Project Roadmap vs Project Plan

A while ago, I wrote a blog post on What is a Project Plan? I often get asked, “what is the difference between a project roadmap and a project plan?” Well, the key difference between the two is that a roadmap is a high-level view of your project.

An effective project plan provides details about what must happen for the project to be successful. Each project plan should provide granular answers to questions like:

• What is the value proposition?
• How is the project scope being managed?
• How much budget is allocated to this project?
• What are the biggest risks? And what are the contingency plans in place?

The project plan should also address all the details of your project. Such as, the client, specific training requirements and schedules. It shows that every aspect of the project has been thoroughly considered and planned.

Your roadmap, on the other hand, is a big picture. It takes all the details in the project plan and highlights the most crucial factors relevant to all stakeholders. In a really simple analogy, if your roadmap is a photograph, your project plan is the pixels that make up the same photograph.

So, why would you need a project roadmap?

Indeed, a well-written project plan provides all the context you need for key stakeholders with very specific questions, but not every project member or stakeholder wants to go through pages and pages of documentation. For example, the CEO may not want to go through every technical and non-technical requirement you need for your project. They just want a summary of when they can expect deliverables.

More often than not, stakeholders just need a quick check-in on when a deliverable is due or what the status of a task is. A roadmap speeds up the process by providing a focused version of the project plan. A roadmap is what you want to present in your recurring project meetings so you can quickly get everyone aligned on timelines and milestones, without getting caught up on the details.

There are many tools out there that can assist you with creating your first project roadmap. The main thing to remember is that your roadmap is the project’s big picture. Another thing to understand is that your roadmap is not a replacement for your project plan. Visualizing the important components (milestones) of the project plan, a roadmap can assist in keeping your team focused on delivering the project on schedule and under budget.