**How do I create a roadmap?

There are a bunch of tools online that all promise that roadmaps can be created simply and easily. However, a text editor is often a much more effective tool than any tool. But perhaps we first need to clarify what actually makes a roadmap valuable.

“We need a roadmap so that we finally have an overview of which features will be ready when and whether we need more developers.” It was the second month of a larger contract, the project was slowly taking shape, but my client was bothered by the lack of a roadmap. Or rather, he was bothered by the roadmap itself, because a roadmap was desired from the beginning, but week after week my drafts were rejected and week after week I developed a new proposal in a new format. What was the problem?

To answer this question, it’s worth looking at the background and context of the project. I had been brought in as an external project manager for a project that had exceeded the estimated budget and time horizon. Other projects were already planned, but were dependent on developers from this project and therefore blocked. The project itself was opaque - it was not clear what the developers were actually working on, when they would be finished and which tasks were still open. This lack of transparency cost money, but also time and nerves. The delay was also putting a strain on relationships with my client’s customers. All these problems were to be solved with a roadmap.

Good roadmaps are a lot of work

A roadmap is a tool for project planning and control and, in its simplest form, is nothing more than an overview of the most important milestones of a project. It often resembles a Gantt chart (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt-Diagramm) in that the most important initiatives of the project are shown on a timeline. This representation is often enriched with an indication of how advanced the respective initiatives are. In theory, this allows a quick and clear overview of when which milestones will be reached and whether there are any undue delays. My client’s desire for such an overview was understandable given the state of the project.

However, like so many management tools, roadmaps also have a decisive disadvantage: they often have little in common with reality. In order to be able to make meaningful management decisions, the information base must be very solid. If a roadmap does not contain correct information, it is therefore unsuitable as a management tool and may even be dangerous. However, in order to have a precise overview of the project status, a deep understanding of the current status and highly precise planning of the further course of the project is required. In reality, however, this precision in planning is almost impossible to implement, as unforeseen and unforeseeable events always occur: an important team member falls ill, a customer suddenly has a new idea and wants it to be taken into account in development or a competitor launches a comparable product on the market from which it is now necessary to differentiate oneself (see, among others: “The Black Swan” by Nassim Taleb). Delays and rescheduling are part of everyday project management.

An ideal roadmap would reflect all these factors, ideally even planning for them. The difficulty here, however, is that while we humans are very good at estimating immediate tasks (the reader probably has a pretty good idea of what he or she can do today), we are getting worse at predicting our performance in the future - for example, what we can do today in a year’s time). The longer a roadmap plans into the future, the more expensive it becomes.

This inevitably raises the question of the cost/benefit ratio: The time and energy invested in creating a perfect roadmap could ultimately be invested directly in the progress of the project.

So how do we build a roadmap that makes sense for our project?

Be stubborn on the vision