Roadmapping frameworks: Why cross-team frameworks fail (and what to do instead)

There's an uncomfortable truth that most product leaders won't say out loud. Working with hundreds of enterprise customers – from telcos managing hundreds of products to hardware-software companies with dozens of teams – Malte Scholz has seen enough to call it out: often, reality doesn’t fit in a framework.

"I've just never seen it work,” he says. “It's setting wrong expectations, and it's putting pressure on everyone. There are a million ways to roadmap. The business world and the product world need fewer playbooks and more critical thinking, and entrepreneurial problem solving."

As co-founder and Head of Product at airfocus by Lucid, Malte has witnessed "crazy interconnected, very unique setups" across enterprise customers. But it’s the companies chasing the perfect cross-team roadmapping framework that he observes struggling the most.

The industry's false promise

Open any product management blog, attend any conference, and you'll hear variations of the same message: there's a "right way" to do cross-team roadmapping. Everything must be OKR-based, fully outcome-oriented, and perfectly linked from strategy to execution.

"Typically, these things come down to 'the only way to do roadmapping in a cross-team situation is to completely have outcome-oriented roadmaps,” says Malte. “Everything must be based on OKRs.' And I think it's always unique and it always depends."

These perfect frameworks sound great on paper. They come with clean and shiny diagrams, logical frameworks, and compelling case studies. Everything screams: “You could do this too!”

But no company actually works exactly as the frameworks describe. The true takeaway from these frameworks? Wrong expectations, unnecessary pressure, and wasted energy chasing an ideal that doesn't exist in the real world. Malte discussed before how specific frameworks like SAFe still work – but today, we’re talking about the big picture.

The "busy work" trap

While product leaders chase the perfect framework, something insidious happens. They get stuck in operational quicksand. Time that should go to strategic thinking gets consumed by alignment theater – endless meetings about process, constant updates to artifacts nobody reads, and the perpetual feeling of being one framework away from having it all figured out.

"In a perfect world, product leaders spend a lot of time in the future. But it's hard because their job is to manage people with all their increasing problems... Ideally, for these experienced product leaders, they are three steps ahead already."

The irony is painful. Experienced leaders often know the answer before the exercise ends. They stay silent to let teams learn, but in the meantime, reality sets in. Micromanagement replaces vision. Endless draining meetings swallow the deep thinking that actually moves products forward. Strategy turns into ‘busy work’.

The opportunity cost is massive: no time left for that 3-to-5-year horizon thinking that separates good product organizations from great ones.

Here are three tough conversations that will help you navigate the reality of your business: You won’t find them in any framework because they're messy, uncomfortable, and will play out differently depending on your situation.

1. "It depends" is actually the answer

This is where the tough conversation starts. Different situations require different tools from the toolbox. Sometimes smart project management beats endless OKR discussions.

Consider this example from Malte: a CRM migration or company acquisition. You don't need endless meetings about how to track success. The ultimate success metric is obvious – the old CRM is migrated and no longer needed. The solution? Pragmatic project management, not a complex OKR framework with elaborate goal-setting ceremonies.

The obsession with "outcome-oriented everything" can become its own form of theater. Not every initiative needs the full framework treatment. The skill is knowing when to use which tool, and having the courage to choose simplicity when it's the right call.

2. Talk about skill gaps

There's another conversation product leaders tend to sidestep: team capability limitations.

No process can compensate for fundamental skill gaps. You can implement the most elegant cross-team roadmapping framework in the world, but if your product managers lack the skills to execute, you're just adding sophisticated scaffolding to a weak foundation.

Investing in people quality is non-negotiable. Training and coaching are part of the cross-team alignment solution – not a nice-to-have afterthought. Sometimes the tough conversation isn't about process at all. It's about acknowledging that you might need different people, not a different framework.

As Malte puts it bluntly: "You can only make a horse jump so high."

3. Address tomorrow’s problems

This structural issue compounds everything: constant turnover in leadership and middle management creates chronic short-term thinking.

New leaders arrive under pressure to show quick wins. They don't have the luxury – or the job security – to invest in strategies that won't pay off this quarter. Long-term strategic work gets deprioritized in favor of visible, immediate results.

This becomes a 5-year problem that nobody addresses today. The avoided conversation? "We need to invest in something that won't pay off this quarter." In organizations where leadership tenure averages 18 months, who's going to champion a 3-year strategic initiative?

4. Shift your mindset: What actually works

If frameworks aren't the answer, what is? These three conversations often end in similar results: First, bet on thinking, not following. Move from "Which framework do we follow?" to "What works for us?" Entrepreneurial problem-solving beats template adoption every time.

This is the hard product work that won’t magically disappear by using more AI. Strategic thinking needs time – time that can be created by establishing a product ops role in your team, freeing product leads from the operational day-to-day burden.

But there's a second part that's equally important: create psychological safety for honest conversations. Develop a culture of trust where everyone can speak up about what they actually see – not what the framework says they should see.

Tip: You can find more initiatives and common product pain points in our Product Ops Report 2025.

5. Consider the pragmatism principle

Theory and practice rarely align perfectly. The best product leaders know this and adjust accordingly.

"By the book, Marty Cagan would probably say you have to talk to your customers twice per week. But set the realistic goal of once per month if you have product managers who don't talk to customers at all. I think that is a good first step, and you can get there in a quarter."

Pragmatic targets beat theoretical ideals. "Good enough" progress in three months beats "perfect" in never. This thinking applies to all cross-team alignment practices – start where you are, not where the framework says you should be.

How Lucid creates strategic time

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy,” says Malte. It’s much harder to show what actually works. So let's take a look at how world-class product organizations protect time for strategic thinking.

The product leadership team has developed rituals that force strategic reflection, including one Malte particularly admires. "The product leaders, every year they build a concept car where they lock themselves in for four days or weeks,” he explains. “And they think about the product in two years. Like, where do we really want to be? Then they create videos about it and designs. In the details, it's not going to be the thing that will be built but directionally it's inspiring, it's visionary, it's correct."

The details will change, they always do, but the direction is inspiring and correct. This kind of exercise requires something important: trust in the operating system below. You can only step away for strategic thinking if the day-to-day alignment doesn't collapse without you.

Lucid has solved this structurally, too. The CPO focuses on strategy: traveling constantly, meeting customers, and staying ahead of market shifts. The VP of Product handles operations. Delegation of operational work enables strategic thinking. A system that’s intentionally designed to reinforce itself.

The real work

The magic won’t be hidden in your roadmapping process: it’s in its content.

Your outcomes in the next five years depend on the content of your strategy, initiatives, and key results. Not on the workflow or process you use to manage them.

Once the process works well enough, stop talking about it. Focus on the actual decisions. In the best-case scenario, roadmaps are able to elevate your product work. However, keep in mind: The best process in the world won't save a bad strategy – but a good strategy can survive an imperfect process.

What to do now

If this resonates, here's where to start:

• Audit your current framework obsession. How much time does your team spend discussing process versus making actual product decisions? The ratio might surprise you.

• Identify where you're doing "alignment theater" versus actual alignment. Meetings that generate artifacts nobody reads? Status updates that don't change decisions? Cut them.

• Create one forum for tough conversations this month. A space where people can say "this isn't working" without career risk. You might be amazed what surfaces.

• And finally: Invest in critical thinking capability, not another framework. The next playbook won't save you. But building a team that can think critically about your unique situation? That's the real competitive advantage.

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