Roadmaps by audience
Name, area and stage go on almost every view. Owner and status come off for anyone outside the team, and dates narrow to a quarter, or disappear entirely for customers and sales. Eight audiences here, each with the fields to show, the fields to hide, and the reason for each.
Most product managers end up maintaining the same roadmap more than once — the detailed one, the presentable one, and a stripped-down one for leadership. They drift, and the version leadership is looking at is usually a month old.
The alternative is one set of items with a saved view per audience, each with its own filter and its own visible fields. Change an item once and every view is current, because nothing was copied. These pages are about the judgement call that remains: which fields each audience should see.
- Board meeting roadmapFive or six bets, the quarter each lands in, and nothing a board would be obliged to chase.
- Customer-facing roadmapRewrite the items first, then show three stages, one area, and no dates at all.
- Roadmap for engineering teamThe view that hides almost nothing, the one field to turn off, and where the tracker starts.
- Roadmap for executivesFour fields to show, two to hide, and why each call goes the way it does.
- Roadmap for new team membersOwner and notes are the payload here, shipped work stays on, and the dates come off.
- Roadmap for QBRTwo quarters back and two forward, shipped work left in place, and no owner column.
- Roadmap for sales teamThe only view that hides quarters, because a rep repeats everything on it within the week.
- Roadmap for stakeholdersBuild for the reader three forwards away, and show only the dependency they owe you.
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