How have you adapted your software roadmap in the past to address external volatility and economic uncertainty? Were there any strategies or tools that proved effective at delivering on product expectations?

Usually, we start with yearly goals, which is the traditional way of planning what we will deliver each year. However, when encountering these types of uncertainties, companies are shifting to shorter planning cycles, such as quarterly goals. Within these cycles, we use dynamic prioritization techniques like MoSCoW — must have, should have, could have, won’t have. This helps us closely track our progress and adjust, adapt, and have the flexibility to focus on what is most important for customers and make progress accordingly.

Roadmaps are interesting because people often see them as a list of direct deliverables, but I think they are really a list of bets. When chasing roadmaps, it’s easy to forget the big picture — what customer problem are we trying to solve? People can get lost in the list of deliverables they need to complete. That’s why we move toward Agile methodology: you build something quickly and then decide whether to double down on it or step back. That is how I think we should approach roadmaps in uncertain times.

We have experienced a lot of volatility in our roadmap over the last six months. One of the things that has helped smooth things over between the product, technical, and business organizations is to show the impact of that volatility. If we have a disruption to our planned roadmap, we track the historical impact. For example, if a project is disrupted by a two-week priority shift, we show that we reprioritized and adapted, but it did push everything out. This has helped us demonstrate that we had a plan, but as the year progressed, volatility occurred. By recording and demonstrating how we adapted, we have improved conversations and understanding about why something slipped or why we are off track, even if it is just a week or two.

Product expectations are uncertain, and the roadmap also changes with the geopolitical situation. We need to adapt. For example, with recent tariffs, we were in the market in an RFP mode to find different vendors. We have our own data and GDPR considerations, so based on the geopolitical situation, we had to find new, innovative ways to handle data and vendors. At times, we had to go domestic and only find domestic vendors. Based on the situation, things changed. Uncertainty required us to adapt quickly.