Roundtrip Roadmapping: From the Roadmap to the Model and Back Again

Both roadmapping and release planning deal with formulating releases for software systems. These are similar activities, in which roadmapping has a bird’s eye-view on the system in order to plan the product and release planning considers the system model in order to meet constraints of the roadmap. Although roadmapping and release planning depend on each other, usually traces from a roadmap to system models are weak or not existent. This paper proposes a tool for roundtrip roadmapping to respect system models in roadmaps: Project managers elaborate release plans based on an initial roadmap. These release plans consider detailed requirements and trade off implementation alternatives. Decisions and results of models influence roadmaps in later reviews. Traceability and awareness allow an informed revision of the roadmap respecting details of the system models.