Public roadmaps are a bad idea

One of the worst ideas in product & marketing

Public roadmaps seem like a great idea. Customers love knowing what you’ll ship next. Product managers imagine this wonderful feedback loop where users vote features up or down. Sales and support teams crave somewhere official to point when new customers ask, “What’s next?” It all sounds so reasonable.

But can you picture Steve Jobs laying out Apple’s entire product roadmap for everyone to see? Or Elon Musk at Tesla doing the same? You might argue, “Well, those are consumer brands.” But look at top B2B companies like Stripe and Shopify: they also don’t broadcast what they plan to build next. Indeed they almost do the opposite: they wait until the time is right, and then they drop everything at once in seasonal releases.

If public roadmaps were such a great idea, wouldn’t we see at least one of these leaders doing it?

When you publish a roadmap, you give away your story. Instead of revealing new features when they’re ready and explaining why they matter as part of a bigger narrative, you end up with a static list of upcoming stuff. It’s like showing the script of a movie before it’s filmed. You lose the tension, the drama, the room to improvise. A public roadmap boxes you in.

The narrative matters, but so does the ability to surprise and delight. Look at OpenAI’s 12 Days of OpenAI campaign. It’s Day 4 now, and each day they promise something big. People are excited and full of anticipation. Nobody knows exactly what’s coming, but the predictions, debates, and gossip — all of that is free, powerful marketing.

Public roadmaps commit you to plans too soon. Good product development isn’t linear. You try something, learn something else, and pivot. But if you’ve promised certain features by certain dates, you can’t change direction without looking foolish. Suddenly you’re at war with your own words.

A public roadmap can push you toward the obvious requests. After all, you asked users what they wanted, and they told you. But the best products often come from what customers didn’t even know they needed. OpenAI didn’t ask users if they wanted a chatbot. They just made it.

The pace slows down too. Internally, you can set ambitious deadlines, fail to meet them, and still land in a good place. But once you’ve told the world a feature will launch on a specific date, you’re forced to pick safe timelines. You give yourself more margin for error and hedge, and that means shipping slower.

By publishing your roadmap, you hand competitors a guide to your future plans. Why should they do their own thinking if you’ll do it for them?

So don’t give in to the pressure. Resist the idea of a public roadmap. The best companies don’t need to promise what’s next. They’d rather show you when the time comes. You should too.