Challenges of Knowledge and Collaboration in Roadmapping

Today's software organizations need to cope with ever intensifying technical and commercial turbulence. In such environment, the level of market orientation could be the deciding factor determining the future success of a company. The activities bridging market orientation to software product development terminology have commonly been linked to terms such as roadmapping and release planning. The purpose of this paper is to explore the roadmapping practices currently followed in software product development organizations. Due to the lack of established theories of roadmapping practices, exploratory and inductive research methods were used. The study resulted with a conceptualized view of roadmapping activities. We identified three types of participants that need to be present in a roadmapping context. Each of the identified participant types relates to particular set of challenges regarding knowledge and collaboration in a roadmapping context. When comparing our results to the existing theories, we found out that the knowledge-based theory of the firm could contribute to further theory development in market-oriented software development and related areas.