A Product Manager’s Simple Guide to Scrum Roadmaps

Scrum is an odd word – there’s not exactly an indication of what it means or what it has to do with roadmaps. It sounds a lot more like a huddle in a football game than something to do with product management. Yet, every office discussion seems to involve a little Scrum talk.

Can’t tell your Scrum from your Agile or Kanban? This guide might just turn your qualms and suspicions into a love for scrum roadmaps. We’ll be looking at:

• Scrum 101: A breakdown of what Scrum is and why it’s such a big deal
• Building a Scrum Roadmap: Steps to create your own, complete with a Scrum product roadmap example
• The Scrum Specialty: Why Scrum roadmaps are so special and how they make for an especially flexible product development process. 

What is a Scrum Roadmap?

Each roadmap type sets itself apart from the others through its focus. Theme-based roadmaps are based on broader themes, while Epic roadmaps go a little more granular and focus on big tasks that can be broken down into manageable parts.

Scrum roadmaps are a high-level sort of roadmap where anyone can take a quick glance at it and understand a product’s most important milestones and goals laid out on a timeline. It focuses on iterations called ‘Sprints’ – two to four-week phases for achieving specific goals. And due to their nature, they’re extremely fluid and ready for versions 2.0 or 3.0 with no issues at all. With small morsels of progress done at a controlled pace, it’s simply about moving the needle closer to the overarching product goals one step at a time.

How to Create a Scrum Roadmap

Engineering a Scrum roadmap takes time to master, but becoming a master of the product roadmap in Scrum is something that will benefit your product management skills in the long run. Let’s break it all down:

1. Envision the Future: After the product is all said and done, what goals do you want it to achieve? High-level objectives are the backbone of any Scrum roadmap and will guide you through the many Sprints. Say you’re launching an online language-learning platform. At this stage, you’re not worried about specifics like implementing a multi-language dictionary – you’ll craft a general objective such as “create an engaging online platform to help users become fluent in a new language.”
2. Break Goals Down: Much like any other roadmap, overarching goals require a couple of smaller tasks to help you complete those goals. The idea of owning such a popular app, potentially one that rivals the likes of Duolingo and Babbel, is certainly exciting. But to get there, you’ll need to do your team a favor and give everyone practical steps to follow. Initial objectives for that language app might include establishing a first language course or finalizing the app design.

3. Organize Your Tasks into Sprints: Welcome to the Scrum part of the roadmap, where you’ll organize these manageable tasks into two to four week-long Sprints, no more, no less. Each of those Sprints needs to have a clear goal or set of goals that work towards the final goal. If the goal is to craft your initial language course, in whatever language that might be, your Sprints could include focusing on alphabets and basic pronunciation, grammar rules, etc.

Appealing-looking Sprints in a basic Fibery space

4. Figure Out Who’s Doing What: Now, these tasks aren’t of much use without team members to work on them. This stage involves assigning tasks based on workload, skills, and position.
5. Set Timelines for Each Sprint: Since each Sprint is time-boxed, deadlines are firm. Although the inherent nature of a product roadmap in Scrum is flexible, these timelines help keep these Sprints on track. With timelines of two to four weeks, you’ll also need to make sure the goals within each one are realistic and achievable.

6. Review and Iterate: One of the golden principles of Scrum is to review and iterate. As a non-linear process, each Sprint should end with a final review to assess the work done and learn from the process. If unexpected hurdles or roadblocks popped up, how could you and your team avoid them in future Sprints? Maybe technical glitches threw a wrench in your plans – how would you evolve this issue into a learning point?

What Are the Perks of Having a Scrum Roadmap?

• Delivers Value Fast: Sprints are manageable and happen frequently over time, which means you can deliver value to customers a lot more quickly. If the first sprint is dedicated to the core learning interface, you can release a beta version of the app to users while the team moves on to other sprints to add later on.
• High Flexibility: Most of the best-laid plans have breathing room in case of new, valuable feedback, unexpected market chances, or curveballs. Because Scrum roadmaps are so agile and adaptable, they can easily be tweaked and updated to better serve your strategy. If your initial plan involves including as many languages as possible on your app, only to later find out your users want more depth in fewer languages, you can easily go ahead and change your plans.
• Better Transparency: Working in Sprints with the entire team, everyone knows what the current Sprint is, what its focus is, and how it ties into the broader objective. Everyone is then accountable for their role in the Sprint. For example, in the user engagement sprint, the design team knows they’re creating attractive badges and score displays, and the testing teams know what scenarios to test.
• Continuous Improvement: The opportunities to regularly review and work with feedback in a Scrum roadmap ensures that everyone knows what worked and what didn’t and to apply that knowledge to future sprints. 
• Improved Risk Management: With complete small stages to work on in a set amount of time, any issues can be picked up and addressed a lot faster. For a sprint that hones in on a speech recognition feature, testing that feature in that specific Sprint will let you quickly figure out whether there are any issues right away.

The PM’s Hot Take

Old-school product managers often swear by traditional methods and how they’ve stood the test of time, but that exact mindset could be what’s holding them back in their product evolution. Scrum roadmaps disrupt the orthodox practices that could be outlived in certain circumstances – yet, even if they become complementary to those practices, they represent a more adaptable, focused, and brisk approach to fast-paced product development.

Conclusion

Scrum roadmaps could be the fresh new approach you need for anything from a big app release to a better way to deliver value to your customers. If you want to craft a well-done Scrum roadmap for your next project, Fibery offers an intuitive platform with all the tools you need to apply Scrum methodologies to your advantage. Sign up for a 14-day trial today!