Raodmap & Weather Chart

The words we speak, communicate certain impressions/views/ideas to the listener. 

Strangely, the words we speak, hammer the associated impressions/views/ideas on the speaker's mind too.

Roadmap is one such word.

Roadmap tells me that Pune is 160 KMs from Mumbai and approx 70 KMs from Mumbai there is a tough Ghat section stretching for about 30 KMs, and after that, it is a flat road. Roadmap tells me what to expect and when to expect,  and it gives me confidence and comfort.    

The business of building software is full of unknowns, less knowns, and sometimes even wrong assumptions. When I use the word "Roadmap" while building something intangible like a software product, I create a false sense of confidence and comfort in the listener’s mind.
The more dangerous thing is, I create the same false sense of confidence and comfort in my mind too.

When it comes to building software, very few things / requirements /  specifications are known upfront fully and correctly. But when I create a Roadmap for next 2 or 3 quarters for my product-building initiative, I give this false sense of confidence to others and also to myself. This false sense of confidence & comfort could very well make me lazy and I would not bother to gather feedback with short cycles and as often as possible.  

In our Org, we stopped the usage of the word ‘Estimation’, and replaced it with 'Guesstimation'. Which makes it sufficiently clear that "this is the best educated guess we can make".
We did that because in the software development world, the word "Estimation" has almost become synonymous with "Commitment".
For the same reason, we stopped using the word ‘Roadmap’ as well. Instead, now we say… “Here is the weather chart for the next 2 Quarters.”

A weather chart tells us… “Based on whatever best information we have as of now, we feel the next 2 Quarters are likely to pan out in this way”

Whereas a Roadmap tells us… “Next 2 Quarters will pan out in this way”.