Free Roadmap Templates

Save time with free roadmap templates for Excel and PowerPoint

Roadmaps are excellent visual tools that help you articulate your business vision to your clients and executives. But as useful as they are, creating them is a long and challenging process. With our pre-built templates, you can spend less time creating your roadmap and more time managing your project.

On this page you'll find six of the most common roadmap templates you can use in your next stakeholder meeting. We’ve developed each template in two versions for easy use with your usual MS Office tools:

• a roadmap template for Excel, where you can use standard Excel features like shapes and colors to build your roadmap manually;

• a roadmap template for PowerPoint, where you can use the free 14 days trial of the Office Timeline add-in to create your roadmap automatically or move the shapes by hand if you don't have Office Timeline yet.

To find out more about how to create roadmaps with Excel, PowerPoint and other roadmap tools, have a quick look at our tutorials section.

Top free roadmap templates

Explore our series of roadmap templates for Excel and PowerPoint specially designed to save you time and get you started quickly:

1. Product roadmap template
2. Project roadmap template
3. Technology roadmap template
4. IT roadmap template
5. Strategy / Business roadmap template
6. Agile roadmap template

Choose from these most popular roadmap examples, download for free and customize them with a few clicks to make them suit your project.

1. Product roadmap template

A product roadmap is a high-level overview of your product strategy and how that fits into your business vision. It can show both the strategic side and the practical side of your product offering, the reasoning, and the planning behind your implementation decisions.

Your product roadmap template can include important aspects like product features, iterations, and the releases that are planned in the future, and you can represent them on the roadmap as key milestones, tasks or on different swimlanes.

To help you fast-track your next product strategy meeting, here are two pre-populated templates that you can easily customize in Excel and PowerPoint (using the Office Timeline free trial).

2. Project roadmap template

When managing any kind of project, you'll probably need to create a project roadmap, which is a strategic outline of the project goals and the key deliverables. When you build it, it's best if you present project tasks, milestones, and goals or initiatives grouped on various swimlanes.

The project roadmap is an extremely useful tool for stakeholder buy-in and communication, since it helps create a common understanding on the strategic reasons for sponsoring a project. When all stakeholders are on the same page, you can overcome obstacles easier and deliver your project on time and within budget.

Use the templates below to turn your project roadmap presentation into an effective meeting. Choose between Excel and PowerPoint (with the Office Timeline free trial) to create a project roadmap that would impress your stakeholders.

3. Technology roadmap template

A roadmap can be a useful tool when it comes to a product or project, but it can just as easily help you make strategic decisions regarding your technology investments. And since roadmaps are strategic planning instruments, it's useful to create a technology roadmap to document your infrastructure initiatives too. You can organize the swimlanes to include infrastructure solutions, tools, or processes that are in place today and what's envisioned for the future.

Working with templates can make things a lot easier for you and save you hours of work. Check out these examples of technology roadmap templates we've created for Excel and PowerPoint (and the Office Timeline free trial) to get started faster.

4. IT roadmap template

Another frequent type of roadmap you may be creating is an IT roadmap, which is basically an overview of the way your organization uses IT systems to achieve its business goals. For example, an IT roadmap can show the strategic plan created to migrate your organization's data or adopt a new tool.

You can include various IT initiatives like apps, internal processes, or new technologies and you can use color-coded swimlanes to represent each initiative or goal. You can use the IT roadmap to show current capabilities or the developments that are planned.

Here's an example of an IT roadmap template that you can download and change the deliverables to make it work for you. There's an Excel version and a PowerPoint one (with the help of the Office Timeline free trial) so you can choose whichever suits you best.

5. Strategy roadmap (or Business roadmap) template

A visual representation of the key moments that mark your strategic business initiatives is extremely useful, especially if you need to include different themes and span across a longer time frame. Communication with stakeholders becomes easier if you show them a strategy roadmap, a more general plan that explains the overall vision for growing your business.

The strategy roadmap (or business roadmap, as it’s sometimes called) can present your initiatives or themes on different swimlanes and include current state, long-term goals, and future steps needed to implement the business strategy.

Discover the strategy roadmap templates we have built using Excel and PowerPoint (and the Office Timeline free trial). These will help you create a simple but clear strategy roadmap for your next stakeholder meeting and show off your presentation skills.

6. Agile roadmap template

As more companies embrace the lean and agile environment, creating an agile roadmap for your project or product can help you align your daily work to your long-term strategy, while remaining flexible enough to rapidly respond to any market changes.

This agile roadmap is a high-level visual plan that displays what user stories your agile teams are focusing on over the course of one or several Scrum sprints and helps you see how this contributes to achieving the overall product vision. It’s also an excellent tool for communicating the product strategy to all the stakeholders, from every team member to clients or executives.

To give you an idea of how the agile roadmap can help you improve clarity and transparency in any project, download these templates – there’s one for Excel and a similar one for PowerPoint that uses the Office Timeline free trial add-in and color codes to indicate team work and implementation of strategic goals.

If you need any help with choosing a roadmap software, check out our dedicated section on roadmap tools and discover useful tips and tricks on getting the best results with a dedicated roadmap maker.

What is a roadmap template?

A roadmap template is a predefined visual overview of a product, project, or process. A roadmap should show at a glance your product or project story at the highest level. You can use roadmap templates as guidance and inspiration to create a roadmap that matches your business' needs, or as a starting point for a highly customized roadmap. Templates should be built with customization options, so that you can reuse them as needed.

What is a product roadmap template? What are the key tenets of roadmaps?

A product roadmap template is a predefined map of the vision and strategy for your product. Product roadmap templates make it easy to communicate your plans and create product presentations. They can be reused after customization.

Some of the key tenets of roadmaps include:

1. Why – Vision and strategy.
   1. Vision: Why a product is created, who it serves.
   2. Strategy: The process and initiatives needed in order for the vision to be achieved.
2. What - Goals and features. What you are looking to accomplish with your product. What the product functionalities are and the benefits they bring to the user.
3. How - Details on the processes and initiatives that are needed in order to achieve your goals.
4. When - Dates or time periods. The timeline of the pathway of your product goals or features from start to finish.

What should a roadmap template include?

First of all, a roadmap content depends on the intended audience. You’ll need different templates to use in different presentations for stakeholders and teams. Then, the content of a roadmap depends on what you want to focus on and the intended level of detail.

A template is a reusable roadmap that offers adjustment options to fit various presentations. Focus only on the key elements to include in a roadmap template, so that you can keep them unchanged if you need to update the content for your next presentation and make adjustments only to the details and secondary items.

For example, start with the product vision and goals, then work your way into the details that make up the roadmap.

There are some common elements that you can use in all types of roadmap templates:

• Strategy processes and initiatives

• Goals

• Features

• Time reference

Does PowerPoint have a roadmap template?

Yes, you can find several basic roadmap templates in PowerPoint, in the online library. The templates can be downloaded, customized, and used in your presentation as needed. If you want to save time with customization or need higher functionality and improved design when creating and updating roadmaps in PowerPoint, try the Office Timeline add-in for PowerPoint for free.