Interviewed a Product Manager candidate today and one of the questions was about "what makes a useful roadmap, to us (the vendor) and the customer?"
He leaped straight in with Apple; "Everyone knows what Apple is going to produce and their published roadmap hypes the products before launch - that is how we should manage a roadmap!"
"Eh?" I responded? "Apple don't publish any roadmap and all of the excitement is based on hype around rumors - it's an example of being successful despite having no roadmap whatsoever"
He argued and argued that Apple's "roadmap" was public, inclusive and successful.
Am I being TRWTF here? Apple should be presented as the anti-roadmap company. right?
(it's clearly been a successful approach for them - I'm not arguing that, simply that Apple are not a great example of a company with a coherent published roadmap)