I was a LEGO kid growing up (and am not ashamed to admit that I’m eager for my kids to reach the age where a LEGO room in the house becomes socially acceptable). It was natural for me then, as it is now, to start building with a clear idea of what I wanted the finished, or initial, product to look like.
It should go without saying in contemporary best practices of lean startup methodology and agile software development to not commit to a bigger roadmap. What one learns from your user, even at the outset, can dramatically shift the resulting solution. Friction still emerges at all levels with the desire to envision the end product, or at least, throw good ideas in a never-ending backlog.
One tool we’ve found personally effective, especially when dealing with stakeholders outside an agile software team, is to align all parties on the outcomes your target user (or your team) is trying to achieve.
Aligning on that, documenting it centrally as a reference point, continually coming back to it whenever resistance against building a long term roadmap emerges, and building metrics around it, in my experience, can help change the conversation.
