Here is the product roadmap template as a file. It opens in Excel, in Google Sheets, in Numbers and in anything else that reads a spreadsheet, because a CSV is text and every one of them imports it without asking.
Heading,Description,Status,Effort,Votes,Comments,Views,Demand,Priority,Target,Release,Tags
Search the board by request title,Customers scroll the whole list to check for a duplicate and file one anyway,In Progress,2,41,6,370,,,Q4,2.5,search
Export voters and what they pay as a CSV,Finance asks for this once a quarter and it is copied by hand,In Review,1,28,3,210,,,Q4,2.5,export
Single sign on for the public board,Enterprise buyers ask in the first call and it stalls the deal,Suggested,5,62,14,540,,,Q1,,auth
Dark theme for the public board,Asked for often and by nobody who would leave over it,Suggested,3,19,2,160,,,,,theme
Merge duplicate requests,Two rows for one idea split the votes and hide the demand,Completed,2,35,8,290,,,Q3,2.4,triage
Take the file. It may be copied, changed and used commercially with no attribution and no link back.
Why are the demand and priority columns empty?
Because a spreadsheet should work them out, and a file cannot.
A CSV carries values and not formulas, so shipping those two columns filled in would ship numbers that go stale the moment you edit a vote count. Paste these two into the first data row instead and fill them down.
H2 =E2*3 + F2*2 + ROUND(G2*0.1, 0)
I2 =IF(D2>0, ROUND(H2/D2, 0), "")
If your spreadsheet separates arguments with semicolons rather than commas, which depends on your regional settings rather than on the program, swap them.
Is there an Excel version with the formulas already in it?
Yes. Take the xlsx, which is the same six rows with both formulas already filled down, the header frozen and a filter on every column.
That is the one thing a CSV cannot carry, so the two files are not the same file in two wrappers. The CSV is for importing into something else. The xlsx is for opening and using.
It opens in Excel, in Numbers and in LibreOffice, and Google Sheets imports it with the formulas and the filter intact.
Both files may be copied, changed and used commercially with no attribution and no link back.
That first formula is the demand score VoteFirst's board calculates. A vote counts for three, a comment for two, and a view for a tenth of one, because a vote is somebody committing, a comment is somebody arguing, and a view is somebody glancing.
The second divides demand by effort, which is the part that changes the order.
The demo board is open with no account if you would rather see the finished thing than the generator.
Fourteen days on Lite or Pro, a card at signup, then nine or thirty nine a month.
What do the two extra columns actually change?
The order, and usually more than the votes do.
Take two rows from the file above. Single sign on has sixty two votes, fourteen comments and five hundred and forty views, which works out at a demand of two hundred and sixty eight, the highest on the sheet.
The CSV export has twenty eight votes, three comments and two hundred and ten views, for a demand of one hundred and eleven, which is not close.
Now divide by effort. Single sign on is a five, so it scores fifty four. The export is a one, so it scores one hundred and eleven and goes first.
That is the whole argument for keeping an effort column at all. The loudest request is frequently the most expensive one, and a roadmap ranked on votes alone will spend a quarter on it while five cheaper things that people also wanted sit untouched.
The same problem has a name when the loud request comes from a small group.
The effort column is a number from one to five, meaning extra small, small, medium, large and extra large. Those are VoteFirst's own labels, and the sizes behind them are a few hours, a few days, about a week, a few weeks, and a month or more.
Leave it at zero when you have not estimated something and the priority formula leaves the cell blank rather than pretending.
Is there a product roadmap template for PowerPoint?
Yes. Take the deck. Seven slides, no clip art, no arrows sweeping across four quarters.
Slide one is the cover. Slide two says how to fill the deck in and tells you to delete itself before you present. Then it gives you the two layouts that actually get used, and asks you to pick one and delete the other: Now, Next and Later for a team that ships continuously, and a quarter grid for a company that plans in quarters and will ask you for dates whatever you put on the slide.
After that there is one slide you copy per theme, with the problem, who asked, what done looks like and a rough size. The last two are the slide most decks leave out, which is what you are not doing and why, and a slide pointing at wherever the live version lives.
It opens in PowerPoint, in Keynote and in Google Slides. Free to copy, change and use commercially, no attribution.
Is there a PDF version of the product roadmap?
Yes, as a filled in example rather than a blank. Take the one page PDF.
It is the same plan shown three ways on one sheet: Now, Next and Later, the same items laid out by quarter, and the not doing list with a reason beside each line. Landscape A4, so it prints without anything falling off the edge.
Use it when somebody has asked you what a roadmap should look like and you want to show them rather than explain. For the version you actually edit, take the xlsx or the deck.
How do I open this product roadmap template in Google Sheets?
Open Sheets, choose File and then Import, and upload either file.
The CSV imports as plain values, which is what you want if you are going to write your own formulas. The xlsx imports with the two formulas, the frozen header and the column filters intact, which is what you want if you just need the sheet to work.
Nothing in either file uses a function that Sheets does not have. If your regional settings separate arguments with semicolons instead of commas, swap them in the two formulas and everything else stays as it is.
Can I build the same roadmap in a tool I already use?
Yes, with a different trade in each. Step by step guides cover Jira, Linear, Notion, GitHub, Trello, Confluence, ClickUp, Miro, monday.com, Asana and Azure DevOps, each with what that tool's plans cost and what a customer outside the workspace can see or vote on.
Is there an innovation roadmap template, and is this it?
This is it, with three of the columns meaning something different when you use it that way.
An innovation roadmap and a product roadmap are the same document pointed at different risk. A product roadmap orders work you have already decided to do, and the open question is when. An innovation roadmap orders bets you have not decided yet, and the open question is whether. That changes what three columns are for and nothing else about the file.
| Column | On a product roadmap | On an innovation roadmap |
|---|---|---|
| Demand | How many people asked for it | How large the opportunity would be if the bet lands |
| Effort | How long the work takes | How long until you know whether it works |
| Status | Where the work has got to | Which stage of proof the idea has reached |
The second row is the one worth sitting with. On an innovation roadmap the effort column is not the cost of building the thing, it is the cost of finding out. Those two numbers are wildly different and putting the wrong one in is how an innovation programme ends up with a twelve month first item and no evidence at the end of it.
Fill the status column with your own stages rather than the ones in the file. Something like proposed, being looked at, being tested, proved and dropped will cover most programmes, and the important one is the last. An innovation roadmap with nothing in a dropped column is a roadmap that has never decided anything.
What this template cannot do for you is the part that decides whether the programme works, which is where the ideas come from. A blank innovation roadmap is harder to fill than a blank product roadmap, because a product roadmap starts from requests you already have and an innovation roadmap starts from a room. The ideation techniques page runs seven of them on the same problem so the outputs can be compared, and what idea management actually covers is the wider process this document sits inside.
What makes a roadmap template stop being used?
Nothing about the template. The second copy of the data.
A roadmap sheet is a snapshot, and the requests keep arriving after you save it. Within a month the sheet and the actual list disagree, somebody notices, and the sheet stops being opened rather than being fixed. Every roadmap document that ever died, died of this.
The columns in the file are the ones a board keeps as it goes. Status, effort, votes, comments and views all sit on the request itself, so the ordering is a property of the list rather than a document somebody maintains beside it.
The feature request template is the other half of this, and the release notes template is the third. Roadmaps that survive contact with a real quarter look like this, and five filled in examples, one per kind of company shows the same plan written five ways.