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Using Asana for your product roadmap

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Marketers rely on product innovation to tell a compelling story to customers, which is why marketing teams need to be constantly up to date with what’s on the product roadmap. Knowing the roadmap means staying ahead of how you’ll bring these new products or features to market effectively.

Use one project in Asana as the source of truth for the product roadmap across your product and marketing teams. Sales and other teams across the company can also follow the project to stay informed about launch plans. Using Asana to track your product launches will ensure everyone knows what is happening, when it’s happening, and who’s responsible for all the different pieces of work.

This article will guide you through building your own product roadmap project, and using Asana to streamline and optimize your product launch process.

Setting up your roadmap project

Create a new project

Click the + Create button in the top bar and select Project or use our product roadmap template to save time.

Screenshot 2024-07-15 at 15.48.48.png

Name the project “Product Roadmap” or “Product Launches” an add it to a public team, so it is visible to the entire company.

Set up your project structure

  • Use sections like "Planning", "In Progress", "Review", "Complete" to organize your project. You could also base your sections on release dates (e.g., month, quarter or sprint cycle).
  • Add tasks for each launch or campaign and break down each of those launch tasks into subtasks for specific activities.
  • Create a task template that the product team will copy for each upcoming product release. Name the task “Duplicate me - Product launch template.” Add subtasks that can be assigned to the appropriate teammate for each new product release.
  • When your product team decides to start building a new feature, they should duplicate and fill out the template task. They should include basic information in the task description, like the shipping schedule and an overview of the product functionality. They should also keep the followers of the template task, add a due date, fill out appropriate custom fields, and move the task to the right section of the project. Or simply create a form to capture all of this information - you can learn more about that below.
  • Invite members from other teams to the project. Teammates will be notified in their inbox when tasks are created in the project so they can stay updated on product changes.

Customize your project

Add custom fields to track important information like campaign type, target audience, channel, priority, and status.

highlight critical path

Use timeline and Gantt view to visualize your roadmap and manage dependencies between tasks. You can also use timeline to outline your project's critical path.

Planning and assigning work

Use forms for project initiation

Create a form to standardize the information collected for each new launch.

Include compulsory fields for objectives, target dates, and key contacts, this ensures essential details are collected upfront.

Assign tasks and set dependencies

Assign tasks to team members to ensure everyone knows who is responsible for what.

Use task dependencies to establish the order of work. You can mark several tasks as dependent on another task. For example, you could make all subtasks dependent upon “Launch messaging.” Once the messaging task is complete, task assignees of dependent subtasks will receive a notification. Your copywriters, social media managers, and email marketers can all begin on their respective subtasks and keep the launch on schedule

Set milestones and manage workload

Add milestones for key events like kickoff, content approval, launch date, and post-campaign analysis.

Use workload view to monitor team capacity and balance assignments.

Convert tasks to projects

If a launch becomes too big for a task, convert the task into a project. Keep a reference task in the launches roadmap project that links to the new project so the launch is accounted for in your roadmap.

Executing and monitoring launches

Automate routine tasks

Set up rules to automatically move tasks between sections, notify team members, and send reminders.

Use Asana AI features like smart rules to automate your workflows with custom rules powered by AI, ensuring that routine processes are handled efficiently.

Integrate with other tools

Connect Asana to tools like Slack, Google Drive, and Adobe Creative Cloud to avoid context switching.

Monitor progress

Use portfolios to track the status of all ongoing campaigns in one place.

Create dashboards to monitor key performance indicators like task completion rates, adherence to deadlines, and resource utilization. Use reporting features to generate insights for weekly or monthly status meetings.

Post-launch analysis

Evaluate campaign performance

Use custom fields and reporting tools to gather insights and measure success against initial goals and identify areas for improvement.

Gather feedback

Create a "Feedback" section within your project and add a new form to collect feedback from team members and stakeholders about the campaign process. Automate this workflow by adding a rule which will move any feedback form submissions to the "Feedback" section.

Use smart answers to get AI-powered answers to your project management questions, gain insights about your projects, helping you to identify blockers, and determine next steps. You can use this to help gather feedback on your project by asking AI what went well, what areas could be improved going forward, etc.

Refine your process

Convert your project into a template to save time when planning your next product roadmap. Update your project template based on learnings to continually improve your launch process.

By following these steps, you can effectively manage your product launch roadmap, ensure timely deliveries, and maintain high visibility across your teams. This holistic approach empowers your teams to work efficiently, reduce bottlenecks, and achieve better campaign outcomes.

Additional resources

  • Visit our template library to find relevant templates and speed up the project creation process.
  • Check out our Getting started with Asana article series to learn everything you need to know to get started.
  • Check out our Asana Academy resources for Marketing teams.

See how Oru Kayak launches new products with Asana:

 

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Using Asana for Your Product Roadmap