Soon after I started at Compendium Blogware I evaluated the business needs and determined that scrum and other agile software development methodologies would best meet our needs. Being a B2B company, we often have larger clients and potential clients that want to know when we will have some feature or what features are on the product roadmap.
This is the problem with scrum and in particular how it relates to even having a product roadmap. We have a product backlog, which is a prioritized list of product features. It has every feature ever requested that has any business value at all. But, none of the items on the roadmap have due dates. We only have due dates for the items being worked on in the current sprint.
Now, if we were just going to share the product backlog with customers that would at least give people an idea of what features had already been requested. The danger in doing that lies in setting false expectations. Just because something is at the top of the list today, doesn't mean it will be at the top of the list in 3 weeks when the sprint is over.
I propose referring to the product roadmap as the product vision. A roadmap implies you have strict requirements and order while a vision implies that you have some ideas.
This is the problem with scrum and in particular how it relates to even having a product roadmap. We have a product backlog, which is a prioritized list of product features. It has every feature ever requested that has any business value at all. But, none of the items on the roadmap have due dates. We only have due dates for the items being worked on in the current sprint.
Now, if we were just going to share the product backlog with customers that would at least give people an idea of what features had already been requested. The danger in doing that lies in setting false expectations. Just because something is at the top of the list today, doesn't mean it will be at the top of the list in 3 weeks when the sprint is over.
I propose referring to the product roadmap as the product vision. A roadmap implies you have strict requirements and order while a vision implies that you have some ideas.
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