Harvestr gives you all the tools you need to build high-level product roadmaps and communicate them to internal and external stakeholders in no time.
From the roadmap section, you will be able to:
build your product roadmap using projects
create different views of your roadmap where you can organize and display information with infinite flexibility
share those views with the right stakeholders (internal teams, customers, investors, etc.) and collect their reactions
link roadmap projects to your discoveries and track progress
Roadmap projects
In Harvestr, roadmaps are built with roadmap projects, which are displayed as cards.
Projects are different from the Discoveries, but both objects are also very complimentary:
Discoveries are customer problems or feature ideas that need to be researched and prioritized
Roadmap Projects represent high-level strategic initiatives. They can be created independently from your Discoveries, but you can also group Discoveries into Projects to tie customer problems to product strategy and business objectives
To create a project, click on the blue "Add" button in the top-right corner of the roadmap builder.
Roadmap fields
Default fields
Each roadmap project has standard fields that you can fill and display based on your needs:
Thumbnail: we recommend a minimum size of 568x260 or more while respecting the ratio for optimal rendering
Caption: a brief summary of the project
Public description: a project description to share with external audiences (customers, etc.)
Private description: a project description to share with internal audiences
Assignees: who is assigned to the project
Custom fields
Roadmap projects are also made of fully customizable fields to help you organize and visualize your roadmap according to your needs.
We created some sample fields to help you get started:
A Milestone field for quarterly planning
A State field to track the actual progress of your projects
A Goal field to show how roadmap projects contribute to company goals
An Area field to map projects per product area
To create and edit project fields, click on the "Edit fields" button in the bottom-left corner of the roadmap section.
Roadmap views
Once you have created your fields and projects, you are ready to create different views of your roadmap.
Views can be used to display different versions of your roadmap to different stakeholders. You can create an internal view for your product team, and another one for the rest of your company, investors, customers, etc.
In a view, you can choose which projects you want to display and which projects to hide by using filters.
You can then use the "View" options to choose how you want to organize the display of your projects in a specific view:
Group by: lets you select the field that should be used to group projects in columns
Subgroup by: lets you select the field that should be used to subgroup projects inside of existing groups
Show empty groups: lets you choose whether you want to display empty groups in the roadmap or not
Display as card header: lets you choose which field you want to display on your project cards' headers
Display on card preview: lets you choose which fields you want to display on the roadmap projects' cards
Display in open card: lets you choose which fields you want to display when someone opens a roadmap project card
Sharing roadmap views
Once you have built custom views for your product roadmap, you can share them with the right audiences in just a few clicks. Views can be shared with Editors, Contributors, and publicly, with people who do not have a Harvestr account.
To display sharing options, click on the "Share" button on top of a roadmap view:
Share to the web: if you select the "Yes" option, your roadmap view will be publicly accessible to anyone that has the view's URL link
Search engine indexing:
Can vote: if you select the "Yes" option, people who have access to your public roadmap will be able to add a smiley reaction to roadmap projects (😀, 😐 or 🙁). The count will then be displayed in your roadmap projects and will be visible to editors and contributors only.
Editors/Contributors of [Your company]: lets you choose if you want to share the current roadmap view with your workspace's editors/contributors and which rights you want to give them:
Full access (for editors only): all your workspace editors can see the roadmap view and edit it
Readonly access to edit mode (contributors only): all your workspace editors can see the roadmap view and all projects' details. They can also add comments to projects but they cannot edit projects and view options
Can view and vote: editors/contributors can see the roadmap view and add reactions to projects
Can view: editors/contributors can only see the roadmap view
No access: editors/contributors do not have access to the view
Invite people by email: lets you invite specific people by email to give them access to the roadmap view with either the right to view only or to view and to react.
You now know how to build and share product roadmaps in no time with Harvestr.