How to Build a Product Roadmap as a Solo Founder

The Problem: Your Roadmap Is Either Missing or Useless

Solo founders usually have one of two problems: no roadmap at all, or a roadmap that's 40 items long and hasn't been touched in six weeks. Both are equally useless. No roadmap means you're deciding what to build based on whatever's loudest that week. A stale roadmap means you're building without direction while pretending you have one.

The real issue is that most roadmap tools are designed for product teams with dedicated PMs, design reviews, and quarterly planning cycles. When you're solo, you don't have any of that. You need something you can maintain in 20 minutes a week that tells you — and anyone you're talking to — what you're building and when.

A simple timeline with three to five milestones and their associated tasks is enough. It forces you to make real decisions about sequence and tradeoffs, which is the actual value of a roadmap. gantt-chart.io gives you exactly that: a lightweight Gantt chart you can build solo and update as often as you need without managing a tool.

Prerequisites

A product with at least one defined milestone (launch, beta, v2, etc.)
A rough sense of what needs to be true before each milestone
Two hours to build the initial roadmap (you'll recover this in saved decision-making time within a week)

Building Your Solo Founder Roadmap

Phase 1: Define your milestones

[ ] Write down your three to five most important milestones for the next six months
[ ] Each milestone should be a state change: "beta is live," "first paying customer," "API v2 shipped"
[ ] Assign a target date to each — imprecise is fine, "end of September" is a valid date
[ ] Order them by dependency: milestone 2 can't happen until milestone 1 is done

Phase 2: Work backwards from each milestone

[ ] For each milestone, list the tasks that must be complete before it's reached
[ ] Keep tasks at the right altitude: "build auth" not "create user table, add password hashing, write JWT logic"
[ ] Estimate each task in days — this is the hardest step, but rough estimates beat no estimates
[ ] Mark which tasks can run in parallel and which are sequential

Phase 3: Plot the timeline

[ ] Add your milestones as anchor points on the timeline
[ ] Fill in tasks between milestones based on your estimates
[ ] Check: does the total task time fit in the milestone window? If not, cut scope now
[ ] Add one buffer week before each milestone — you will need it

Phase 4: Maintain it weekly

[ ] Every Monday, open the roadmap and update task status
[ ] If something slipped, adjust the timeline — don't leave it showing "on track" when it isn't
[ ] Every two weeks, look at the next milestone and ask: is scope still right?
[ ] Archive completed milestones so the roadmap stays focused on what's ahead

Common Mistakes

1. Building a roadmap for investors, not for yourself. If your roadmap is a slide you update before fundraising calls, it's not a roadmap. It's a pitch prop. Build the roadmap you actually use to decide what to do tomorrow.

2. Planning features, not outcomes. "Build notifications" is a feature. "Users return to the product daily" is an outcome. Your milestones should describe outcomes; your tasks describe the features that get you there.

3. Never cutting scope. A roadmap that only grows is a wishlist. When a new idea goes in, something has to come out or move out. Enforcing this is the discipline that makes a roadmap useful.

4. Ignoring the timeline when things slip. Slippage is normal. Pretending it didn't happen is what kills solo founders — you end up with a roadmap that says you're done when you're six weeks behind.

5. Making it too granular too far out. Plan the next four weeks in tasks. Plan months two and three in milestones. Anything beyond three months is themes. Granularity past your planning horizon is fake precision.

Quick-Start in gantt-chart.io

Open gantt-chart.io and create a new chart
Add your milestones as high-level rows with their target dates
Add tasks under each milestone as sub-rows
Use the date handles to set realistic durations based on your estimates
Bookmark the chart URL — return every Monday to update

FAQ

How far out should a solo founder plan?

Three to six months is the practical limit. Beyond that, your product understanding and market conditions will change enough that the plan is fiction. Plan in detail for four weeks, in milestones for three months, in themes after that.

Should my roadmap be public?

Only if it serves a purpose: attracting early users, setting expectations with design partners, or showing momentum to investors. A public roadmap is a commitment. Only publish what you're confident shipping.

What's the difference between a roadmap and a sprint plan?

Roadmap = what you're building and when, at milestone level. Sprint plan = what you're doing this week, at task level. Both are useful. They operate at different altitudes. Don't collapse them into one document.

How do I handle feature requests from users?

Log them separately from the roadmap. Once a week, decide if any of them belong in the current milestone scope. If yes, something comes out. If no, they stay in the request backlog. Don't let incoming requests directly modify your roadmap.

Do I need any PM software for this?

A Gantt chart is enough for a solo founder. You don't need issue tracking, velocity charts, or burndown metrics. Add those when you have a team large enough that communication becomes the bottleneck — not before.

A roadmap isn't about predicting the future. It's about making your current priorities explicit so you can make consistent decisions about what to build next. Fifteen minutes a week maintaining a real timeline beats quarterly planning sessions every time. Start at gantt-chart.io — build your milestone timeline today, update it Monday.