nes the impact of stakeholders on network roadmaps. We will explain the motivation of each of the stakeholders and how they influence the roadmap planning. This section should prove useful to help you understand the complexities of roadmap planning and to factor in inputs from such key stakeholders and manage their expectations. Business Business ownership normally rests with people responsible for business development in the company. These would be those who are entrusted to have an innate understanding of the product domain and the market. They could be from marketing, sales, or from product line management. Also, they are likely to be knowledgeable of different trends in different markets as targeted by the company with their product. Note It should be clear as to who has the responsibility for business ownership for your product. It is always a good idea to make this explicit, even in cases where the responsibility may be distributed. What kind of inputs could one expect from such business owners that could influence the roadmap planning? Broadly speaking, the business owner may have inputs to the roadmap based on following lines: Business development plans Proof of concepts or demonstration inputs Inputs on end-of-life decisions Portfolio development decisions based on investment plans Inputs on timing of particular releases Business development plans are normally based on how the product is placed and performing in different markets. To move a product from an established market or geographic area to newer markets (which could even involve newer countries or continents) may require certain specific features to be addressed by the product. For example, one decision could be that the network roadmap necessarily needs to involve support for a TDD duplexing method to be able to deploy it in a large market like China. Even in this regard, it is the duty of the business owner to clearly define the scope or extent of the feature support required within a definite timeframe to make the business plan fruitful. CHAPTE