Sarbox Impact on Product Roadmaps

A friend of mine emailed me the other day asking to compare notes on presenting product roadmaps. He runs Product Management for a well-known, well-funded startup offering enterprise software. Having been in the business for quite a while, he has great experience presenting product roadmaps. However, the corporate controller recently approached him and expressed concern over the content of his roadmap presentations. Specifically, the implied commitments created exposure from a revenue recognition perspective -- according to the controller.

In general, this first year of implementing Sarbanes-Oxley is resulting in lots of anxiety that works its way across all parts of the organization, not just Finance and Accounting. The fear of legal exposure is so great that many areas of ambiguity are interpreted with extreme conservatism. This is starting to hamper a company's flexibility to do business.

I once had breakfast with a CIO who started the conversation by stating -- "I want you to tell me everything you know about your future plans and direction. Don't hold anything back due to fear that I'll hold you accountable. I pretty much assume all vendors lie anyways." Nice way to break the ice. With regulatory compliance taking up everyone's attention, I can't imagine what that conversation would be like today.