I've been asked to work on a technical product road map for a suite of products.
Can anyone provide recommendation as to what this should include and how I should present it? I'd probably need to cover some lines that will disappear and convergence between other products.
I'd also like to find a good way of presenting this in a diagrammatic form. There are plenty of these on the web but I'm not finding any that really strike me.
Here are some sources of inspiration for the second part of the question (so it's a partial answer):
Your Product Roadmap must support your Strategy for achieving your Vision. If your Vision isn't explicit, make it so, and gain agreement from the relevant stakeholders. Then make your Strategy explicit, and again verify that the appropriate parties are on-board. The role of your Product Roadmap is to make your Strategy concrete, illustrating step-by-step how how the Vision will be achieved based on advances in your product suite. You will likely need multiple views of your Roadmap -- what's appropriate when working with developers is very different than what's appropriate when working with members of a board of directors, or when engaged with prospective customers. In all of these views, strive for clarity while modulating the level of detail to meet the needs of your audience.
I do agree with Dave on this, but I feel that besides having a vision as to what your product should ideally look at the end of your roadmap and defining steps to get there, you should also take into account what is going to be the functional roadmap. That should be there first, before writing even a vision and a technical roadmap.
Knowing what functionality has to be supported when could have a great impact on how you want your product to evolve technically. Knowing what will be the end functionality may even change the technical side completely.
Off topic: I do like it that there are still companies out there that take the time to work like this. I wish I would work for a company like that.