A public roadmap is a customer-facing view of your product development plans, showing what features and improvements are planned, in progress, or recently shipped. It's a transparency tool that helps users understand where your product is heading.

What It Typically Shows

Now (or In Progress): Features actively being developed

Next (or Planned): Features committed for near-term development

Later (or Under Consideration): Features you're thinking about but not committed to

Recently Shipped: What you've released recently

Some roadmaps also include "Under Review" or "Not Planned" categories.

Purpose of Public Roadmaps

Reduce repetitive feature requests: Users see you're already planning something, so they don't need to ask.

Build trust through transparency: Showing your plans demonstrates you're actively developing the product.

Manage expectations: Users know what's coming and what's not.

Competitive positioning: Prospects comparing tools can see your future direction.

Community engagement: Users can vote, comment, or follow items they care about.

The Transparency Trade-off

Benefits of public roadmaps:

• Reduces support burden (users see what's coming)
• Creates accountability (you said you'd build it)
• Demonstrates momentum and activity
• Users feel heard when their requests appear

Risks of public roadmaps:

• Creates expectation you'll deliver exactly what you showed
• Competitors see your strategy
• Limits flexibility (hard to pivot when you've committed publicly)
• Users blame you if priorities change
• Enterprise customers may not want their requests public

Best Practices

Be vague on timing: "Q2 2025" creates commitment. "Next" or "Planned" gives flexibility.

Show themes, not detailed features: "Improved collaboration" > "Real-time co-editing with cursor tracking and @mentions"

Update regularly: Stale roadmaps signal stagnant products. Update monthly at minimum.

Mark items as shipped: Show you're making progress and delivering on promises.

Don't show everything: Some internal work doesn't belong on public roadmaps (technical debt, infrastructure).

Include disclaimers: "Plans are subject to change" or "This roadmap reflects current priorities but isn't a commitment"

Allow following/voting: Let users subscribe to updates on items they care about.

Public Roadmap vs. Feature Voting

These are related but different:

Feature voting boards: Users submit requests and vote. Democratic but can be dominated by loud minorities.

Public roadmaps: You show what you've decided to build. More curated and strategic.

Many tools combine both: users submit and vote on requests, then you pull selected items onto your public roadmap.

When Not to Use Public Roadmaps

Early stage: Pre-product-market-fit companies pivot frequently. Public roadmaps create false commitments.

Enterprise B2B: Large customers don't want their strategic needs visible to competitors.

Highly competitive markets: Revealing your plans telegraphs strategy to competitors.

Complex products: Some roadmap items require extensive context that's hard to convey publicly.

Rapidly changing priorities: If you need to pivot monthly, public roadmaps create confusion.

Alternatives to Public Roadmaps

If public roadmaps don't fit your strategy:

Customer advisory boards: Share detailed roadmap with select customers under NDA

Quarterly blog posts: Write about themes and direction without item-by-item detail

In-app changelog: Show what you've shipped, not what's planned

Private previews: Share upcoming features with specific customers before public launch

Direct communication: Respond to feature requests individually rather than broadcasting plans