666 Roadmap Template
Plan your product vision and strategy over 6 weeks, 6 months, and 6 years.
About the 666 Roadmap Template
The 666 roadmap works across three timelines: one for your long-term vision, one that lets you plan (with some flexibility), and a short-term fixed plan.
This roadmap was created by Paul Adams, a VP of Product at Intercom. He believed that common suggested timelines such as two years or 18 months were either too shortsighted or too far into the future to manage unpredictability or understand the market.
Keep reading to learn more about 666 roadmaps.
What is a 666 roadmap
A 666 roadmap helps product managers plan and decide on what they’d like to build by encouraging them to focus on three key timelines:
The next six years: What will the world look like six years from now? And how will that affect today’s market trends? These questions give your team an opportunity to do some industry forecasting and future thinking, thus informing your product build.
The next six months: Think of this as a rolling timeline you can update every quarter. Over six months, you can build 50-75% of your product. That leaves 25% to chance, perhaps impacted by things you can’t predict. Progress is possible, but circumstances can change. Adapt accordingly.
The next six weeks: These are your most concrete, immediate priorities – a rolling timeline that gets updated every two weeks. Your team is usually across all the details here. They should be familiar with the design work and what’s committed to being built.
The 666 roadmap method's success hinges on product managers and their teams balancing a project’s vision and significant milestones with its day-to-day work.
When to use 666 roadmaps
These roadmaps help product managers and their teams practically plan while dealing with the realities of week-to-week workloads.
You may also need to present a 666 roadmap to your leadership or agile development team. Buy-in presentations are excellent opportunities to show everyone your confidence in balancing customer needs with your company's business objectives.
Remember that roadmaps shouldn't exist in isolation. Instead, they should back up other work your product team may be doing. You can connect roadmap goals to team progress by breaking down initiatives into epics in your product backlog. Break down these epics into requirements and user stories.
Product managers can pitch the 666 roadmap approach to their teams and any external stakeholders as an alternative to thinking in only two timelines: the twenty-year stretch and the six-month container.
Create your own 666 roadmap
Making your own 666 roadmaps is easy. Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share them. Get started by selecting the 666 Roadmap Template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Record your goals for the next six years. These are your long-term product vision goals. They can be updated every two weeks to keep your goals accurate and a shared source of truth for your entire team.
Record your goals for the next six months. These are your quarterly ambitions, such as implementing a new feature. Include only as much detail as your stakeholders and team need for each column. Ideally, they should be confident in consulting the roadmap independently to understand the status of current work and long-term goals, rather than asking you for updates.
Record your goals for the next six weeks. These are your easily definable daily team goals, such quality assurance or implementing a functional customization. No more than six goals are recommended per timeline, to keep teams focused between long- and short-term ambitions.
Review and adjust the details for each timeline as needed. Make sure everyone can access the roadmap by updating your board’s Share settings as needed. Staying connected with teammates and stakeholders at all levels by automating updates (such as notifications of new changes) or regularly scheduled check-ins helps keep everyone aligned and motivated.
Get started with this template right now.
Multiple-Product Roadmap
Works best for:
Planning, Mapping
The Multiple Product Roadmap template empowers product managers to visualize and manage multiple product initiatives effectively. By providing a centralized view of project timelines, dependencies, and milestones, this template fosters alignment and transparency across teams. With sections for prioritizing initiatives, tracking progress, and communicating updates, it enables teams to coordinate efforts and drive collective success. This template serves as a strategic tool for planning and executing product roadmaps that align with organizational goals and drive business growth.
Editorial Calendar Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Strategic Planning, Project Planning
If your company is like most, content is a big thing. You create more of it (and a lot faster) than you create almost anything else. It includes blogs, newsletters, social media posts, ads, and more—and it requires ideating, writing, editing, and publishing. That’s why every content team needs an editorial calendar. The template will let you easily create a calendar that empowers your team to plan strategically, keep things organized (by content type, writer, channel, and delivery date), and finalize/post all content on schedule.
Product Development Gantt Chart
Works best for:
Gantt Chart, Planning
Developing a new product involves many steps and stakeholders. The Product Development Gantt Chart template helps you manage this complex process efficiently. Use it to outline each phase of development, set timelines, and assign responsibilities. Track progress and make adjustments as needed to stay on schedule. This template provides a clear visual representation, coordinating tasks for a successful product launch.
Event Planning Template
Works best for:
Planning, Workshops
Whether you’re planning a product launch, fully remote conference, or milestone event, the Event Planning Template will act as a visual checklist and map for all the details you need to consider before the big day. The Event Planning Template is an adaptable way to make sure the creative and strategic vision of your event doesn’t get lost in the details. By mapping out different sections - from the marketing plan, to the agenda, to snacks and swag for guests — you and your team can focus on the details most important to your functions, and collaborate as needed when overlaps occur.
Communications Plan Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Project Management, Project Planning
You saw the opportunity. You developed the product. Now comes an important step: Find your audience and speak to them in a way that’s clear, memorable, and inspiring. You need a communications plan—a strategy for controlling your narrative at every stage of your business—and this template will help you create a good one. No need to build a new strategy every time you have something to communicate. Here, you can simplify the process, streamline your messaging, and empower you to communicate in ways that grow with your business.
Conversion Funnel Backlog Template
Works best for:
Decision Making, Product Management, Prioritization
If you’re working on a product that has clear conversions, then it can help to structure your backlog around the conversion funnel to make sure you’re reaching your audience. Creating a conversion funnel backlog brings together information around potential pain-points in your funnel and opportunities for growth. Once you’ve identified that information, it becomes easier to prioritize. You and your team can use the conversion funnel backlog to focus on conversion, retention, and referral, or to tweak your workflow in more mature products.