Roadmap Planning for SaaS Founders and Product Managers

Roadmap planning is an intimate affair. You need to get close to your product data, your customers, and your financial numbers to make the right decisions. No two founders or product managers approach their product roadmap process in the same way. However, there are best practices that you’ll want to cover every time you decide if an update should make it on your roadmap. 

In this guide, we dive into how product teams can improve customer experience, boost retention, and achieve important business goals with a public, visual roadmap. 

Keep scrolling for hard-earned advice from SaaS entrepreneurs and product managers.

Here’s how to plan your roadmap.

Why roadmap planning matters beyond feature releases

A product roadmap isn’t just about deciding which features make the cut. It’s a powerful alignment tool that connects customer needs, market positioning, and business strategy. When done right, roadmap planning:

• Creates clarity across teams by showing engineers, marketers, and sales where the product is heading.

• Encourages customer trust and loyalty, since users feel like insiders who understand your vision.

• Drives strategic decision-making by forcing teams to prioritize impact over “nice-to-haves.”

By framing roadmap planning as a business-critical process—not just an engineering exercise—you’ll elevate your roadmap from a task list to a growth lever.

Key elements of a roadmap

A roadmap shows your users what your team will be building in the coming months. This helps users see if you’re already planning on building something they want to request. It also shows them that you’re continually improving the product, which can positively impact your customer retention rates. 

A roadmap should be:

• Publicly available, or available to all signed-in users

• Easy for users to understand

• Organized and categorized

For example, Acadle’s roadmap built with Frill is publicly available and categorized into “Under consideration,” “Planned,” “In progress,” and “Live.”

SaaS product roadmaps are different from backlogs and project management software because they are intended for customer viewing as opposed to managing tasks within your team. 

“I want to know how many customers specifically want certain features, to know that people actually want this thing we are thinking of building. So, having a public roadmap that users can vote on and add their feedback to is extremely helpful. Another bonus of a public roadmap is that the more transparency that customers and prospective customers see, the more invested they can be in the future of the product, if there's something they are waiting on.” - Andy Cabasso, CEO of Postaga

8 steps for roadmap planning

To plan your roadmap effectively, keep customers on board, and convert new customers, follow these steps. Throughout, you’ll find tried and true advice from SaaS founders and product managers.

1. Collect feedback from users

The most important thing is collecting feedback from your users. You can do this with a user feedback board like Frill, and through surveys and interviews. 

“Our roadmap is primarily driven by our customer needs. Every month I’m on at least one call with a customer to discuss Analytics. These are often open-ended conversations where I give the customer space to share their processes, systems and needs related to Analytics. It’s also an opportunity for me to present what the team is planning and to get feedback. My primary goal in these conversations is to understand how the customer is using Analytics and what questions they are trying to answer. Also if they show any “hacks” (such as a custom-built spreadsheet to track a certain metric) that is usually a strong indicator of a potential feature that would provide instant utility for the customer.” - Andrei Kryssov, product manager at Vimeo and creator of Modern Guitar Hub

“Assume 90% of customer asks are valid and that 90% of their recommended implementations are wrong. Customers are great at knowing what they want, not necessarily how they want it. Our roadmap for Q4 is basically all things that customers have asked for. What I have planned for Q2 2022 is basically all stuff that I've derived from intuition. When we get to Jan/Feb 2022, I bet customers will have started to ask for it. When you're really early though, you don't have many customers, so your intuition plays a way bigger role.” - Kyle Tymoszewicz, Product Manager at Convictional

2. Conduct market and competitor research

The next step is to check out the market landscape and your competitors. You need to know whether or not your competitors are implementing certain features, particularly if these are features that customers are requesting. 

3. Look into your product analytics

Next, it’s time to look deeper into your product analytics. What features are the most popular? How can you make these better? What features are causing drop-off, especially during the freemium conversion funnel?

“I begin by determining which features are most frequently used and which aspects are rarely utilized. I then determine which steps in our workflow are causing the most drop-offs—that is, which steps are causing users to become stuck. Finally, we try to comprehend our consumers' requirements, their causes of reluctance, and the internal dialogue that is taking place in their heads.” - Sam Sweeney - Founder of Trivvy

4. Set a theme for the quarter

Once you’ve researched your customers, your market, and your product data, you might want to set a theme for the upcoming two-week sprint, month, or quarter. This way, you can build related updates in order to reduce the effort and complexity of tackling strategic objectives.

“I have led SaaS and marketplace product teams for the last 10 years. My #1 tip for roadmap planning is to start with your product vision ask two questions: (1) what is one thing that will accelerate our ability to realize our vision? and (2) what one thing is holding us back from realizing our vision?  These two questions force team's to think about things that will add fuel to accelerate the vision or remove friction that is slowing progress. The second question helps to uncover non-traditional items like technical debt, feature debt, etc. that, if removed, would help the team move forward.” - Chris Redrich, founder of Product Manager Jobs

“My top tip in developing and managing roadmap planning in SaaS is starting with why. In managing roadmap planning, it's important to ask everyone involved the "why". Why are you developing the product? Why this product? Why will people be interested in it? It seems like it's not something important to consider, given the many steps involved in creating a product roadmap. Many companies skip this step. However, it's important to have a clear and deep understanding of your product. It helps in creating the best strategy. Knowing your whys will help everyone create firmer decisions that make sense and will help the product succeed.” - John Simmons, Deliverability Expert at InboxAlly

5. Consider the impact of features and updates

Before you decide to build anything, you need to measure its impact. You can use the RICE method, explained by SaaS found Philipp Wolf below:

“Many products have failed because owners and product managers did not focus on the right features and prioritized the ones they thought were important. A feature prioritization framework can help you build products that are helpful, easy to use, and with great UX. To help create this framework, you can use the RICE Score, where you score on a scale of 1 - 5 each of the following categories for a given feature idea: reach (how many customers will be positively impacted), impact (how intense will the impact be), confidence (how confident are you in the potential reach and impact), and effort (how much effort will be required).” - Philipp Wolf, CEO of Custify

Make sure that when you’re measuring the potential impact of an update or new feature, that you’re considering all of the following:

• Expenses and resources 

• Revenue 

• Retention 

• Churn 

• Satisfaction 

• New customer acquisition 

Ultimately, the best thing to build is what is good for your business. What will impact your top metrics now? At certain points, you’ll want to focus on revenue impact above all else. At other points, you’ll be focused on retention. 

“At the moment we are prioritizing fostering our current partnerships as well as looking to establish even more partnerships in the future. Our online review site partnerships we have right now enabled us to secure more efficient and cost-effective ways of collecting review data. This also helps us to continue to raise capital and gather the resources we need to improve the product, develop new feature enhancements, and acquire new customers.” - Chris Campbell, CEO of ReviewTrackers

6. Add features and updates to your public roadmap

Now, it’s time to make your decisions. Once you’ve considered all of the above, you’ll have the data and insights you need to prioritize and organize your upcoming builds. 

Put these into your public roadmap so customers can see them. If you’re using Frill, you can add user ideas to your roadmap by simply dragging them from one column to another. Feel free to update the item with extra information. 

7. Update and groom your backlog

Your public roadmap is not your backlog. Your roadmap should live in a simple, easy-to-understand platform. Your backlog however probably exists in Jira and has tons of complex and sensitive information. After you’ve added projects to your roadmap, make sure that the person taking ownership of each item adds the correct tasks to the backlog. Depending on the size of your team, you might have multiple people in charge of managing the backlog. 

“Roadmap compliance is about ensuring projects are specifically owned by someone (at least at Convictional's current stage of approximately 40 people) so that they have skin in the game and want to see the build effort be a success. I don't spend much time actively checking in on work, our Eng team is pretty senior and autonomous.” - Kyle Tymoszewicz, Product Manager at Convictional

8. Be ready to change your roadmap quickly (regardless of prior planning)

Planning is essential, but plans can change. Be ready to pause on your plans or throw them out altogether when you get urgent customer feedback or discover issues in your product. 

“Our roadmap planning at Userlist is very top-level. It's important for us to be always aligned on product strategy: 1-2 large features that will be added over the next year. Everything else is very fluid, and is constantly reassessed. Previously, we had a nice detailed backlog, and spent whole meetings prioritizing potential features. Only a couple years later we realized — not without reading Shape Up by Ryan Singer — that it's a complete waste of time. Not only do things change fast, but we keep learning all the time. It's easy to figure out the next thing to work on, and the rest doesn't matter. We always listen to our customers, but try not to make hard promises. Ultimately, the biggest pleasure of working on a product, compared to client work, is not having hard deadlines.” - Jane Portman, Co-founder of Userlist

Best practices for roadmap planning

Roadmap planning doesn’t have to be complicated. By following a few best practices, you can keep your team focused, your customers happy, and your product moving in the right direction.

Align roadmaps with company vision

Many teams get stuck reacting to customer requests without tying their roadmap back to the bigger picture.

When teams focus only on reacting to feedback, the roadmap can quickly become cluttered and lose its sense of purpose. By grounding roadmap planning in your company vision, you ensure that every release supports your long-term goals.

Here’s how a vision-first roadmap helps your team stay aligned:

• Connect updates to your North Star metric. Every feature should move you closer to the outcomes that matter most.

• Reinforce your mission. Choose features that reflect why your product exists and who it serves.

• Clarify your positioning. Distinguish between features that give you an edge and those that just keep you on par with competitors.

This shift from reactive to strategic planning keeps your roadmap lean, purposeful, and focused on driving meaningful growth.

Balance customer wants with business needs

One of the toughest calls in roadmap planning is deciding which customer requests deserve attention. It’s tempting to say yes to everything, but that approach quickly spreads your team thin and dilutes your product vision. A helpful way to simplify decisions is by organizing requests into three buckets:

• Customer retention drivers: Features that ease pain points for existing users and keep them engaged.

• Growth accelerators: Updates that help you win new customers or enter new markets.

• Operational enablers: Investments in scalability, reduced technical debt, and internal efficiency.

Strong SaaS teams know the key is rotation. If you only build retention features, you may stop attracting new customers. If you focus only on growth, churn could climb. And if you never tackle enablers, your product won’t scale effectively.

By balancing these three categories, you ensure your roadmap fuels growth, maintains loyalty, and strengthens your foundation, without sacrificing one priority for another.

Use multiple frameworks for feature prioritization

No single framework can answer every prioritization question, which is why the best product teams experiment with several. Each approach shines in different situations:

• RICE: Score features based on reach, impact, confidence, and effort to balance ambition with practicality.

• MoSCoW method: Sort features into Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, and Won’t-have to make trade-offs clear.

• Kano model: Identify which features will delight users versus those they simply expect.

• Weighted scoring: Customize scoring to your business needs, such as emphasizing revenue potential in a growth stage.

Using multiple frameworks gives you flexibility. It prevents over-reliance on a single system and helps you see requests from different angles. Ultimately, the right combination depends on your product’s stage, your team’s size, and the competitive landscape you’re operating in.

Involve stakeholders in roadmap planning

Roadmap planning shouldn’t live in a product management bubble. The best roadmaps are shaped with input from across the company, giving you a well-rounded view of priorities and challenges. Different teams bring different insights:

• Engineering leaders flag technical dependencies and resource limits.

• Customer success shares recurring pain points from high-value accounts.

• Marketing and sales highlight features that could drive new demand.

• Executives ensure plans align with business strategy and financial goals.

Bringing these voices together creates balance between customer needs, technical realities, and company objectives. A great way to make this collaboration consistent is by holding a quarterly roadmap workshop. This forum allows stakeholders to weigh in, discuss trade-offs, and surface hidden risks while product leadership still owns the final decisions.

Understand the difference between short-term and long-term roadmap planning

One of the biggest mistakes in roadmap planning is treating every feature as if it carries the same weight and timeline. In reality, different initiatives live on different horizons—and managing them separately keeps your strategy balanced.

• Short-term (0–3 months): Quick wins like bug fixes, usability improvements, and small enhancements that keep customers happy.

• Medium-term (3–12 months): Strategic projects tied to core business goals, such as new integrations or expansion into adjacent markets.

• Long-term (1–3 years): Big, visionary bets and innovation-driven updates that can transform your product’s future.

By separating initiatives into horizons, you avoid letting urgent short-term needs derail larger strategic efforts. At the same time, you stay flexible enough to respond quickly when priorities shift. This balance ensures your roadmap delivers value today while still paving the way for tomorrow’s growth.

Handle competing priorities and limited resources

For most product teams, the challenge is choosing which ones to pursue with limited time and resources. This is where prioritization techniques become essential.

Opportunity scoring can help by weighing customer importance against satisfaction with current alternatives, revealing which features will have the greatest impact. Cost versus impact mapping is another valuable tool, allowing teams to visualize quick wins alongside longer-term investments that require more effort.

And because priorities shift, it’s smart to regularly revisit “someday” items to see if timing or resources now make them more viable. The truth is that the best roadmaps don’t attempt to do everything at once. Instead, they reflect a series of deliberate trade-offs designed to maximize impact, balance short- and long-term goals, and keep the product moving forward without overwhelming the team or diluting the vision.

Communicate about your public roadmap often

Sharing your roadmap is an important step, but communication can’t stop once it’s published. Customers need context to understand what’s coming and how it affects them. The best approach is to keep your updates simple and consistent, avoiding technical jargon and overly specific promises. Timelines should be broad to give your team flexibility, while updates should connect back to customer requests so users feel heard. To keep things clear, focus on a few simple principles:

• Use clear language

• Share broad timelines

• Announce updates alongside launches

• Frame the roadmap as directional

By revisiting your roadmap regularly and communicating openly, you show customers that it’s a living, evolving plan rather than a rigid contract. This balance of transparency and expectation-setting builds trust, keeps users engaged, and ensures your roadmap is seen as a reliable guide rather than a static list.

Adapt your roadmap for different audiences

A single roadmap isn’t enough to meet the needs of every audience. Each group—internal teams, executives, and customers—requires a different level of detail to stay aligned and engaged. By tailoring your roadmap for each audience, you make sure the right people get the right information without overwhelming them.

• Internal roadmap: Detailed and tactical, closely tied to the backlog. It’s the version product and engineering teams use to plan daily and weekly work.

• Executive roadmap: High-level and strategic, highlighting ROI, market opportunities, and revenue impact. This version connects product development to overall business goals.

• Customer-facing roadmap: Simple, visual, and inspiring. It avoids technical details and instead showcases upcoming features in a way that builds trust and excitement.

This multi-layered approach turns your roadmap into a communication tool rather than just a planning document. Internal teams stay on track, executives stay confident in the strategy, and customers stay invested in your product’s future. By adapting your roadmap to the audience, you strengthen alignment across every level of your organization.

4 roadmap planning pitfalls to avoid

Even with the best intentions, teams can fall into traps.

1. Overpromising

Committing to exact dates or overly ambitious timelines can backfire if delays happen.

Tip: Use broad timeframes like “Q1” or “Later” to set expectations without locking yourself into deadlines.

2. Under-communicating

Asking for feedback but never updating customers leaves them feeling ignored.

Tip: Close the loop by announcing when requests make it onto the roadmap or when priorities shift.

3. Ignoring technical debt

Adding features on top of fragile infrastructure slows future progress.

Tip: Dedicate part of every cycle to addressing technical debt so your product can scale smoothly.

4. Overreacting to loud voices

It’s easy to let the most vocal customers sway your priorities.

Tip: Balance feedback by looking at overall demand, not just who shouts the loudest.

Top tools for roadmap planning

Most teams use a few different types of software to plan and communicate their roadmap. These are the most helpful tools.

User feedback software

Collecting feedback directly from your users gives you insight into what they need most. Look for user feedback software with features like single sign-on, comments, and upvoting to make it easy for customers to share and prioritize ideas.

Examples: Frill, Canny, UserVoice

Public roadmap software

A public roadmap keeps your users in the loop and builds trust by showing what’s planned, in progress, or recently launched. The best roadmap tools integrate with your feedback system so you can move ideas seamlessly into roadmap categories.

Examples: Frill, Productboard, Trello

Competitor analysis tracking

Tracking your competitors’ updates helps you spot trends and identify opportunities to differentiate your product. Simple tools are often the most effective for monitoring changes and documenting insights.

Examples: Google Sheets, Notion, ClickUp

Product analytics software

Analytics tools reveal how customers use your product and where they’re dropping off. These insights highlight opportunities for improvements that may never surface in feedback alone.

Examples: Mixpanel, Heap, Amplitude

Plan and showcase your roadmap, collect ideas from users, and announce new updates all in one place. Learn more about Frill.