Great reading! Always good to remember that trust alone will not fix everything, but is the pillar to start fixing it at least.
I think about Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework which suggests that in complex systems, even with trust and collaboration, outcomes are emergent and not always predictable.
So while fixing culture is crucial, leaders also need to accept a level of humility that even the best planning and trust can only guide, not guarantee, the right outcomes.
I really appreciate the brutal honesty here, especially the idea that better coordination cannot fix poor collaboration.
I agree, these problems exist. Why do we still have them after decades of roadmapping and decades of Agile? I believe a strong reason is that there is no shared purpose of the roadmap between dev teams, management, sales, etc. They all use roadmaps for different purposes.
Oh my... #5 is deadly. I've been living with that for 6 years now and it is exhausting. You can do it, mostly by creating your own isolated roadmap (strategy) within your own part of the broader organization. But that brings its own challenges. And it took me a year or so to figure out #5 was the root challenge. It can be survived. But it is disappointing.
Great reading! Always good to remember that trust alone will not fix everything, but is the pillar to start fixing it at least.
I think about Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework which suggests that in complex systems, even with trust and collaboration, outcomes are emergent and not always predictable.
So while fixing culture is crucial, leaders also need to accept a level of humility that even the best planning and trust can only guide, not guarantee, the right outcomes.
I really appreciate the brutal honesty here, especially the idea that better coordination cannot fix poor collaboration.
I agree, these problems exist. Why do we still have them after decades of roadmapping and decades of Agile? I believe a strong reason is that there is no shared purpose of the roadmap between dev teams, management, sales, etc. They all use roadmaps for different purposes.
That’s covered by the 5th law.
No strong vision and strategy means lack of alignment.
Each of the roles have a clear vision of what the business and the roadmap should achieve. They are just different version.
I understand the the 5th law as missing clarity within one role.
Oh my... #5 is deadly. I've been living with that for 6 years now and it is exhausting. You can do it, mostly by creating your own isolated roadmap (strategy) within your own part of the broader organization. But that brings its own challenges. And it took me a year or so to figure out #5 was the root challenge. It can be survived. But it is disappointing.
Good patterns to avoid when thinking about agentic coding as well (it’s only as smart as your PRD and the current agent context)
Such an amazing content Marteen!
Thank you, this one was blood, sweat and roadmaps for me too ;)
Yes, this was an extensive article, but the effort was well worth it as it is a great inspiration!