Roadmap View

Vistaly’s roadmap provides a high-level view of the Solutions and Opportunities that the product team is focused on Now, what they will address Next, and what they are considering for Later.

Vistaly’s roadmap view is NOT a project release plan with release dates. It’s a high-level overview of larger commitments for strategic discussions and decisions.

Card & Column statuses

The Roadmap view groups Solutions and Opportunities into columns based on their status.

You can think of statuses in three stages.

  1. Starting Statuses: Upon creation, Opportunities start with a status of Identified, and Solutions start with a status of Idea
  2. Active Statuses: As Opportunities and Solutions get committed to, they move through the status of Later, then Next, then Now
  3. End Statuses: Solutions get marked Done once they’ve been shipped and Opportunities get marked Addressed when the problem no longer exists for users. If you explicitly decide not to address an Opportunity or build a specific Solution, mark it as Not Now

When to use Now, Next, and Later

Active statuses are used to show the Opportunities you have committed to addressing and the Solutions your team is actively building.

Now, Next, and Later are used to communicate commitment level, clarity around the problem/solution, and time horizon.

The “further” out an Opportunity or Solution is, the less certainty surrounds when, how, and even if it will be addressed or shipped. The closer they get to Now, the more certainty exists.

Later

Work starts as big, over-arching Opportunities (customer problems, pain points, desires) in the Later column once you’ve committed to addressing them.

The time horizon for these is generally far in the future (quarters, halves, or years depending on the business). There is a possibility that some of these Opportunities might be deprioritized in favor of addressing more pressing customer problems (and set back to Identified).

Next

The Next column is for smaller “sub-opportunities” you’re doing discovery on and Solutions you haven’t quite started development on yet — maybe because your team is still testing designs with users or there just isn’t a dev team available to start work on it yet.

You have a good grasp on the problem you’re trying to solve, even if you don’t have a 100% clear idea of how you’re going to solve it.

You should have enough certainty around these Opportunities/Solutions that the majority of them (85%+) ultimately get shipped/addressed.

Now

The Now column is for Solutions that are actively being developed. The Now status indicates that there is a high level of certainty around the problem being solved and the Solution your team is building to address it.

In the Now column, it becomes more feasible and realistic to start communicating delivery expectations.

Focusing on “child” cards

When a parent Opportunity has a sub-Opportunity or child Solution with an active status (Now, Next, Later), we only show the furthest down active child. This helps reduce the amount of clutter on the roadmap.

Status updates “propagate” up to parent Opportunities

When an Opportunity contains a sub-Opportunity or a child Solution with a status of Now, Next, or Later, the status of the parent Opportunity is automatically updated to match the status of the sub-Opportunity or child Solution.

Notice how the Opportunity's status updates along with the Solution

If an Opportunity has multiple children with “Active” statuses, the parent will have the status of the furthest along child.

Sorting Items On The Roadmap

You can drag and drop items to move them to different columns as well as sort them within a given column.

Sorting items between columns is a way to more clearly communicate exactly what you’re focused on.

Show the “Story” of why a Solution matters

Trying to figure out why a solution matters? The Story section of each card expands to show why any solution fits into the bigger picture. Select More to view more context.

Filtering the Roadmap

The filters at the top of the roadmap views will take the current selection and filter it further by assignees and labels. The results must match all selected filters to display.

Scoping down the Roadmap to specific branches

The menu on the left-hand side of the roadmap view will allow you to navigate the workspace data and scope the roadmap to any selected card – answering questions like: “What work is being done to support this outcome?”

Select the bubble icon to scope the roadmap to a specific card.

Add Unmapped cards

The ”+” icons in the column headers let you quickly add an Unmapped Card to your Roadmap.

This can be helpful if you’re in a meeting and just need to quickly add something that you can properly add to the tree at a later time.