What is Project Roadmapping?

Project roadmapping (previously called the Discovery Phase) is something that we talk about a lot because it is extremely valuable and important! It even came up on our most recent Tech Tuesday about Wireframes and User Stories. Cody stated that along with DevOps, properly planning your project is the best way to save money and time along the journey of developing a custom piece of software. With that in mind, what does Project Roadmapping look like at Bixly?

First, we listen.

Step one is making sure we understand your needs. As we outlined in a previous blog, your needs may be entirely to solve an internal business problem, or you could be trying to solve a problem for future potential customers. Either way, it’s our responsibility to listen closely and understand what that is. We will likely ask a lot of follow up questions ensure that we are grasping your idea entirely.

Second, we take it to the drawing board.

Step two is creating wireframes for your software. This will be a collaborative process as we show you examples of how your app could be organized on the various screens. We also like to outline the userflow or site map so that we also understand how the screens are related to one another. Finally, we flesh out the full scope of the project with user stories to define the actual functionality of each component on the screens.

Third, we refine.

If we’re being honest, step two and step three organically happen at once. As we are having conversations about what features and layout will accomplish your purpose, we also begin making suggestions about what may not need to be a part of your MVP. We want to help you refine your idea to the smallest yet still completely functional iteration. We also keep track of all the things you want to eventually build, but have decided to leave off version one.

Depending on the size of your project these steps can take anywhere from two to six weeks. Project roadmapping is a low risk way to kick off your app idea today. Once you have your roadmap, you can begin planning the future of your business. 2021 is coming at us fast. Now is the perfect time to do the research for you next big move!

Originally published at https://blog.bixly.com on October 15, 2020.