[tjomk]

I would argue about the roadmap being visual. When you present people with the gantt chart, people tend to focus more on the timelines rather than the direction. This inadvertently pushes you to follow clearly defined deadlines and makes your roadmap a release plan instead (which Jira or similar tool is much better at).

We've been experimenting with gantt-style vs a simple table/list-view [1] and found that in many cases the latter actually works better in presenting the product vision, albeit at the expense of longer reading times.

[1] https://www.getshipit.com/blog/should-you-use-gantt-product-...

[tootie]

I think the key is just for it to be visual. I've found that if key ideas aren't accompanied by a visual, they don't get read or understood.

[Jibranio]

I'm not posing that this is the preferred or only way of creating a product roadmap. (I used this image because it's familiar with people when they think about product roadmaps).

I think a roadmap should be created based on the audience that's consuming it. So the answer in many cases is, "It depends."