How to Build a Product Roadmap for a Seamless App Development Process

Published on June 18, 2024

The sudden increase in modern tech demands has pushed businesses to develop mobile apps to gain a competitive edge, enhance customer experience, and boost retention. Although there are nearly 2 million apps in various app stores today, developing a mobile app is complex and risky. This is where road mapping becomes essential. 

  

What is a Product Roadmap?
 

A product Mobile app Development roadmap is a strategic document outlining the major stages of the Mobile App Development process. Its main goal is to align your product vision with your business goals. Road mapping helps prioritize and organise feature ideas, decide which features to release, and, if necessary, which to remove or restructure. Effective roadmaps provide insights into the big picture, identify missed opportunities, and eliminate difficulties along the way, thus supporting the long-term development of your product. 

  

How to Start? 

To begin, understand your product vision and develop a user-driven strategy. Create a plan before road mapping to align your team and focus on essential tasks. A roadmap, which results from strategic planning, typically contains: 

  

• Product Vision: The desired outcome of your product. 

• Strategy: Execution plan detailing necessary actions. 

• Goal: Objectives measured by specific metrics. 

• Initiative: Features implemented to achieve the goal. 

• Feature: Product functionality or third-party applications. 

• Time Frame: Approximate time required for completion. 

• Status Marker: Indicator of work progress. 

• Metrics: Measurements such as organic traffic or churn rate. 

 

Creating a Successful Roadmap
 

1. Define Your Strategy and Product Vision 

  

Identify the problem your app will solve, its target users, and its unique value proposition (UVP). Conduct market research, define customer personas, and consult stakeholders to gather necessary information for your roadmap.
 

1. Define Your ‘Audience’ 

  

Tailor your Mobile App Development roadmap for specific audiences. Different departments, such as sales, marketing, and engineering, may require different roadmaps.
 

1. Use Metrics 

  

Define KPIs to measure progress and focus on essential areas. Utilise methods like the MoSCoW method (Must, Should, Could, Won’t) to prioritise features and keep the project on track. 

 

1. Use Roadmap Tools 

  

Modern tools like OpenProject, Roadmap Planner, ProductPlan, Aha! and Roadmunk offer dynamic, cloud-based solutions for road mapping, allowing easy updates and collaboration.
 

1. Focus on Important Updates 

  

Keep your roadmap strategic and avoid unnecessary details. Regularly update it to reflect new features and goals, ensuring all teams and stakeholders are informed.
 

1. Understand Your Users 

  

Gather user feedback through surveys, interviews, and specialised tools like Mopinion or Apptentive. Use this feedback to improve your product and prioritise development areas.
 

1. SWOT Analysis 

  

Conduct a SWOT analysis to evaluate internal and external factors affecting your development process, identifying potential opportunities and risks.

 

Final Word 

The mobile app development roadmap is a dynamic process with many evolving parts. A product roadmap supports collaboration and eliminates barriers. It communicates your vision, prioritises steps, and aligns your mobile app development with business objectives. 

  

The Impact of Digital Transformation on Product Management 

With the increasing pervasiveness of mobile apps, digital transformations have made the role of product management more complex. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital migration by five years, and global mobile app usage exploded to nearly 70 billion hours (about 8,000,000 years) per week during lockdowns. This shift in consumer trends has led to changes in product roadmaps, with new priorities to meet emerging customer needs. 

  

Building a Product Roadmap Strategy 

In an agile environment, speed and adaptability are crucial. Agile roadmaps, unlike traditional static ones, break down the timeline into months or quarters. Key attributes include: 

  

• Continuous Testing: Builds are released in small batches to gather feedback for iterations.
   

• Cross-functional collaboration: Involves marketing, customer support, design, sales, engineering, and operations.
   

• Feature and User Story Breakdown: Development teams create technical necessities and plan resources.
   

• Regular Sprints: Weekly or monthly releases of smaller feature groups and user stories. 

New features should be treated as experiments, and validated by user feedback. The build-measure-learn feedback loop helps product teams focus on relevant, customer-oriented ideas. 

  

Customer Insights and Feedback 

User feedback is essential for product mapping. Three main types of feedback include: 

  

• Feature Requests: Identify missing features for an improved user experience. 

• Issue Reporting: Highlight performance issues that spark new ideas for improvements. 

• Competitor Feedback: Benchmark against competitors to stay ahead.
   

Creating a Customer-Focused Roadmap 

1. Set Learning Milestones and Goals 

 Define what you need to learn from customer insights and set goals for future development.
 

1. Focus on Relevant User Feedback 

 Collect feedback related to performance issues and competitive analysis to inform your roadmap.
 

1. Collaborate with Customer-Facing Teams 

Engage with teams that interact with customers to gather relevant feedback and prioritise product development.
 

Agile Development and Kanban 

Using Kanban for backlog grooming allows for an agile workflow that adapts to unpredictable changes. Key principles include: 

  

• Validation: Ensure features resolve customer needs before moving to the next stage. 

• Limited Work in Progress: Only a set number of user stories are in progress at any time. 

 

Best Practices for Product Roadmaps 

• Focus on solving user stories rather than meeting deadlines. 

• Keep your roadmap flexible to adapt to changing trends and customer needs. 

• Use accessible, actionable, and auditable metrics to measure progress and inform decisions.
   

Product Manager KPIs and Metrics 

Key metrics to track include: 

  

• User Reach: Number of users over a period. 

• Active Users: Daily Active Users (DAU) or Monthly Active Users (MAU). 

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): Total revenue from subscriptions or in-app purchases. 

• Active User Spending (ARPU): Average revenue per user. 

• Churn Rate: Percentage of users lost. 

• Retention Rate: Percentage of users returning. 

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Total revenue from a customer over their lifetime.
   

Finding Actionable Customer Insights with Savvient Technologies 

Savvient Technologies, a leading mobile app development company Australia, offers Advanced software to provide segmented and organised product insights. Savvient Technologies helps you build a roadmap with desired, accurate insights by leveraging user reviews and gritty customer sentiment data, ensuring your app meets customer needs and stands out in the market. If you’re aiming to build the best app in your category and create features that customers want, Savvient Technologies is the right partner for you.