Pendo Roadmap (Legacy)

Pendo Roadmap is a communication tool that helps you visualize and share your product vision with internal teams and customers. You can show how customer requests align with themes of work, and demonstrate how you're using data and insights collected in Pendo Feedback to inform your roadmap.

Roadmap functionality

We offer a theme-based view of features that you’re building and planning. You have control over how themes are divided and what items are included in each.

Roadmap is a flexible tool that can be used in different ways. You can:

• Show broad themes of work you plan on delivering in coming quarters to leadership.
• Communicate what’s coming with sales who can then get prospects excited about where you’re heading.
• Close the loop with customers who are interested in what you’re building next.

 

Themes

Use themes (horizontal swimlanes) to group your roadmap items by Product Areas, strategy initiatives, company divisions, sectors, and so on. For information on Product Areas in Pendo, see Product Areas Overview.

You can also group roadmaps items within a theme by adding lanes to your theme.

Dividers

Use vertical dividers to indicate when you plan on building and releasing features. Dividers are optional and customizable. For example, you can use loose estimates such as “near term” and “long term”, or create time-specific dividers based on quarters or months. We recommend that you don’t use granular completion dates, and instead use dividers that create time-based “buckets” that allow for flexibility.

Alternatively, you can avoid using a timeline and use dividers to categorize ideas. You might also include items that you aren’t sure about building, with dividers that denote how likely something is to be built. For example, you could add items that are “in research phase”, “in progress”, and “on the roadmap”.

Feedback

The Requests panel in the Roadmap page lists all Pendo Feedback requests that have the status “Planned” or “Building”, or whatever terminology your organization uses for these phases in the development cycle. For information on renaming statuses in Pendo Feedback, see Request status updates.

For a detailed view of what you’re planning and building, pull in request data from Pendo Feedback and add requests to your roadmap. This involves grouping Feedback requests by theme and mapping these against your timeline. Your roadmaps, along with your release logs, will update as you change the status of requests in Feedback.

Visibility

You can choose the visibility of your roadmap, setting it for internal use, for visitors and your colleagues, or as a public offering on the web. 

You can also create multiple roadmaps with different levels of visibility. This allows you to tailor different roadmaps to different audiences. For example, you might create a public roadmap that provides an overview of upcoming features so that your customers can get an idea of what to expect without your competition knowing enough to outmaneuver you.

Prerequisites

You must have a Pendo Feedback subscription to access our roadmapping tool. 

To enable Pendo Feedback, you must first install the Pendo snippet. The snippet is the code that enables Pendo products to launch in your application.

For more information about the Pendo snippet, see the Developer's Guide to Installing Pendo.

Create a roadmap

You create your roadmap in the Roadmap page, which you can find in the left-side menu of Pendo Feedback. To create a new roadmap:

1. Select New Roadmap in the top-right corner of the page. 
2. Enter a meaningful name for your roadmap in the text box that appears in the top-left, and select the tick mark to continue.
3. Rename the default theme by selecting the ellipses (...) next to the theme and selecting Edit theme name.
4. Enter a meaningful theme name and select Done.

Add themes to your roadmap

Use themes to group features and categories on your roadmap. To add themes to your roadmap:

1. Select the gear icon at the top of the page, next to the Cancel button.
2. Choose Add theme from the dropdown menu.
3. Enter a meaningful theme name and select Create

 

You can reorder your themes by dragging and dropping them further up or down the roadmap.

Add lanes to your themes

You might have several features that contribute to a theme, or different Epics that you want to represent under a theme. You can separate these into different lanes within a theme. To add a lane, select the ellipses (...) next to the theme and choose Add lane from the dropdown menu.

Add dividers to your roadmap

You can be as specific or as broad as you like with your roadmap by creating, naming, and placing dividers in your roadmap. To add dividers to your roadmap:

1. Select the gear icon at the top of the page, next to the Cancel button.
2. Choose Add divider from the dropdown menu.
3. Enter a meaningful name for the divider and then press Enter.
4. Drag your divider across your timeline to reposition it.

 

You can also add dividers by selecting the down arrow on an existing divider, and selecting Add divider.

Populate your roadmap

As with dividers, you can be as specific or as broad as you want with the items in your roadmap, in line with your company or your team’s processes, and based on the target audience. For example, you might want a roadmap that you can share with your customers that is based on high-level plans, and a roadmap that you can share with Sales that gives specific details about what to expect in the near future.

Add Feedback requests to your roadmap

You can drag and drop requests that are planned or being built from the Requests panel on the right-side of the page into your themes. You can also search the list using the search bar in the Requests panel.

To create a quick view of items that are in development, separated into theme, team, or strategic initiative, only move requests with a status of “Building” to your roadmap.

Add high-level projects to your roadmap

To add broad categories of work to your roadmap, like “UI Refresh”, create high-level items in Pendo Feedback and move their statuses into “Planned” or “Building”, or whatever terminology your organization uses for these phases in the development cycle. 

Add Epics and Stories to your roadmap

If you’re using an Agile development methodology, you can use lanes within themes to separate items of work into Epics.

To create User Stories for your Epics, create items in Pendo Feedback that define your Stories and move their statuses into “Planned” or “Building”, or whatever terminology your organization uses for these phases in the development cycle. 

These items will then appear in the Requests panel on the right-side of the page into your themes, which you can drag and drop into your Epics (lanes) under the themes in your roadmap.

 

Set the visibility of your roadmap

You have a choice of three visibility levels:

• Team Only.
• Visitors and Team.
• Public. This option creates a public roadmap link that displays at the top of your Vendor Dashboard and takes you to your public roadmap

 

Making your roadmap Public creates a public roadmap link at the top of your Vendor Dashboard. Following the link will display your public roadmap. 

Select the option that suits your roadmapping needs from the Visibility dropdown menu at the top of your roadmap.

These items will then appear in the Requests panel on the right-side of the page, which you can drag and drop into your roadmap.

 

Create multiple roadmaps

You aren’t limited to one roadmap. You can create multiple roadmaps for different products and different audiences.

To create a new roadmap, navigate to Feedback > Roadmap in the left-side menu. This takes you to the default Roadmap view. Follow the same steps described under Create a roadmap.

 

To switch between roadmaps, select the relevant roadmap name from the tabs at the top of the page.

You can set the visibility of each roadmap separately. This allows you to share high-level projects publicly, keeping the strategic parts of your roadmap internal.

 

Edit an existing roadmap

You can edit dividers, themes, visibility, roadmap name, and the requests in your roadmap by navigating to Feedback > Roadmap in the left-side menu, selecting your roadmap from the top of the page, and then selecting Edit in the top-right corner. From here, you can:

• Rename your roadmap by selecting it and entering a new name in the text box.
• Rename any theme or divider by selecting it and entering a new name in the text box. 
• Reposition any theme or divider by dragging and dropping your selection to a new location. 
• Change the visibility of your roadmap using the dropdown menu at the top of the page.
• Add requests to your roadmap.
• Edit requests in your roadmap by selecting the request and making changes to it in the Requests panel on the right-side of the page.

 

If you select a request on the roadmap, it appears in the Edit request panel in the top right-hand corner of the page. To adjust the size and location of a request that's already in the roadmap, use the arrows in the editing pane.

After you’ve edited your roadmap, select Save Changes in the top-right corner of the page, or select Cancel to revert to the unedited roadmap.

Clear or delete an existing roadmap

To clear your roadmap of all themes, dividers, and items, without deleting the roadmap itself:

1. Navigate to Feedback > Roadmap in the left-side menu
2. Select your roadmap from the top of the page
3. Select Edit in the top-right corner. 
4. Select the gear icon at the top of the page, next to the Cancel button.
5. Choose Clear roadmap from the dropdown menu.

 

To delete your roadmap:

1. Navigate to Feedback > Roadmap in the left-side menu
2. Select your roadmap from the top of the page
3. Select Edit in the top-right corner. 
4. Select the gear icon at the top of the page, next to the Cancel button.

 

Choose Delete roadmap from the dropdown menu.