Comments on: 5 reasons why sharing your product roadmap is a bad idea

By: Ignacio G del Valle

Ignacio G del Valle — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:33:07 +0000

I agree with most of your points, but I think if you are receiving lot of input from your customers, is good to manage their expectations, in such a way they don’t need to look elsewhere to satisfy their needs.
Maybe a compromise is to publish a partial roadmap, so you keep some surprises under the hood, but at the same time are showing your commitment to deliver the new features your customers expect.
I think this is specially important if you are offering a web-based service, or if you are offering a maintence contract.

By: John Kamuchau

John Kamuchau — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:54:16 +0000

I agree with this to a huge extent especially a commercial product. My strategy has always been to set up a landing page with a teaser of what the product can do and one or more screenshots and then wait until launch or when the product is mature enough to for private beta.
However , for open source projects , i believe that a road map is critical.

By: Phillip Ingle

Phillip Ingle — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:35:37 +0000

I think that you need also to consider the old maxim that ‘the customer is always right’. At the end of the day the customer does pay the Freshbooks staff wages, and pay for the development costs of the product. You should not discount them completely.

I tend to think that May Chu’s bullish and Sonia Simones engaged customers, customers who might have already invested significant resources in choosing a system, and significant cost in paying for yours do have the right to request features, and to have some idea of whether those features are in the pipeline, or shelved. By not keeping those customers up to date, you are failing to provide them with a sense of security in your product/system and you risk losing them.

By: Kaimaan » Secrecy or Transparency?

Kaimaan » Secrecy or Transparency? — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:55:35 +0000

[...] process. This morning I ran into interesting conversation between two blogs Read Write Web and Freshbook. Freshbook is trying to keep everything for them selves before the release while Read Write Web [...]

By: Dan Cornish

Dan Cornish — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:25:15 +0000

I will argue that a discussion forum and user group are another way for customers to gang up on you. Look at the discussion forums at 37 Signals. The gripes of customers provides a development roadmap to build a competitive product. Also if enough customers say you suck, you will be forced to veer off your own plan to cut the noise down. Sometimes product development can cause you to have a tin ear to your customers but sometimes you just end up oiling the squeaky wheel.

By: Roy Abraham

Roy Abraham — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:10:47 +0000

Insightful post.

I made that sales mistake once in the past (telling a potential client about upcoming features).

Besides there’s something odd about a product if it needs to sell itself by telling you what it plans to do in the future.

By: Sonia Simone | Remarkable Communication

Sonia Simone | Remarkable Communication — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:46:12 +0000

It’s fascinating to me to watch passionate, engaged customers become so certain that they have the RIGHT to all of your business processes and closed-door information. It’s a great sign but it’s still a pain in the ass.

By: Mike McDerment

Mike McDerment — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:08:51 +0000

@todd good to hear from you

re printing cheques: i hear you, and the specter of handwriting is indeed painful – we’ll keep it in mind.

By: todd lucier

todd lucier — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:35:33 +0000

Hi Mike,
I can see why you moved away from the PaddlingOntario type projects into this exciting venture. Its really nice to see how your service has evolved. And future evolutions…. hmmm. I have one wish:
Printing Cheques…
Coming from Simply Accounting, going back to handwriting cheques will be a pain. Any way to simplify the process for offline payments?

By: dragonwize

dragonwize — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:29:28 +0000

“Releasing on a specific date what you said you would is a packaged software thing…”

I completely agree with this statement. But I would also agree that being secretive is also a part of that same industry.

I believe that is more about how your industry and business model that will determine how much information you can share and do well. Being transparent is a great thing but it does not work with all business models and vice versa.

In the end, it is the company management that is the key factor in determining what will work.