I don’t think a public roadmap has to be a major commitment to timeframes.
We have enagagment with quite a few systems in our business and the two major ones both have ‘roadmaps’ we can view neither has set dates, and I don’t think people generally or silly enough to think those dates would be set in stone.
Both the companies I am thinking off simply categorise the things on the roadmap to give us an idea of their focus and when it will happen.
One of them categorises things as:
- working on it now
- front of the queue
- on the radar
each item just has a date estimate such as Q4-2026 - beta etc.
The other categorises things as;
Now
Soon
Low Priority
This company mark each item - as Big, Medium, Small - and again they give an timeframe estimate, they also use quarters. Each of the items on their roadmap though leads to a dedicated forum thread where the ask users to help them narrow down exactly how they want it to work asking questions of users and allowing users to point stuff out. They engage highly on the Now items - the Soon and low priority they just put out the rough idea and often put ‘talk among yourselves…we will be listening’ and don’t really respond to much, when they do respond it’s because it’s about to jump a category.
Only approved users can access the forums on the second company - I assume they worry a rival will come along and get the ideas and information for themselves. But with both all current clients can see the roadmap.
Appreciate you pointing out a couple of the items that you are focused on - they’re pretty vague so not really that helpful from a planning perspective.
From my perspective hopefully we will get some more info on the Client Home Page Revamp a couple of months before our renewal as for us that’s the biggest issue - the inability to create nested app and embed menus is preventing us from doing stuff as it gets a mess way too quickly.