Glossary
What is a delivery roadmap?
A time-ordered statement of what an organisation intends to deliver — a communication artifact that sequences intentions, distinct from the commitment record that says what was actually promised, by whom, against what capacity.
The two get conflated, and the conflation is expensive: a roadmap entry reads as a promise to whoever wants it to be one, while carrying none of a commitment's substance — no owner, no agreed capacity, no recorded unknowns. A roadmap is a useful summary OF commitments; it fails as a substitute for them, because when a date on it slips, nobody can reconstruct what was actually agreed.
Related terms
- Commitment exception — A recorded justification required to commit to work that is not yet decision-ready, naming why it is early, what is still unknown, who accepts the risk, and what condition would change the decision.
- Delivery governance — The practice of deciding what to commit to — establishing value, ownership, capacity, dependencies and open questions before people, budget or a date are promised.
- Decision-ready demand — A demand that can responsibly be committed to: the problem stated apart from the proposed solution, an intended outcome, a named owner, a first capacity figure, the dependencies, and the open questions written down as unknowns.
This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.