This sounds to me like what many might expect a roadmap to be. I know I struggled with this for a while. Everyone said focus on themes and not feature, and then I'd look at everyone's roadmaps and all I'd see are features (in the short term).

It would be great if you could share an example of what the ideal roadmap would look like. Once you start considering dependencies, what you describe starts to look an awful lot like a GANTT chart.