Main idea

A roadmap feeds on everyone: sales raise what they see, support carries the recurring irritants, developers flag technical risks, executives restate the strategy, customers weigh in through their real problems. That openness is good, and it says nothing about who decides.

If nobody is designated, the result is not a collective decision: it is the resultant of the forces present. Each function gets a share proportional to its influence, everyone finds their topic, and the document produced looks like an agreement. It is not one — it cost nobody a renunciation, which is the sign that no arbitration took place.

The decision-maker therefore has to be named, and it is generally the Product Manager or whoever truly owns the product arbitration. Their role is not to decide alone: it is to listen to everyone and then make the call, which is precisely what collegiality cannot do.

Why it matters

It stops you blaming on a failure of method what is a failure of mandate. A soft roadmap does not improve by changing format or adding a meeting: it improves when someone has the right and the duty to make the call.

It also gives a reading test: look, in the latest version of a roadmap, for the function that lost something. If none lost anything, nobody decided.

Nuances and limits

Designating a decision-maker is not enough if they are not backed: an arbiter whose decisions are reopened the moment they displease an influential function quickly learns to produce wording everyone can accept.

And the person who owns the arbitration is not always the one with the title — the duty follows real authority over the product, not the org chart.

Open questions

• How do you protect a product arbiter in an organization where the sales leadership can reopen any decision?