How to Use Product Roadmap Milestones

One of the simplest ways to guide your team through the product development lifecycle is by creating a product roadmap. And a key feature of an effective product roadmap is milestones. Milestones break down complex projects into manageable pieces, helping your team stay on track and deliver work on time. In this post, we’ll explore:

• What product roadmap milestones are
• How to use them effectively
• How to create Milestones in Visor

Want a free tool that lets you create powerful roadmap visualizations (and also plays nice with your PM tools, like Jira?) Try Visor and see what you can create. 

What Are Product Roadmap Milestones? 

Product roadmap milestones are markers that show important points in a project’s development. They’re often used to mark the completion of critical tasks or phases, such as finishing a feature, achieving a certain performance metric, or hitting a deadline for a release. Milestones help teams keep track of progress and make sure everyone is working toward the same goals. 

In good product roadmapping or portfolio management software, you can add milestones as visible markers on your roadmap, helping you and your team focus on key objectives while providing stakeholders with a clear overview of progress. For instance, in the Visor Gantt chart below, a milestone is indicated by a diamond shape.

A Milestone in Visor

6 Types of Milestones to Add to Your Product Roadmap

There are a lot of different ways you can use milestones to guide and track the progress of a project. Here are a few of the most common common types:

1. Project Phases Milestones: Show when you’ve completed a significant phase of a project.
   Example: Completing the design phase, entering the development phase, or moving to the testing phase.
   
2. Time-Based Milestones: Indicate specific dates or deadlines to ensure that your team stays on track with scheduled deliverables.
   Example: Releasing a beta version by January 1st or delivering a report by the end of the quarter.
   
3. Deliverable Milestones: Mark the completion of a significant output or product that is handed off to the next team, client, or phase of the project.
   Example: Completing a user interface design for a new app feature.
   
4. Approval Milestones: You can use this type of milestone for when you obtain approvals or sign-offs from stakeholders, clients, or upper management.
   Example: Getting approval from the head of product for a completed design.

5. Testing and Quality Milestones: Note where testing, reviews, or quality assurance must take place before moving forward.
   Example: Completing user acceptance testing (UAT), passing security audits, or achieving a successful product quality review.
   
6. Launch or Release Milestones: These milestones are tied to launching new products, services, or campaigns. They signify the official release of a project to the market or public.
   Example: Launching a new app, releasing a product update, or rolling out a product marketing campaign.

How to Use Product Roadmap Milestones Effectively 

Before you actually use milestones, here are a few key tips to help you use them more effectively.

Visualize Milestones on Your Roadmap

Most people absorb information better with a visual aid. Having a visual roadmap makes it easier for stakeholders to understand the project’s status at a glance. Tools like Gantt charts allow you to display milestones as distinct markers, helping teams see the flow of the project more clearly.

A roadmap with milestones in Visor

Please note that not every project management software or portfolio management software will have the ability to display milestones. For instance, Jira does not offer milestones for its users. However, you still share eye-catching visualizations with Visor, which allows you to create customizable Gantt charts featuring Milestones. (Try it for free!)

Define Key Milestones Early

As we mentioned in the section above there’s more than one way to set a milestone. Just be sure you iIdentify the most critical points in your project – the ones that signify meaningful progress. These should include events like:

• Major feature completions
• Alpha and beta testing phases
• Product launch or release dates
• Significant internal reviews or approvals

Make Milestones SMART

You’re going to want some brains behind your milestones, so be sure to make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example:

• “Launch feature X to beta users by March 1st.”
• “Complete UX design for module Y by January 15th.”

Align Milestones with Product Goals

Milestones should be more than just important events. Every milestone should tie back to broader product or business goals to make sure they are genuinely significant.

For example, you could add a milestone marking the completion of user research if that directly relates to your product’s user-centric design objectives.

Regularly Review and Adjust Milestones

Flexibility is key in product development. Regularly review your milestones as the project progresses. If priorities change, make sure you have a system that can change with them. (Check out our post on Agile Gantt charts for some inspiration.)

Best Practices for Managing Milestones

• Communicate Milestones to All Teams: Ensure every team involved understands the significance of each milestone and how it impacts their role.
• Celebrate Milestone Achievements: Recognize and celebrate when significant milestones are hit. This boosts morale and keeps teams motivated to continue progressing toward the next goal.
• Use Tools for Tracking Milestones: Leverage tools like Jira, Visor, or Asana to help track progress, set deadlines, and report on milestone completion.

How to Use Visor to Share Product Roadmap Milestones

One of the most well-known Jira user complaints is their lack of milestones. This is a huge downside to their otherwise strong roadmapping capabilities. Milestones, as we’ve covered, are a crucial part of successful roadmap development, and it’s going to be unnecessarily difficult to manage a functional roadmap without milestones.

If you’re looking to share a product roadmap with milestones, try Visor. It offers customizable Milestones that you can apply to data from your favorite project management software (like Jira or Asana). You can also create a two-way sync between Visor and Jira, Asana, or Salesforce so that you keep your data up-to-date even if you’re not in those programs.

Visor lets you:

• See Milestones along with tasks and epics within a hierarchy
• Add a name and description to your Milestone
• Locate your Milestone based on its due date on a Gantt chart 
• Drag your Milestone to a different date on your Gantt chart
• Filter your view so that you can add or remove Milestones
• Delete or edit your Milestones whenever you like

Take a look at how you can create your own product roadmap Milestones in Visor:

Visor was designed to sync with the apps you already use, like Jira and Asana, to help you visualize your full project portfolio. Use the data you already have to create and share beautiful roadmaps, Gantt charts, and more.

How to Create a Product Roadmap Milestone in a Gantt chart

Step 1: Open Gantt View

Visor offers a variety of Views, including Gantt View. When you import data from another program (Jira, for example), Visor will open to the Spreadsheet View. You can switch it out by clicking on Gantt View from the list of different Views listed along the bottom of your screen. You can also click the + Add View button if you want to create a new custom Gantt View.

Step 2: Create a Milestone

Once you’re in Gantt View, you’ll see a Display As column on the left side of your screen. This lets you know how a given issue will display – either as a bar for a regular task or epic or a diamond for a Milestone. Find the issue you want to convert to a Milestone, select Milestone from the Display As dropdown menu, and your issue will be switched over to a Milestone.

Setting up Milestones in Visor

Step 3: Customize Your Milestone

To make it pop even more, you can set the colors you use for your Milestones in Visor as well.

Go to the Bar Colors above your Gantt chart. Select Display As from the dropdown menu, and you’ll be given the option to select colors for bars and Milestones. Alternatively, you can add color based on Status or other relevant factors. To change a color, select Format and a Format Choice menu will appear.

You can use Visor’s preset colors or click Background from the available tabs to enter a hex code.

Updating colors in Visor

How to Create a Product Roadmap Milestone in a Table (Spreadsheet) View

You can easily change an issue into a Milestone in Visor’s Table View as well. Simply right-click on a record, or make the change from the Display As dropdown menu. Though you won’t be able to see a visible change in Table View, your Milestone will appear as a diamond when you’re the Gantt chart View.

Syncing fields

Common Pitfalls to Avoid when Creating Product Roadmap Milestones

We’ve talked about what you should do when you’re creating milestones. Let’s get into some practices to avoid. If you don’t do these, you’ll produce better, more effective milestones.

• Don’t overcomplicate your roadmap: You should avoid cluttering your roadmap with too many milestones, since having too many makes it harder to identify what should be a priority. If it’s too late and you’ve already created a ton of milestones, there’s a fix for that (at least if you’re using Visor). Simply use Visor’s filtering options to narrow down the scope of your roadmap.
  
• Don’t Forget to Update Milestones: We’ve mentioned that product roadmapping is an agile process, and sometimes the targets move. Just make sure those changes are reflected in your roadmap, or you’ll end up with a tool that doesn’t reflect reality.
  
• Avoid Vague Milestones: Ensure that every milestone you create in Visor is clear and actionable, so there’s no confusion about what success looks like. 

How will you build your product roadmap with milestones?

Product roadmap milestones are essential tools that help break down complex projects into manageable parts, ensuring that your team stays focused, aligned, and on schedule. With Visor’s powerful roadmap tools, integrating milestones into your workflow becomes simple and efficient, helping you stay on track, communicate clearly with stakeholders, and achieve your product goals. By defining clear milestones, prioritizing tasks, and leveraging Visor to visualize your roadmap, you can drive your product’s success from concept to launch.

Ready to enhance your product roadmap? Start using Visor to track milestones and create visualizations stakeholders will love.

If this article was helpful, consider reading these related articles:

1. Your Complete Guide to Gantt Chart Milestones
2. 5 Free Agile Product Roadmap Templates Your Team Can Use Today
3. Roadmap Visualizations That Your Stakeholders Will Understand

Moira West

Moira West

Moira West is a former journalist and educator who has spent the last nine years writing about technology, data management, and more. She is excited to now bring her expertise to Visor. When she's not working, she spends time with her family, paints, bakes, and writes more -- just for fun.