I want to lose all the mechanisms of a project, it is easy for a project manager to get lost in the details and lose sight of the big picture. But what’s the big picture of the project to make sure it’s going in the right direction? Better however, how can you easily explain to your stakeholders how your project will develop without having to break down the entire project management plan?
A project roadmap is the best way to summarize the what, why and how of your project in an easy-to-insert document that can be shared with anyone. A project management roadmap is a unique tool that has a different proposal than other similar project documents, such as a project letter, milestone chart, or project plan.
Elements of a project roadmap
What is a project roadmap?
A project roadmap is an overview that defines the milestones, deliverables and objectives of the project. Its main goal is to provide a high-level visual representation of the project timeline and explain its phases. As a guide, the project roadmap is also a great communication tool that can be used to keep stakeholders informed at any point in the project life cycle.
It is the general document that talks about the project strategy and why that strategy is used. Therefore, the project roadmap helps project managers to ensure that everyone working on the project understands the piece to work on.
Due to their difficulty, project roadmaps are commonly used as project portfolio management tools. They are very useful for program managers who need to monitor multiple projects at the same time. With project roadmaps, they can easily track their project portfolios.
The following image shows the ProjectManager project roadmap tool used to manage a portfolio of projects.
Portfolio Management Project Roadmap on ProjectManager.com, showing activities and their duration on a timeline.
Under the company name column, planners can list their project portfolio and zoom in on each project to see its phases, activities and milestones. In addition, they can monitor the progress of each activity in real time and communicate with team members.
How to create a project roadmap
Simply put, a project roadmap tugs information from the project plan to provide an overview of the project. The project roadmap should be visual and manageable in length so that it can be easily assimilated by all involved parties and team members in the project. If it fits on one page, even better. Think of the project roadmap as a real map. Show yourself and your team members the big picture and contextualize your journey.
The key components needed to create a project roadmap are as follows:
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General description of the project
The main shove of any project roadmap is the high-level goals and objectives of the project. No, you need to go into a lot of detail here, as the project goals and objectives are detailed in the project letter.
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Risks
of the project
List the main project risks that could cause the project to fail or compromise the main elements of the project plan, such as the project plan, program, objectives, stakeholder expectations, confidence in quality, etc.
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General description of the program
Since your project roadmap is a visual timeline of your project, you want to include an overview of the planning. This planning overview will include only key project deliverables and milestones. You can also use Gantt charts to get a more detailed representation of your project planning.
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Addictions
Again, only from a high-level view, look at the important project results and how they are connected. Creating your project roadmap with a Gantt chart software tool that allows you to link dependencies is the easiest way to represent dependencies.
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Resources
Write down the resources needed to complete the project. These include human resources like your project team and physical resources like equipment, materials, etc.
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Key people
List the key people on the project team and how to reach them.
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Kickoff meeting
Stick to the project management roadmap and make sure expectations are clear to all stakeholders. (Make sure you have prepared an initial meeting agenda.)
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Tasks and assignments
Another aspect of the project roadmap is ownership. This means that they all describe the roles and responsibilities of those involved in the project. The project roadmap defines who is doing what and therefore these activities and results can be monitored. Project management software allows you to assign tasks and use team teamwork tools to facilitate this process.
That’s not all if it can defined so precisely, of course, the project roadmap maintains something called “time spread”. It is a technical project planning that allows for activities that cannot clearly stated residing in a very flexible time frame. They now back and can tracked down without fear of getting lost.
Project roadmap example
To better illustrate how to create a project roadmap, let’s take a closer look at the project roadmap example we mentioned earlier.
project roadmap example
The image above shows a completed project management roadmap. Now let’s take a look at each of its components.
Project phases: The image above shows the “development” and “test” phases of the “Tannen Tech project”. They represented on the project timeline with blue and red lines respectively.
Milestones: Diamond-shaped icons represent project milestones that mark the end of each phase.
Tasks: each bar represents a competitor. Our roadmap tool allows you to track your completion with a percentage. You can also specify the project deliverables associated with each activity.
Dependencies – The arrows in the roadmap tool represent the dependencies between activities.
Key people: Each activity is possible for the project team members who are responsible for it.
Date – Date is a key component of the project roadmap. Our roadmap tool allows you to set the activity date, milestone, and phases of your project.
As you can see, the project progress detail is similar to a Gantt chart, but the main difference is that you can use our Gantt chart view to create a detailed version of the project, within our tool. works best for the project you manage. carrying case.
Also Read: What Is Scheduling in Project Management?
