Comments on: Why don’t we see more platform technology roadmaps?

By: san1t1

san1t1 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:55:10 +0000

Releasing new feature – rather than bug fix – roadmaps gets easier as your product gets entrenched and you move from customer acquisition to customer retention.

(I use the word customer loosely, it’s the folk who are active on your platform, be their developers, resellers, end consumers, etc.)

As your platform matures you keep your current user base excited by involving them in what you are doing, the threat of competitors stealing your thunder being lessened by the cost – to your current customers – of platform migration.

Microsoft have a pretty open process, with lots of community involvement in so many aspects of their platform direction.
Likewise Adobe. They are both on a large proportion of desktops, so both MS and Adobe having entrenched platforms, their key task is to retain and upsell, so openness about the future really quite helps them, any competitors they have, they need, to prevent or mitigate the risk of being a monopoly.

On the other hand, Amazon’s Web Service platform is relatively young, and they are need to win customers more than they need to retain – though obviously retention is important as well. Plus there are a growing number of cloud hosting providers to compete with.

There are countless younger aspirational platforms in the start up community. These all live in a less predictable, less proven market, and with less entrenched customers they need to avoid disappointing their audience, so keep their cards closer to their chests.

By: Freddy

Freddy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:39:03 +0000

Previous hypothetic Adobe Flash Player road map:

“In six months from now we will listen to our users and add low level audio manipulation, but without any useful help pages”
“In seven months we will ask our users about the bugs in Flash CS4 IDE, just to find out there are plenty, and we will fix only a handful of them, but don’t worry, you can get more bug fixes on the next suite update”

a worthy roadmap!

By: Tink

Tink — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:17:14 +0000

Publicly announcing roadmaps would only lead to disappointment in my opinion.

That said Adobe publicly announce ‘safer’ items before the release and before its fully complete don’t they?

It’s difficult for them not to with Flex as its open source, but they always give you info on the player, and new stuff thats in the Flash IDE.

By: chuckstar22

chuckstar22 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:54:30 +0000

@Josh Right on. I think a company like Adobe already has the ability to do it, almost like a reverse bug report forum. List the new features ahead of time and get feedback on them. Let developers tell you what they want out of them and how they might implement them. Think about how much fostering new ideas, excitement, anticipation AND PRE-ORDERING that would bring on!

By: chuckstar22

chuckstar22 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:51:47 +0000

@John Dowdell That makes sense, especially if it's a new service or breakthrough innovation that has never been done before. Even still, that feature would likely be added to other 'safer' items that should be announced. Should the new feature work and be included in the platform, it would be a pleasant surprise.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:10:40 +0000

The fear of competition stealing thunder is understandable. On the other hand, public roadmaps would be great for you and I because all that open information pushes companies to try harder. I think it would also help destroy bad ideas faster. Look at how much the community was able to influence Flex 4 for the better thanks to all the information that’s been available so long before the release.

In the startup world, founders are encouraged to talk about their ideas with anyone and everyone. The urge to keep things secret is strong, but there’s a huge difference between a potential competitor saying, “That’s neat, I bet I could do that too” and actually committing to it. The feedback a startup receives from sharing ideas with users and smart people greatly outweighs the low risk of creating competitors. Larger companies could learn a bit from that.

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:52:32 +0000

Another reason: It can be hard to assure something will be done until it is done… sometimes it isn’t until you’re close to a deployment that you can see how it really works, for real people. Setting expectations too high risks frustration later. That’s why predictions are usually in general terms.

jd/adobe