3 reasons why product teams are saying goodbye to spreadsheet roadmaps

Spreadsheets are where the best-laid plans go to die. Bring them back to life in Coda.

Teresa de Figueiredo

Product Manager at Coda

3 reasons why product teams are saying goodbye to spreadsheet roadmaps

By Teresa de Figueiredo

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Product teams · 6 min read
When it’s time to create a roadmap, many product teams start by opening up a spreadsheet. That strategy makes sense—spreadsheets are familiar, flexible, structured, and applicable to multiple use cases. They’re also easy to export and share, and feature handy formulas and visualization/charting capabilities. In my career as a product manager, however, I’ve run into quite a few problems using spreadsheets, and I’m sure most other PMs can relate. For one, they’re far from an ideal roadmapping tool. More and more product teams are realizing this and are considering other options (like Coda) for building their roadmaps. Let’s go through three of the biggest issues that spreadsheets have when it comes to creating and managing product roadmaps and how to solve them in Coda.

Spreadsheet issue #1: They’re hard to maintain and keep up to date.

Copy and pasting relevant content from the roadmap into a million status updates. That sucks.
Leo Claassen
Senior Product Manager at Snap
As a PM, a big part of my job is making sure that the roadmap is accurate. Multiple departments rely on the product roadmap to make decisions and complete their own tasks, so it needs to be current at all times. When something in the roadmap changes, whether it’s a due date, a priority, or an assignee, that change must be reflected everywhere that roadmap lives. As a result, the PM typically ends up copying and pasting the updated information into the original spreadsheet and any additional versions other teams might have, as well as into tracking tools or software like Jira, Airtable, Asana, etc. This manual consolidation is frustrating and tedious, and takes resources away from strategic product work. So, how can PMs cut the copy/pasting? Instead of relying on a spreadsheet to manage your roadmap, put all of your roadmap info into a Coda table instead. It looks like the spreadsheets that you’re already familiar with and functions much the same way. However, Coda tables include some helpful additional functionality that spreadsheets just can’t provide.
For example, Coda’s database tables sync automatically. That means any changes you make in one table will be reflected in real-time in any others—no copy/pasting required! In addition, you can convert your foundational roadmap table into visual formats like a Kanban board or a Gantt chart with just a few clicks. Finally, Coda Packs allow content from other tools (Salesforce, Jira, Asana, etc.) to live alongside your roadmap in a single doc, putting key information and data right at your product team’s fingertips.
Ready to move your roadmap spreadsheet into Coda? All you have to do is copy and paste it one last time into a blank Coda doc and then go from there!

Spreadsheet issue #2: There’s no easy way to create an executive summary.

We needed a source of truth for all projects in the CIO org.
TPM, Zoom
When a stakeholder asks you for a status update on the roadmap, how do you communicate it? My guess is that you don’t use a spreadsheet. In my experience, these updates take the form of a Google Doc or Slides deck that the PM has to build and maintain. When the status question comes in, the PM then brings (instantly out-of-date) info from multiple disparate systems into the deck or doc. Our friends at Zoom saw this problem firsthand. The company made plans in a spreadsheet, wrote briefs in separate documents, tracked execution in Jira, and presented in Slides—four disconnected systems. To keep their boss happy, their PM was forced to manually copy and paste updates from Jira into spreadsheets, presentations, and other documents every week. And unless the PM created multiple versions, there was no way to tailor that document to different audiences (execs versus engineering leaders, for example).
After moving their roadmap into Coda, however, they were able to add a high-level summary to the same Coda doc. The Zoom product team synced in information from other platforms, such as Jira and Slack, to create a single source of roadmap truth. Accessible via a single link, this Coda doc also included separate views for different groups of stakeholders. And the best part? The product manager no longer needed to recreate the document every week—the data was all live!

Spreadsheet issue #3: They require constant pings and requests to update.

One of the biggest challenges for leaders is being able to consume the right information to then make the right decision.
Trevor Evans
TPM at Qualtrics
Your organization’s execs need the latest information so they can make smart, data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, the burden of getting that information often falls on the product org. I constantly hear from PMs and TPMs that they spend so much of their day pinging their colleagues to ask for updates or reminding them to fill out weekly reports/summaries of their progress. I’ve done this plenty myself, and in addition to making me feel like a nag, it’s really not the best use of my time. So, I make Coda bug my co-workers instead by building a simple app that takes this repetitive task off my plate. Coda comes with robust automations and buttons, so you can automate sending a Gmail or Slack message every X days to remind your team to update task status, for example. Or you could build a “Nagbot:” a button that when pressed, pings your colleagues that it’s time to share their task status. These automations are fully customizable, allowing you to edit message text, sender, and send date. Plus, they’re easy to set up. Check out how to here.

Skip the spreadsheets and build your roadmap in Coda.

 While spreadsheets have their place in product, they’re simply not the best tool for roadmaps. They’re difficult to summarize, almost impossible to keep current, and require you to constantly annoy your team for updates. Coda, however, makes roadmap management easy and sets product teams up for planning success. Want to give it a try? Make a copy of our Product Development Roadmap template and dive right in.
Check out the template

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