How to make roadmaps with your favorite office tools
Learn how to turn your data into polished roadmaps using Excel, PowerPoint, Project, and other familiar tools – with step-by-step guides and free templates.
Visualize strategic plans with confidence
Roadmaps turn strategy into a visual story that highlights the steps, milestones, and initiatives needed to reach your goals. They’re an essential tool to align teams, communicate priorities, and keep everyone focused on the big picture.
You can build roadmaps in familiar software like Excel or PowerPoint, or speed things up with a purpose-built roadmap maker that produces polished visuals in minutes. To get started quickly and confidently, use our comprehensive tutorials and free resources below.
Use Excel’s editing tools and Shapes to turn data into a visual roadmap for clients and executives. Follow our tutorial to learn the steps – or see how a roadmap maker can automate the process.
PowerPoint can double as a roadmap builder, letting you showcase strategic plans in a clear slide. Learn how to create one manually with shapes or automatically with Office Timeline.
Use MS Project’s Roadmap feature to create high-level visuals for collaboration. Our tutorial shows you how to enable it and explore simpler alternatives.
Build simple roadmaps in Google Sheets by formatting tables with swimlanes and shapes. Follow our guide or try a web-based roadmap maker for speed.
Jira roadmaps help teams and decision-makers stay aligned on project goals. Learn how to use Jira’s Timeline feature or import data into a roadmap maker for presentation-ready slides.
Why professionals rely on Office Timeline
Office Timeline is a great tool for creating visually appealing and easy to understand PowerPoint schedules. The ability to import existing data into Office Timeline (e.g. MS Project) and then edit is invaluable. I use this on a weekly basis and would not want to be without it!
Frequently asked questions about making roadmaps
Get practical answers to the most common questions about building roadmaps - from what to include to how to create one for free.
You can build a roadmap for free using pre-built templates that you customize with your own data. This saves time and effort compared to starting from scratch. Explore our collection of free, professionally designed roadmap templates to get started.
A strong roadmap highlights the major steps needed to reach your goal. Core elements usually include:
- Tasks and initiatives,
- Releases and milestones,
- Key features or deliverables,
- Dependencies between tasks.
Excel’s editing tools make it possible to build a simple roadmap with swimlanes and shapes. The basic steps are:
- Open a new spreadsheet and set the print area to A4.
- Use the top row to list main dates.
- Set up swimlanes with alternating colors.
- Add shapes (rectangles, circles, triangles) for project items.
- Color-code items by status or priority.
- Add comments where needed and include a legend.
For a detailed walkthrough with screenshots, see our full tutorial on how to make a roadmap in Excel.
PowerPoint roadmap maker
Use Office Timeline to seamlessly import data from Excel, Project, and other productivity tools into PowerPoint – then instantly turn it into professional roadmaps you can update with ease.
