Strengthening the link between business decisions and RE: Long-term product planning in software product companies

Long-term product planning (i.e. roadmapping) is an approach that companies operating in the software product business have used to bridge the gap between business planning and product development. A strong link between strategy and product development is important, since companies developing software products need to select requirements for forthcoming releases based on the business decisions of the company. However, in practice, connecting requirements engineering decisions and business management is far from trivial. This paper reports lessons learned from four software product companies that recognize the need for more business-oriented long- term product planning. The study was conducted using the action research approach. We identified four practices that seem to strengthen the link between business decisions and requirements engineering. These are: 1) explicating the planning levels and time horizons needed in product planning, 2) separating the planning of business goals relating to products from R&D resource allocation, 3) conducting open-ended planning by pre-defined rhythm and 4) emphasizing whole-product thinking.