Harvestr provides all the tools to quickly build high-level product roadmaps and communicate them to internal and external stakeholders.
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 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 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 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
Progress tracks the cumulated progress of all the Discoveries linked to a project based on their state categories (Unstarted, Started, Completed).
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 the "Edit fields" button in the bottom-left corner of the roadmap section.
Roadmap views
You can create different roadmap views once your fields and projects are created.
Views can display different versions of your roadmap to various stakeholders. You can create an internal view for your product team and another one for the rest of your company, investors, customers, etc.
You can choose which projects to display and which to hide in a view 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: enables you to choose the field that should be used to subgroup projects inside of existing groups
Show empty groups: this allows you to choose whether you want to display empty groups in the roadmap or not
Display as card header: enables you to choose which field you want to display on your project cards' headers
Display on card preview: enables you to choose which fields you want to display on the roadmap projects' cards
Display in open card: enables you to 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 who has the view's URL link
Can vote: If you select the "Yes" option, people who have access to your public roadmap can add a smiley reaction to roadmap projects (😀, 😐 or 🙁). The count will be displayed in your roadmap projects and 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
Read-only 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 not 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: this 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 react.
Sharing a public roadmap
If you want to build in public and share a view of your roadmap with customers, here are the steps to follow:
Create a new roadmap view
Name and configure the view to communicate the right level of information
Create and add a theme to your view if you'd like to customize the look and feel.
Open the sharing options and set "Share to the web" to Yes.
You can open the view in private mode to see how it will look for your customers.
If you're happy with the result, share your roadmap view with your customers by sharing the URL or embedding it in an iframe within your product or website.