A product roadmap is a visual way of communicating to stakeholders what a product team is working on.
Like all communication tools they are context dependent: different organizations and audiences will adopt different formats and have different needs.
You might even need different types of roadmaps at different times of year, depending on your objectives.
Real product roadmap examples are useful. They help you understand which format will work best for your context and stakeholders. We’ve therefore compiled the best product roadmap examples we could source.
Researching this took several months to find the best product roadmap examples out there. It’s a mix of real product roadmap examples from genuine product leaders, interspersed with some of the strongest company roadmaps we could find.
We’ve done the work so you don’t have to, but if you’ve got more, send them to us at contact@hustlebadger.com and help the community.
Hustle Badger Guide to How to Create a Roadmap with 5 Product Roadmap Templates
Strategic / Theme based product roadmap examples
Strategic, or theme based product roadmaps are usually used to represent where a product organization will allocate its focus and resources, typically organised by squad and/or theme.
They do a great job of explaining resource allocation and strategy simply at a high level that stakeholders can grasp quickly, but they don’t provide much detail or commit to timelines.
They’re most useful when communicating with senior stakeholders, during longer term planning cycles, and when fleshing out strategy documents.
Here are the best strategic or theme based product roadmap examples we could find.
Gibson Biddle | Netflix Product Roadmap Example
Stylized version of the 2005 Netflix Product Roadmap from Gibson Biddle
What’s great about this example
What sets this product roadmap example apart is its simplicity. It’s a 1 page grid view of resource allocation and themes for the next 12 months. You understand what the major priorities for the organisation are at a glance. It’s high level and elegant.
This is a great example of communicating clearly at the C-suite level and providing conceptual direction to squads.
What are the downsides
The themes per quarter are precisely worded, but there’s not a lot of detail, nor are there timelines. This only makes sense if product squads are aligned to the core themes, i.e. the themes reflect resource focus and allocation. Under the hood work is also omitted – for example platform architecture or data workstreams – by design.
“The roadmap tells a story about how the overall strategy for the product team might play out over time. When I put it together, I thought of the company’s board as the primary audience—they don’t need all the details.” – Gibson Biddle
Stripe Product Roadmap Example
Stripe Strategy Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
It’s well structured to provide all the key talking points required for a persuasive, clear strategy in roadmap form. Unlike the other product roadmap examples we’ve shared, it has a neat strategic overview section, a past learnings section to ground the strategy in reality, and then drills down to two key themes and the workstreams that sit below them.
Following a clear seam of logic top down makes it clear why the team is doing what it is doing, and makes a compelling case for their focus. It also clearly calls out where delivering certain workstreams requires more resources.
“Implementing this led to significant positive outcomes for our team at Stripe. The feedback from stakeholders was overwhelmingly positive, highlighting improved transparency and communication across teams. Additionally, the roadmap facilitated better resource allocation and prioritization, leading to more efficient execution of strategic initiatives.” – Halim Madi, Product Lead at Stripe
What are the downsides
This type of approach works best in a company executing on longer timelines, where a product has already reached a certain degree of maturity. It’s hard to see this approach and upfront investment working well in earlier stage environments. Finally, this product roadmap example only really works for a single team. It’s too detailed to give a simple overview for the whole product org.
Github Product Roadmap Example
Github Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
Themes are listed on the left hand side, and then are tagged across items. The items are listed in detail for each quarter, and when you drill into the individual roadmap items there’s some decent detail about what is coming. It contains all the work, not only the glamorous work.
What are the downsides
This product roadmap example is fairly detailed, so it’s likely more usable at the team or the end user level. Execs might struggle to absorb this easily. The strategy story is less clear, and it’s not shown why the teams are doing what they are doing.
The Hustle Badger Strategic Product Roadmap Template
OKR | Goal based product roadmap examples
This type of product readmap is best for tracking goal, or objective based initiatives across squads, in companies which use objectives, or goals to align teams on strategic initiatives.
They’re most useful when teams are held to account for delivering against objectives, and where objectives align or overlap with other teams.
Here are the best objective based product roadmap examples we could find.
Lenny Rachitsky Goal based Product Roadmap Example
Lenny Rachitsky’s Goal based Product Roadmap Example in Notion
What’s great about it
Lenny shares a couple of different types of product roadmap example in both Notion and Excel. His roadmaps tend to be a hybrid between Objective, Gantt and project management views showing how a particular initiative is proceeding through work stages towards completion. This is common, and many roadmaps will try to balance a variety of needs from different stakeholders.
This example is a simple goal based view, with key results listed beneath the goals, and the responsible team members allocated by goal.
Underneath this view sits another view, which shows where the project is in its delivery lifecycle (i.e. ‘In design’) and some simple scoring of initiatives, using a priority, effort, impact range.
Lenny Product Roadmap Example [input from Andrew Chen]: Objectives merged with execution status
What are the downsides
The scoring is pretty high level, i.e. ‘priority high’, ‘effort medium’. If you don’t get those estimates right, things could easily slip, which matters in a delivery focused view like this, over a high level strategy view. Additionally it’s not clear why some things make it to key results contributing to the goal over others.
Nonetheless, in scenarios where company vision and strategy is clear, and focus is on shipping, and workflows are agile (such as at Airbnb, the inspiration for this product roadmap), this type of view would be useful.
The Hustle Badger OKR Product Roadmap Template
Now Next Later product roadmap examples
Now Next Later roadmaps are simple strategic overviews which show what a team is working on now, what they will work on next, and what is on the backlog or (effectively) deprioritized for now.
Their strength and weakness is their simplicity. They don’t contain timelines or indicate where resources are being allocated, they don’t align to goals and they don’t show dependencies.
There are scenarios where that is desirable, such as community or public facing roadmaps, and there are scenarios where that is not, typically when you’re trying to align product roadmaps to the efforts of other teams, or communicate well internally about progress to goals. Most execs and boards will want more certainty about what they are getting in return for their ongoing investment in product. A Now, Next, Later format is great for public and client facing roadmaps, but less useful internally.
Here are the best Now Next Later product roadmap examples we could find.
Docker Product Roadmap Example
Docker Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
This is essentially a Now, Next, Later product roadmap example with more intuitive names which clarify stages of discovery. Considering, Investigating, Upcoming logic aligns closely to Steam, Water, Ice thinking, and provides more information about where things are in the discovery cycle than a simple Now, Next, Later prioritisation. They’ve also segmented developed products into two delivery stages: beta and shipped. This builds credibility both by showing what has actually been done, and what’s being refined as an MVP.
Overall this is a neat example of a Now, Next, Later format that’s been iterated to communicate clearly to stakeholders where things are in the cycle and why
What are the downsides
If you deep dive into the different items being reviewed you see it’s more of an issue tracker, than a strategic roadmap. That’s useful when you’re responding to community feedback, i.e. in an Enterprise context where you’re serving contracted client needs, but doesn’t leave a lot of space for blue sky or big leap projects.
The Hustle Badger Guide to Product Backlogs
Buffer Product Roadmap Example
Buffer Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
This roadmap format allows for upvotes from the community, and is then stack ranked by user endorsement. It’s a strong example of customer and community <> product engagement.
They’ve also renamed their Now, Next, Later buckets to intuitive product discovery and development stages which more accurately track progress.
Similar to the previous example they’ve added additional buckets of activity to show both what is being developed as an MVP, and what is done.
Finally they have a section which shows what they’re not going to work on (Closed). Including everything on a list, and showing what won’t be worked on and why is powerful in terms of stakeholder communication. Here the upvoting comes into its own – you can see the closed column has little endorsement from the community.
What are the downsides
Ultimately again this is a community driven, public product roadmap example. Its strength (community upvoting and engagement) is also a weakness. While it does include some big leap ideas, those don’t have the same traction among the community as smaller, day to day operational improvements to working in the tool – because they’re novel, unproven in value and by design, big leap concepts. It’s not clear how the internal team balances those imperatives.
Microsoft 365 Product Roadmap Example
Microsoft 365 Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
There’s elegant, but minimalist detail per item that clarifies what it is. There’s target dates for when things will ship. It covers all products and all items under the Microsoft 365 umbrella, so there are no teams, or topics omitted. It is organised by product, and then summarised by development status (launched, rolling out, and in development align to now, next, later), which allows quite a bit of granularity.
By filtering by product, i.e. Microsoft Copilot, you get a clear picture of what is coming next. For teams working on longer horizons, the roadmap extends out many years. Other useful filters include platform, cloud, and whether it’s a new or an update to an existing topic.
What are the downsides
Initially it reads as a long list of things which they will be releasing. The discovery and consideration phases of roadmap planning are omitted. While you can see dates and understand priorities similarly the strategic and goal elements of the roadmap cycle are not public.
Customer feedback isn’t part of the roadmap on an initiative basis, and users are redirected to a Feedback portal, which covers all product bugs and queries. Finally, since it’s not intuitive they provide a PowerPoint deck on how to read it.
Atlassian Product Roadmap Example
Atlassian Cloud Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
You can segment the roadmaps by Cloud and Data Platform products, so it works across customer sets. It includes target dates for shipping, and items which were shipped in the past, often as far back as 2022, which can be helpful context or information. There’s a short script on the item topic, and then more detail once you click into the topic.
It’s also a leaner, higher level roadmap than the Microsoft product roadmap example. You can easily share and copy the links to the tickets. Finally, you can sort it by both Product (i.e. Jira), and Category of work (i.e. Agile and Dev Ops).
What are the downsides
Dates are rounded to the quarter – so they’re approximated, and can shift. The statuses are Released, Coming Soon, and Future, which align to Now, Next, Later, with limited granularity. It’s not clear what is in discovery.
Similar to the Microsoft example, since it’s sorted as a long list, it’s actually less intuitive than a simple visualization of a Now Next Later roadmap, since you have to know what you’re looking for to filter it effectively.
Monzo USA product roadmap example
Monzo USA product roadmap example
What’s great about this example
This is another adaptation of a Now, Next, Later roadmap. In this scenario, Live shows what the team has recently shipped, In Progress shows what they are working on now, Priorities shows what they will work on next, Stretch goals shows what they will tackle later, and Backlog shows items which may never make it to the In Progress section.
This is a very clear, neat Now Next Later, with community features like upvoting, and a comments section, should users have feedback. A further benefit of this roadmap (which really flows from resource allocation) is the fact that it’s a geo specific lens on customer features for a multi national product.
What are the downsides
This public facing Now, Next, Later seems like a single team initiative designed to communicate with stakeholders and clients in the US, meaning core product updates aren’t included.
Additionally there’s detail on the problem the roadmap will solve but not the how, nor are there dates for when it will happen. Plus clients are mostly upvoting topics, but not commenting, meaning there’s a relatively limited feedback loop.
Social Bee product roadmap example
Social Bee Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
What makes this one stand out is the amount of effort they have put into making the overall themes of work clear, and how they have elicited and engaged with customer feedback.
They’ve pinned both a YTD roadmap summary (easier to view than the item list), an explainer and a colour coded key to the item type. They’ve also really prompted users to request features, with the result that there’s a lot of user requests, and a lot of engagement on the development items. They make the effort to routinely update this board.
Social Bee Roadmap Summaries and feature request requests
What are the downsides
There are cards for features and epics, but detail is pretty light in a lot of cases. Until there’s a design prototype, little information is shared. There aren’t timelines for when things will land, nor is there a sense of what overall goals are.
The Hustle Badger Now Next Later Product Roadmap Template
Gantt chart product roadmap examples
A Gantt chart product roadmap represents tasks and priorities as a timeline. It’s useful when you need to deliver to tight deadlines and with a high degree of certainty.
The downside of this format is that it’s so delivery focused: it doesn’t lend itself to strategic overviews, it quickly devolves to a lengthy task list and there’s often not enough certainty about what is getting built more than a few weeks out.
Here are the best Gantt chart product roadmap examples we could find.
Change Product Roadmap Example
Change Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about this example
The roadmap is clearly linked to company goals and core company KPIs. It then groups a series of backlog items by goal theme and does an ICE prioritization on the backlog to promote topics to the roadmap. The roadmap is then organized by timeline.
Get the Hustle Badger Guide to the RICE Framework
What are the downsides
It’s not clear what the strategy is that connects all these items together in this product roadmap example, and how they ladder up to an end to end product vision. Not all of the items listed are of the same order of magnitude, which is clear in the delivery timelines. Keeping all the done items open at the top of the roadmap makes it hard to see what’s coming next.
Notion product roadmap example
Notion Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about it
This isn’t the actual roadmap for Notion, but the template they’ve built to showcase their product. It’s pretty nice, showing both a high level overview and a task tracker. This sort of format often seems great in theory, but falls down in practice, because you only have good estimates in the very near term.
What are the downsides
The high level tracker suggests high accuracy a long way out, but it seems unlikely that the dates are reliable. You have to set date ranges in order to enter the initiatives into Notion, but the reality is that they’re probably highly mobile. Displaying things with definite dates which move can make stakeholder management difficult.
Maven Product Roadmap Example
Maven Product Roadmap Template
What’s great about it
It’s a simple task based tracker, with a couple of different ways to look at the progress and timeline information. You can flip easily between timeline and table views of the date ranges, see what’s done, and tag by product area, which aligns to squad.
What are the downsides
It’s probably supplementing a strategy document which sits somewhere else. Not having the strategy document to hand makes it hard to understand why things are included or excluded. All in all it’s a basic Gantt roadmap format and no more, but it could be a good starting point for iteration.
Lenny Rachitsky Team Time Roadmap Example
Lenny Rachitsky Team Time Roadmap Example
What’s great about it
This is a delivery focused view that ensures that team time is planned up front in order to ensure the sequence of deliverables land on time for the entire team to be able to execute the roadmap. It’s a good stress test of whether key results and objectives are actually deliverable or not. For example, if Design needs 6 weeks, and Engineering needs 12, the initiative won’t land within the quarter.
What are the downsides
This requires strong planning skills and effective estimation upfront. If estimates slip or stakeholders disrupt this planning, things will fall down.
The Hustle Badger Gantt Product Roadmap Template
Hybrid product roadmap examples
Hybrid product roadmap examples are a halfway house / mashup of two or more product roadmap formats. For example, a timeline or Gantt visualization of an objective based roadmap.
It’s where most people end up: it’s not a perfect format but it allows most of the critical information to live in a single document, and explains enough for stakeholders to have security that they know where things are heading, and to give product teams enough flexibility to be able to commit incrementally.
The most common hybrid product roadmap types are strategic / theme based and Gantt crossovers. The way that these typically manifest is that the timelines are a bit vague to give engineers some leeway, and the view is structured to show how things fit together and how resources are being allocated.
Johanna Tortensson Agile Product Roadmap Example
What’s great about it
It’s a really strong example of two of the most common product roadmap formats. It displays initiatives either by objective or team, and then pulls out major themes over time which may overlap. By aggregating features into larger groups or breaking them out you can produce these at various levels of detail, and always condense to the level that you can fit an entire org’s roadmap on a single chart. Fun, but informative touches include stickers to highlight major events and releases.
What are the downsides
It’s thematic and time based, which is a neat abstraction but means that if estimates are wrong or projects blow up things may change quickly.
Grammarly Growth Roadmap
Grammarly Growth Roadmap Example
What’s great about it
Simple, theme based blocks of work arranged across time periods are grouped by categories. Not strictly a product roadmap example (it’s a growth roadmap) the format could easily be applied to product initiatives. Prioritization is deliberately omitted. The blocks of work support 2 big company initiatives, and are to a degree, non-negotiable. By blocking out the timelines for completing the work, the author was forcing a resourcing discussion as part of annual planning (a common use case for strategic / theme based roadmaps).
What are the downsides
The downside of committing up front to work sequenced in estimated blocks is that you may be held to delivering on those timelines, and according to that plan. If you follow this format it’s important to build consensus about change, and leave flexibility for the unknown.
“No annual roadmap remains unchanged. You’re usually looking for 90% accuracy one Q out, 60-70% accuracy 2 Qs out, so on and so forth” – Yuriy Timen
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FAQs
Where can I find some real product roadmap examples?
We’ve collated 16 of the best real product roadmap examples we could find, across Strategic / Theme based, OKR, Now Next Later, Gantts and hybrid roadmaps. This isn’t a list of detail free, high level SaaS company roadmaps, or a list of templates in our product. It’s good examples of real roadmaps.
Where can I find product roadmap templates?
You can find 5 different types of product roadmap templates in our Guide: How to Create a Product Roadmap. We walk you through which format is best for which purpose, what makes a good or a bad roadmap, plus provide a bunch of templates you can deploy today.
Why are real product roadmap examples useful?
Seeing how real people organize and display their information, interact with their users, and engage their stakeholders gives you a starting point to create your own roadmap. Product roadmap templates are useful as a starting point, but real product roadmap examples bring things to life.
Where did you find these product roadmap examples?
We trawled the internet (social sites, publicly available links, newsletter platforms) to source this group. We shortlisted c. 40 product roadmap examples after 2 months of research, and then selected this group as the best examples of format and how to use a product roadmap to communicate with stakeholders. If you’d like to share more product roadmap examples, please write to us at contact@hustlebadger.com.
