Skip to main content

Whether you’re in a basement brainstorming your best startup ideas or finishing up your fifth round of funding Lucidchart’s data linking functionality empowers you to create data driven product roadmaps.

FnrkenZkvWmWlH58ifUqbw.png

Product roadmaps are a great way to communicate your organization’s priorities to different teams and even investors. However creating a product roadmap typically requires substantial organization as you need to think through the strategic steps required to accomplish these goals. On top of that there are usually various stakeholders and teams that work cross-functionally to make gradual improvements to the product over time. This makes the creation of a product roadmap difficult because teams might have conflicting priorities and timelines to consider. With Lucidchart you can visualize the many variables that go into the creation of a comprehensive product roadmap.

 

Rather than writing vague statements about your organization’s vision you can import data directly into Lucidchart to show exactly what projects each team is working on when.

For example the product roadmap example template shown above demonstrates how you can link your data sets to Lucidchart display data on shapes and arrange the shapes on your canvas into a timeline. To build this product roadmap example we took a simple spreadsheet that organized product objectives by team and Epics (aka: a big chunk of work that has one common objective). Then we imported the data set into Lucidchart and linked data to individual shapes on the canvas.

v5wiWcUPC18wL5a0h-SJjQ.png

Spreadsheets like the one shown above are useful to reference but they fail to paint a full picture about the product vision or timeline.

 

When you combine spreadsheet data with Lucidchart’s flexible diagramming tools the possibilities multiply.

For example you can add conditional formatting rules to make the document easier to navigate. This template added four easy conditional formatting rules that color-coordinate the roadmap by team. Not only does this make the document more visually appealing but also it makes sure that your collaborators aren’t overwhelmed with information.

u8Hc5evlAMZrk9ewQZxR9A.png

 

The possibilities don’t end there! For more complex projects:

  • You might want to consider adding actions and hotspots to create buttons that link out to other document pages or external resources.
  • If you want your product roadmap to double as a progress dashboard you can use layers and add dynamic shapes to track how far along teams are on their objectives.
  • Additionally if you pull data from live data sources such as Google Sheets then you can rely on Lucidchart as your source of truth because Lucidchart automatically updates your data every 30 seconds.
  • Once you’ve finished building the product roadmap you can easily shift to presentation mode and showcase your work to employees investors or anyone who might be interested.

 

Try it yourself – click here to get started with our product roadmap example template or click here for a blank product roadmap template!

For this example (and others) do we still have to position the product bars manually across the timeline (Q1-4) or can we use a data field and conditional data to accomplish that? Thanks!


Hi Elizabeth thanks for commenting in our community! In this template the Q1-Q4 are adjusted manually. Linking data to these shapes might be useful if you're interested. Feel free to check out our Help Center article about Data Linking to objects here.


  1. Is there a way to automate the adjustment?
  2.  Is there a way incorporate a more advanced template?

Hi @Vince B , thank you sharing those questions! Unfortunately, it’s not possible to automate the adjustment in Lucidchart. 

This feature isn’t limited to specific templates, this means you can create advanced diagrams or templates and add data to different components of your document.

Once you have imported a data set to your Lucidchart document, you can assign data to objects, groups of objects, or to your document as a whole.  For more information, I recommend checking out the Assign data to document components section of our Data linking Help Center article.

I hope this helps. Feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions! 


Hi! I’m Micah from Lucid’s community team. 👋 Jumping in here to share about Lucid’s Data Trusted User Group. This group is made up of knowledgeable users who regularly analyze and visualize data in their work. As part of this group, you’ll have the opportunity to connect directly with Lucid’s product team, gain early access to beta features, and share insights about your needs, shaping the future of Lucid’s data solutions 🎉 You can learn more and request to join here. Thanks!


A step by step guide for how to get a simple data set (3 columns) into this template please? 


Hi @Jen22, thanks for your comment! I would recommend the following:

  1. Create a new document based on that template, which you can edit. To do so, open the Template Gallery, search for the template you’d like, and click Open. For more information on working with templates, I recommend this Start with a template article from our help center. 

 

 

  1.  Import your data by selecting File > Import data, then selecting Data linking and conditional formatting
  1.  Choose Import your data. 
  1. Lucidchart will prompt you to to connect your data source. 
  1. After importing, you’ll find your uploaded data in the Data Linking panel. 
  1. From there, you can associate your data with specific shapes in the template according to the detailed instructions in this Link data to a Lucidchart document article from our help center. 

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have specific questions about any of these steps. 


Hi @Micah is there any way to generate shapes from the data?  I have 100 rows in Google Sheets, so I need to create 100 shapes and assign them one by one?


@Micah I did find this was possible, I just select all the rows from the Data Panel, drag on to the canvas and select a custom shape


 @PatrickRadoszewski Thank you so much for letting me know! I’ve removed my previous response to avoid any future confusion. I’ve also demonstrated what you described in a GIF below in case it’s helpful for others. 

 


Is there a way to automatically add shapes from your data set? For example, if a dataset gets a new item, do you then have to manually drag that line item to the chart to create a shape or can it automatically get its own shape?


@Shannon B I’m not aware of a way to do that.  The new items will show in the dataset though as not linked to a shape, so I scan the list for unlinked items and then drag them on to the canvas.  Fortunately I am only dealing with 2-3 new ones at a time.  My other concern is that if items are removed from the data set, they don’t get removed from the canvas


Reply