This sales tactic involves creating FOMO by announcing a foundational process (like roadmapping) is obsolete. This "funeral" creates an opening to sell a new tool, consultancy, or framework as the necessary successor, creating a repeatable business model.
A true product roadmap is a strategic document outlining problems and outcomes, allowing for pivots. If your artifact is a timeline of features with fixed commitments and swim lanes, you don't have a roadmap; you have a project management Gantt chart, a tool for execution, not strategy.
The Agile Manifesto prioritizes collaboration over contract negotiation. When leadership hands down a plan without input from customers or builders, it's not a strategic conviction—it's an internal contract. The team is obligated to deliver by a date or face consequences, removing any real collaboration.
The narrative of a small, cross-functional team shipping rapidly with minimal overhead, empowered to work directly with the business, is being pitched as a new AI-enabled paradigm. In reality, this is the exact team structure and environment the Agile Manifesto described over two decades ago.
For decades, the primary obstacle to creating fast-moving, empowered teams has been leadership's refusal to delegate authority and trust them. AI is now being used as the narrative excuse to allow for this model, but the core constraint was always organizational and cultural, not a lack of tools.
The ability for AI to generate numerous prototypes cheaply creates an illusion of progress. However, evaluating these options internally without direct, continuous customer collaboration isn't decision-making; it's just a high volume of guessing. A single prototype reviewed with a customer is infinitely more valuable than ten reviewed in a vacuum.
Internal teams often identify necessary changes but are ignored by leadership. Because external consultants are paid, their advice is perceived as more valuable, even if it's identical to what employees have been saying. This dynamic highlights a common organizational dysfunction where value is tied to cost, not the merit of the idea itself.
While AI lowers the cost to build software, treating features as disposable has two significant, non-financial costs. First, repeatedly building and discarding features drains team motivation. Second, if customers adopt a 'disposable' feature that is later removed, it erodes their trust and forces them into constant, frustrating upgrades.
A simple test to determine if you have a strategic roadmap or a project plan: what is left if you delete every date? If the document becomes meaningless, it was only a schedule (a Gantt chart). A true roadmap, focused on problems, outcomes, and strategic priorities, would still retain its value and guide decision-making.