Thread by @nurijanian

I've never seen a roadmap survive contact with reality.

Not once. In 15+ years of product work.

Yet we spend weeks building beautiful charts and quarter-by-quarter feature lists like we can predict the future.

🧵

1/16 Watch any PM in December:

Frantically building next year's roadmap like they can predict customer behavior, market shifts, and technical challenges 12 months out.

Same energy as checking your horoscope for investment advice.

2/16 Roadmaps promise something impossible: certainty in an uncertain world.

They make us feel like we have control. Like we're strategic. Like we know what we're doing.

But they're really just elaborate fiction dressed as planning.

3/16 Companies spend more time planning roadmaps than questioning if roadmaps work.

It's like elaborate rain dancing. Nobody wants to admit it doesn't control the weather.

4/16 Built the exact feature customers asked for?

They don't use it.

Built something completely different?

"This is exactly what we needed!"

Customer interviews don't predict customer behavior.

5/16 The dirty secret about roadmap planning:

We start with what we want to build, then work backwards to justify the timeline.

"This should take 2 months" becomes "This will take 2 months" in the slide deck.

6/16 Roadmaps fail because they assume static context:

Market stays the same (it doesn't)
Competition stays the same (it doesn't)
Team stays the same (it doesn't)
Company priorities stay the same (they don't)

Yet we plan like none of this will change.

7/16 We roadmap the known unknowns but ignore the unknown unknowns:

Known: "This integration might be complex"
Unknown: "The vendor will change their API twice"
Unknown: "Our biggest customer will threaten to leave"
Unknown: "Legal will block the launch"

8/16 Roadmaps assume perfect execution:

No one gets sick
No one quits
No technical debt blocks progress
No urgent bugs derail the team
No scope creep happens

Have you met humans?

9/16 My favorite roadmap lie: "accurate" time estimates.

"This will take 6 weeks"
(Based on what? The last time we built something completely different?)

We estimate like we have historical data for novel work.

10/16 Stakeholders treat roadmaps like contracts:

"You said Q3, it's now Q4"
"The roadmap shows mobile first"
"This wasn't on the original plan"

But they were built on assumptions that expired months ago.

11/16 What works better than detailed roadmaps:

Clear principles for decision-making
Outcome goals instead of feature lists
Quarterly themes, not monthly commitments
Options, not promises

12/16 The best "roadmaps" I've seen:

3 months: Specific commitments
6 months: General direction
12 months: Strategic themes

The further out, the vaguer it gets. That's honest planning.

13/16 Instead of defending the roadmap, constantly question it:

What changed since we made this plan?
What did we learn that invalidates our assumptions?
What would we do differently if we started today?

Plans should evolve, not persist.

14/16 Stop saying: "Here's what we're building next year"
Start saying: "Here's how we'll decide what to build"

Stop promising features.
Start promising good judgment.

15/16 Many PMs struggle with roadmap pressure due to lacking systems to convey uncertainty while maintaining credibility.

I've built 120+ prompts for these exact situations - stakeholder communication, planning under uncertainty, priority frameworks.

prodmgmt.world/products/ai-pr…

16/16 Your roadmap isn't a plan - it's a starting point for conversation.

Stop defending fiction. Start embracing reality.

Complete PM system for planning in uncertainty (frameworks, communication templates, decision tools):
prodmgmt.world/products/produ…