Roadmaps, Marty? Where we’re going, we don't need Roadmaps!

When asked, “Can you share your product roadmap?” our answer isn’t as simple as you might expect. And that's because we don't have a traditional roadmap. What we have instead, is a feature lifecycle.

When product managers deliver roadmaps to customers, they speak in promises. And when customers ask for roadmaps, they are asking for assurances. As we journey into the future, these promises and assurances will ideally meet. In reality, the story is more complicated.

In theory, a roadmap aligns stakeholders, provides direction, and enhances transparency. In practice, roadmaps create challenges, too. They risk overemphasis on feature releases rather than on solving real customer problems. Their rigidity can prevent teams from responding to new insights or customer feedback without breaking promises elsewhere. Worse, if taken as a guaranteed delivery plan, changes to a roadmap may lead to disappointment or loss of trust.

With Edge Delivery Services, we take a different approach. Guided by principles of simplicity and productivity, we strive to keep things lean and fast—focused on what truly matters: real customer needs and real usage. Instead of a static roadmap, we follow a feature lifecycle approach.

At the core of our feature lifecycle is one thing: usage. Things that get used are added to the product, and things that are in the product and don't get used will be removed.

https://www.aem.live/docs/featurelifecycle.svg

Let’s look at an example, and its journey through the lifecycle:

A while ago, we saw a need in some of our customer projects to capture simple end-user input. "I know how to put a form on my page, but where can I send the data" was a common refrain. Partnering with a customer, we developed a solution, and once multiple customers actively used it, manual forms, with the ability to post back to Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, became a productized Edge Delivery feature.

Over the next several months, we closely monitored usage—and the data told a clear story. Adoption was low. Talking to customers, we learned that most already had specialized third-party solutions for forms (e.g., Marketo). Meanwhile, the limited use cases we observed included “off-label” applications, such as tracking analytics data. Additionally, security concerns surfaced due to potential attack vectors.
Through our feature lifecycle approach, we moved the feature into deprecation. To best serve customers with this need, we then transitioned focus on it to the experts - AEM Forms – to build a better solution.

This lifecycle approach allows us to stay customer-driven and adaptable, delivering real value while keeping Edge Delivery Services fast, simple, and focused.

When we introduced aem.live we also created a deprecation page for features that will be removed. Today, we are bringing the counterpoint: a single page to understand the feature lifecycle, the map of interest, and current early-access technologies.

Marty, the future isn’t written. It can be changed.