Sometimes sharing your product roadmap can be a really good idea. For instance: I was the lead architect at Quickoffice for several years... at one point we we

Sometimes sharing your product roadmap can be a really good idea. For instance: I was the lead architect at Quickoffice for several years... at one point we were preparing for a big release. THE big release. It contained our first go at full editing/round-tripping for Word/Excel files. This was a big deal for our company as we moved from very hacky desktop-syncing solutions to full on-device mobile editing. Our big competitor was behind and I'm pretty sure they knew it. We had been competing for some big business so we had some idea what the other was up to. About a month before our release, they issued a press release clearly laying out their roadmap... including their plans for full document round-tripping. It was a genius move. It had a tremendous delaying effect among our shared customers (big phone OEM's primarily). They instantly negated our advantage as the decision makers and end-users both decided to take a wait and see approach rather than put their money into our software. It also took some steam away from our feature-set as people seemed to credit them with arriving at it first even if we were the first to actually deliver it. I've seen this work in other cases. A competitor outlines their roadmap which forces their competitors to spin cycles trying to respond to it. It makes the product conversation about how they stack up against your hypothetical product, not what you're actually delivering today. As with all things strategic, it's all about timing. All of those negatives in the article are valid and have to be weighed as well. In the end, however, it can be a tremendous competitive tool. edit: god my grammar is truly terrible.