- What's the difference between a roadmap and a project timeline? While both look similar because they chronologically map work, they're actually quite different. In this video, we'll define them both, discuss the relationship between the two, and outline their key differences.
Your roadmap is a visualization of the strategic problems your team commits to solving in order of priority. These problems are mapped according to approximate broad timeframes, such as now, next, and future. These broad timeframes allow teams to make strategic progress over the long-term rather than getting bogged down by dates.
The roadmap focuses teams on broader problems to solve rather than predefined solutions. These broad focus areas might be: research-oriented, such as understanding user needs; product-oriented, such as boosting your conversion rate by a notable percentage; or internally-oriented, such as decreasing time to develop new features. A project timeline, on the other hand, is a comprehensive outline of the tasks you'll need to do to build a solution to a problem on the roadmap with specific delivery milestones.
A project timeline usually includes: scope definition, what you'll specifically deliver; along with tasks, how you will specifically get it done step-by-step to deliver the scope; and roles and responsibilities, who will be doing each of those tasks and in what order will they get done. That's where timeline comes in. When we create a timeline, we outline when each task is expected to start and be completed.
How this is visualized depends on your team's process. If you're using an agile framework, your timeline can show when your team will finish significant chunks of work known as epics, which come from completing several sprints worth of work. If your team follows waterfall, you might visualize your timeline as a Gantt chart, which breaks down tasks across segments of time.
Last, milestones. Within your timeline, what are the key moments the team will need to prepare for. This mark key events like reporting progress, checking in, presenting deliverables, and doing demos.
Although your roadmap and your project timeline are separate entities, they are connected. Each theme on your roadmap finds a counterpart in a project timeline the moment your team commits to solving that problem. When we transition from roadmaps to project timeline, we go from strategic to tactical.
Imagine a theme on an e-commerce website's roadmap to increase conversion rate. Imagine a solution to this is to add Apple Pay to the checkout page. The project manager might create a project timeline, which looks like this.
Scope definition: Add Apple Pay integration to the checkout page. Tasks: We expect to complete a set of 15 tasks to accomplish this, divide it up among our people with roles and responsibilities. We will have the project lead, the design and research lead, the development lead, the third party partners lead, the quality assurance lead, and the marketing lead.
For timeline, we expect the project to take three to four sprints worth of time and budget with four milestones approximately two weeks apart with some flexibility, where we'll report progress and test with users. A project timeline should contain all relevant details that are specific to your project. Be thorough and be specific.
So ask yourself, are you trying to develop a strategic plan or are you planning to deliver a known solution? Roadmaps are a great tool for outlining your strategy, while project timelines are a great tool for ensuring you don't miss any details in delivery. Using the right one for the right purpose ensures you'll make the most of both.
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