The Kanban Roadmap helps product managers leverage the Kanban Expression methodology for strategic planning. In the Kanban method, we classify the effort into distinct buckets such as “planned,” “in progress,” “completed,” and “blocked.” This approach to product roadmaps allows product teams to capture product strategies in a broad, long-term context. The Kanban roadmap is a great way to track functionality across the entire discovery and delivery lifecycle. This roadmap organizes features by status. The roadmap captures and communicates high-level strategies, and Kanban is a task-oriented approach.
The word “Kanban Roadmap” has freshly come into practice. If the product manager has seen this glossary, he will know what a Kanban Road Map is. There is no word for Kanban Road Map. The combination of the Kanban Board and the product roadmap appeared before the product manager knows it. However, ultimately, the word “Kanban Roadmap” is misused. The roadmap captures and communicates high-level strategies, and Kanban is a task-oriented approach.
What Is Kanban?
“Kanban” is a Japanese term that implies “visible card,” but it is also translated as “visual signal” or “simply card.”
Kanban may be perceived as a visual interface used in many project management apps. It allows teams to create visual boards, group items into vertical columns (e.g., marked “Planned,” “Executed,” “Completed”), create individual cards, and move between columns according to their current status.
How Do Product Managers Leverage the Kanban Roadmap?
There are many steps in which product managers typically practice the Kanban system to more reliable record and supervise the task-level aspects of product improvement. However, product managers can create virtually complementary roadmaps using Kanban, especially about roadmaps. Here are some of the significant benefits of such a Kanban roadmap in the company.
Benefits
- The Kanban roadmap will help the product team understand and communicate what they are currently working on, what they are hoping for a little more, and what they are looking for in the long run. In other words, a Product manager can integrate both a strategic roadmap and backlog items and distinguish between the two using a clear visual bucket.
- The Kanban roadmap also helps critical audiences, such as development and support teams, get a clear snapshot of the high-level project management view of the product. This view will be much more appropriate for these teams to track their progress than just presenting a broader, strategic level of product roadmap view.
- The Kanban roadmap shows the current status of a firm project to show relevant audiences where it is in the development process without looking at dates or deadlines.
Timeline-based Roadmap
A timeline-based roadmap is ideal for visualizing product schedules for different tasks. Product managers can quickly and easily figure out what everyone is working on and allocate resources.
However, a simple trap in a timeline-based roadmap is concentrating on deadlines rather than solid preferences. It also does not show the background of why it is on the roadmap. Also, there is no clue why we prioritized them and how they were arranged.
Closing Lines
Depending on which roadmap format the Product Manager chooses, the results are chain reactions. If the company uses the Kanban system, people will be asking for dates. If the product team chooses a timeline, it will promise an implicit delivery date for all items. However, one roadmap should not be used for the product’s life. It is best to start with the Kanban method and then move to a timeline roadmap when the product is mature. Alternatively, the company can start with the timeline to produce MVPs and switch to the Kanban system when backlog items or feature requests accumulate.