoid using version specific roadmaps as far as possible. As a product owner navigating in markets you’re going to adjust plans, often. Instead, we recommend agile roadmaps where the features currently under development are shown to be coming soon and additional feedback for future scope is collected.
  • Add version-specific committments of features to your roadmap only for big-ticket items or important customers.
  • In the main roadmap add as little detail as possible. Focus on the big picture. Describe details for specific features in separate documents, for the reader interested in this item. 
  • Review and align frequently, with internal stakeholders and customers.
  • Show user benefit and relate to strategic goals.
.... and, of course, our top recommendation is to use Productific for showing users what's up next on the product roadmap and collect feedback at the same time. For offline use in a document, templates are available in the next chapter.

 
Download the templates 
When used offline, roadmaps are usually shown as a presentation in meetings or as supportive info together with other documents. The following presentation templates are available.

Template for Google Presentations: 
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bPI0xHswHaVCqtYnK2lBrgH42OjTk73tVFItk6iV8Y8

Download for Microsoft Powerpoint: 
Product_Roadmap_Template.pptx

Roadmaps can also be displayed in spreadsheet/table formatting or with gantt charts. Due to the complexity we recommend avoiding this, though sometimes enterprise stakeholders may require such layout. A spreadsheet is helpful for internal planning because development periods can be visualized appropriately. 

Template for Google Sheets:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/103lRVImvVY1b7sywmA_4I2NOWT8HC5B7Baq3QXBKd80

Download for Microsoft Excel: 
Product_Roadmap_Template.xlsx