Product Management

Ditch your roadmap for a product landscape

Going beyond roadmaps with internal teams.

Illustration from DrawKit

It’s time to ditch roadmaps. More often than not, roadmap presentations leave me unsatisfied. Perhaps it’s the pressure to “do product management right,” or the weight of the roadmap’s established place in the product world as the artifact — you can’t NOT have a roadmap and be seen as credible. Whatever the reason, roadmaps often seem to be a trick and pony show — look at what we are doing soon 🤩, somewhat soon 🎉, and later! 🏆 They are often inaccurate, always changing, and fail to produce consensus.

Perhaps I have been a bit harsh here— there is indeed value in product roadmaps (please do not misinterpret me here), however, we too often use roadmaps when we should not. It’s in these scenarios that we need to rethink the roadmap and replace it with something better. Let’s break this down into two categories:

When are Roadmaps Valuable?

Roadmaps are valuable when:

• Executives, clients, and stakeholders need a window into development progress and what’s coming next
• You want to promote excitement about new offerings or components
• Clients and customers need a place to see that their needs are being heard

Roadmaps are less effective when:

• You’re trying to build clear consensus within a development team
• You’re trying to promote or craft a product vision and create momentum
• You’re trying to decide what not to do
• You’re defining the problem space for your product

Here’s one scenario that illustrates the point. In the past, I worked with a development team to build a product. The product evolved and was repositioned as a larger contributor towards new company goals. Naturally, the team was reallocated, put under a new manager, and given a new set of “to-dos.” Despite being a bit bitter about losing control of the product, the team still reached out to me to help. One pervasive sentiment stood out — “We feel lost! We need to see the product roadmap!” Interestingly, roadmap presentations were a regular and…