It implies a major problem in their org is/was pesky developers working on things that weren't assigned. Why weren't those things assigned? Bad PMs who don't care about the pain developers feel? Not enough developer freedom? The fact that the roadmap is completely disconnected from what's actually important for the business/developers? It's a product for developers; the developers should know better than anyone what the right things to work on are.
"Work on what you think is important" is a fantastic policy with the right people, especially if your developers are also users of the product. Where it falls down is when the team grows and the "not right people" get added to the team.
I've seen developers work on just completely the wrong stuff, and their entire salaries was 100% pissed away, or in some cases, even more than 100% because they added net-negative value.
You really need to optimize hiring the right people with the right mindset and have a good team lead/manager which balances developer autonomy with business interest. I have thus far not seen it work outside of fairly small teams, although I agree that in principle it's the best way to make a good product and keep your developers happy.
It's interesting that what I read there is just a company saying "hey, we have this nice TODO app that interfaces with your development tools". There's nothing there about developers management, freedom or anything else.
Looks like corporate lingo is no better than a Rorschach test.
Since when is “at the right time” a problem? Virtually no one has that problem, so if they think it’s a big issue, big enough to spend marketing copy on, that’s because they are weird. Inventing problems is typically seen as a sign of dysfunction.
How is wanting your products to be aligned with their vision evidence of dysfunction?