Would Your Customer Care About Your Roadmap?
Most product roadmaps are built to satisfy internal priorities.
They’re packed with features, organized by release dates, and shaped by competing voices inside the business.
But when a roadmap isn’t grounded in what your customers actually need, it loses its purpose.
A good roadmap should do more than organize delivery. It should guide your team toward solving the right problems, in the right order, for the right people.
Here’s how to make that shift, from a list of features to a strategic path forward, anchored in customer value.
Start With the Customer’s Job to Be Done
Before deciding what to build, step back and ask:
- Who is this for?
- What are they trying to get done?
- Where are they struggling today?
Every roadmap item should tie back to a real customer pain or opportunity.
That’s what gives your roadmap focus, and makes it useful.
3 Ways to Build a Customer-Aligned Roadmap
1. Connect roadmap items to a clear customer use case.
Don’t just say: “Redesign the housing.”
Say: “Make the product easier to sanitize in clinical settings where infection control matters.”
When you connect roadmap items to real use cases, your team focuses on what matters, and your customers see the value right away.
2. Use customer insight, not internal noise, to set priorities.
Talk to customer service. Ask your distributors. Review recent customer research.
You’ll hear what’s actually holding people back:
• Why customers are slow to adopt
• Where confusion happens during selection, setup, or everyday use
• What keeps them from getting full value from the product
These insights are often buried in support tickets, sales calls, or post-sale conversations.
Pull them together, and your roadmap starts to reflect real customer needs.
3. Focus on customer outcomes, not internal output.
Instead of “Add a new mounting bracket,” say:
• “Reduce install time by 50% for retrofit jobs.”
• “Help engineers integrate our system without redesigning
their layout.”
• “Make replacement parts easier to identify and order.”
Your customers don’t care what’s on the roadmap, they care about what gets better, easier, or more reliable in their world.
Gut Check: Would Your Customer Care About This Roadmap?
Take a look at what’s on your current roadmap. Ask:
• Can a customer see how this helps them?
• Are we solving the right problems?
• Are we prioritizing based on impact, or internal noise?
If you wouldn’t walk a customer through your roadmap with confidence, it’s time to rethink it.
Final Thought: A Roadmap Should Build Trust
Your roadmap is a story.
It tells your team, your customers, and your partners what you care about, and where you’re going.
When it’s aligned to customer needs, it builds clarity, momentum, and trust
That’s when a product becomes a growth engine.
If you’re working on your roadmap right now and want a quick outside perspective, reply to this email. I’m happy to talk through where you’re at.
Posted in Improve Product Managers | Tagged Product Market Fit, Product Portfolio, Strategy
