How to Use This Template

Erika Deal

This is a living document.

Modern product development is iterative and collaborative; our document culture should reflect that. This template provides structure for taking an idea from discovery through launch, mapped to the Outreach roadmap process.

There are five key parts:

Resources: A succinct description of the project, with links to key supporting docs. Keep this up to date so readers know who’s involved, what the current status is, and where to go for more details.

Product Brief: A short, crisp explanation of what will be built, why it matters, and how success will be measured. Use this brief to socialize a proposal with key stakeholders, pressure test it, and make a go/no-go decision.

Product Requirements: The nitty gritty solution details, hammered out in collaboration with design and engineering. Use this section to document what use cases/capabilities will be supported, and any key constraints or other considerations driving the solution.

Launch Plan: How we’ll release to customers, gather feedback, and phase out incremental changes if applicable. PMM and GTM should be close partners in finalizing this section.

Metrics: All levels of metrics that will be tracked in relation to the project (business impact, usage/adoption, feature-level) along with links to relevant dashboards. Use this primarily to express success criteria, and secondarily to provide implementation details to Engineering for required telemetry.

Using this template with the

PDE roadmap process⁠

⁠

Under Consideration

Discovery

Gather data and do initial explorations

Write & review product brief with stakeholders

Transition roadmap item to “In Planning”

In Planning

Scoping, Costing, Designing, Defining

Detailed visual, content and technical design

Write & review product requirements

Transition roadmap item to “In Development”

In Development

Development, QA

Finalize testing and launch plan with PMM and GTM

Review plan before transitioning roadmap item to “In Alpha”

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