Build a Six-Month Roadmap You Can Track Task by Task

Most roadmaps are drawn once, shown in a meeting, and ignored. They go stale because they live apart from the work. The fix is simple to say and fiddly to do: make every bar on the roadmap add up from real tasks, so it can't drift.

Start with the shape, not the dates

Before you touch a calendar, decide the levels. A software team might use Program, Epic and Milestone. A builder might use Build, Phase and Trade. In Alignr you name the levels yourself, and you can start from a template for your kind of work so the words already fit.

• Top level: the thing the whole six months is about.
• Middle level: the big chunks, usually four to eight.
• Bottom level: the deliverables that real tasks hang from.

Put dates on the chunks, then let the tasks fill in

Give the middle level a start and an end. Then add the tasks underneath, each with its own dates. A bar that has children is a summary: it follows what is inside it. When a task slips, the bar above it stretches, and the roadmap tells the truth without anyone editing it.

Mark milestones and dependencies

A milestone is a day, not a stretch of work: design freeze, inspection passed, launch. Add the few dependencies that really matter, the ones where one thing cannot start until another finishes. Alignr draws them as arrows and turns one red when the plan can't hold, so you see the problem while it is still cheap to fix.

Look at it from three angles

• Roadmap: the months at a glance, for talking to the people who fund the work.
• Gantt: the detail, where you drag bars to reschedule.
• Workload: who has too much in the same weeks, before it becomes a missed date.

Keep it small. Six months is far enough to steer by and near enough to believe. Review it for ten minutes every week, and when something moves, move it here first. Read about spotting overloaded people next.