One aspect of our annual user’s conference is publishing our product roadmap. Now, we don’t publish our entire roadmap as the market is too dynamic and we’d rather under commit than over commit and have to remove functionality. The challenge is to balance the desires of customers, employees, prospects, and the general vision for the application. Most important, it is critical to be opinionated about the software.
Here’s what we consider in building our product roadmap:
- Internal vision and opinion for the software
- Customer ideas and votes on our idea exchange
- Services and support team member input on ways to make their lives easier
- Marketplace input from prospects and analysts
My recommendation is to make the roadmap development process a regular strategic action item.
What else? What other aspects would you add to the product roadmap process?
David Cummings on Startups 