Final answer:
Developing and maintaining a product roadmap helps teams and stakeholders understand the project sequence and notice the value added over time. It also helps align team efforts with the overarching project vision.
Step-by-step explanation:
The benefits of developing and maintaining a product roadmap are numerous, and they particularly relate to how teams and stakeholders understand and visualize the progress and the future direction of a project. Some of the benefits include:
- Teams and stakeholders understand the sequence of deliverables, laying out a clear timeline for project milestones.
- Stakeholders notice incremental value over the course of the project, which helps to maintain their support and enthusiasm.
- Teams understand how their efforts relate to the project vision, ensuring that their work is aligned with the overall goals.
While it is noted that a product roadmap is not a static document and that flexibility is needed because project demands and external conditions can change, having a structured plan helps in making grounded decisions and keeping focus on important product attributes. Furthermore, a structured decision process to select a final product concept can increase the quality and suitability of the outcome.