Roadmap: plan tickets and features over time
From an empty timeline to a shared plan: how to work with the roadmap.
1. Create a roadmap
Open the roadmap and choose New roadmap. Pick the kind: a ticket roadmap plans tickets over time and in sprints, a strategy roadmap plans features and milestones at a higher level - it has no tickets. Without a date range a roadmap covers three months from today; later you can extend it in the settings or by scrolling to the edge of the timeline.
2. Create or bring in tickets
A completely new ticket is made right in the list: with the + at the top (title, ticket number, estimate, priority, lane, description - "Create and add another" keeps the form open for the next one) or with the line under the list (type a title, press Enter; the button beside it opens the dialog with the title you typed when you want to say more). With Also keep in my profile it lands in your tickets as well. Everything else comes through Import tickets:
- From your profile: tickets you keep under My tickets.
- From planning: the tickets of a planning session - with the estimate the team settled on, who takes them on and the description. The details say where they came from, with a link to the session.
- Import: from a file (CSV, Jira export) or live from Jira and GitHub - with Keep in profile ticked the tickets stay available for other roadmaps and sessions afterwards. The tick is there wherever you import tickets, in Planning too.
- Load a whole sprint: the sprint arrives with its dates and every ticket that belongs to it.
The narrow list of all entries is on the left, the timeline in the middle. Drag a ticket from the list onto the timeline - or put it into a sprint from the ticket's dot menu. Tickets stay in your profile as long as you kept them there. On a strategy roadmap you make a feature or a milestone with the same + above the list (title, kind, lane, days if you like) or with the line under the list; without days the entry waits in the list until you drag it onto the timeline.
You change start and end by pulling the left or right edge of a bar - for tickets and features alike. While you pull, the days the bar would have are shown above it; the new dates apply to the entry at once (details, list, sprint counts) and can be taken back with Undo. With the keyboard: Alt + arrow pulls the end by a day, Alt + Shift + arrow the start. A ticket that reaches beyond its sprint no longer belongs to it.
3. Zoom, your view and the preview
Zoom is continuous: with + and -, with Ctrl/Cmd + mouse wheel (a pinch on a trackpad) under the pointer, and with two fingers on a phone. Week, month, quarter jump to fixed steps: if the roadmap is too short for one, the timeline shows empty days after its end so the step really holds (nothing of that is saved). The arrows icon brings everything planned into view. The timeline always fills the width that is available; vertical lines mark the weeks and months, and weekends are shaded when days are shown. Weeks are labelled CW43. As in a spreadsheet, pull a column border in the header to make all columns wider or narrower (that is the zoom), and the lower border of a lane to make just that row taller or shorter; a double click resets it. This arrangement is yours: it is kept in your browser only and changes nothing for anybody else.
The list on the left folds away completely with the icon beside its heading - it becomes a narrow rail and the timeline gets the room; pull its edge to change its width. Click an entry and its preview opens on the right with everything that matters: title, status, owner, priority, estimate, lane, sprint, start, end, deadline (optional), description and dependencies. Changes save by themselves. When the window gets tight (under about 1600 pixels) the preview does not sit on the right any more but below the timeline - in columns, with the title and the status on one row - and the diagram of the dependencies below it; both can be collapsed and expanded - with a click on the whole head or on the arrow at its left (collapsed, only the head stays, tinted) - and pulled taller or shorter at their top edge. Where room is tight (a window under 900 pixels high) the diagram of the dependencies is as tall as it needs to be by itself, otherwise 220 pixels; pull its edge and it keeps your height, a double click on the edge (or Home while it has the focus) gives it back. In a narrower window the preview opens as a dialog; up to about 900 pixels of width and on a phone it opens as a sheet from the bottom (from the side when the phone is turned). You pick an owner from names used before - in a workspace from members and teams too - or type one. With + next to the dependencies you search for another ticket and say whether this one waits for it or blocks others. A lane is a row of the roadmap - for example a team, a topic or a product area.
Order: drag entries up or down in the list by their grip, or use the arrow keys on the grip - just like the backlog of a planning session. The same order applies on the Board, whose columns you can drag cards (and rows of the list) into. Every move glows briefly - in the list, on the timeline and on the board.
Undo and redo are at the right end of the row with the switches (Ctrl/Cmd + Z; with Shift, or Ctrl + Y, it does it again): they take back what you did on this page - moving, pulling an edge, fields, the order, dependencies, an external dependency. The tooltip on the button names the change. Deleting and adding are not part of it, and after a reload the history is empty.
You draw dependencies right on the timeline: move over a bar and a faint dot appears on either side of it that becomes active when you reach it. Drag it onto another item - from the right dot the other one waits for this one, from the left dot this one waits for the other. A loop is refused; click a line to remove it.
Waiting for something that is not on the roadmap at all - another company's delivery, an approval? Open the item that waits, press the plus next to its dependencies and choose Add an external dependency …: you say what is awaited, who delivers it and by when. It appears as a piece of its own kind, External (one day, with a dashed edge on the timeline and a dashed node in the flow), and is linked to the waiting item at once. If the delivery comes after the waiting item starts, or has no day, the flow shows it in yellow or red.
Under Owner we offer what you have used before, the members and teams of the workspace - and your own work teams: people you bundle into teams under Work teams, without a workspace too. The people need no account, and only you see the teams. You can also make them right from the field ("Manage my teams").
The dependencies of an item are shown below as soon as you click it: everything that has to be done before it (tag "Before"), the item itself ("This item") and everything that waits for it ("After") - as nodes you can move around freely: the tag sits on the border of the node and moves with it, and it changes when you click another item (the arrangement stays in your browser). Yellow marks what only needs settling (no dates, nobody responsible, no estimate, a start before the predecessor has ended), red what matters now (blocked, deadline passed, a predecessor is not done although its successor is already under way). Hover over or click the yellow or red pill - or the mark on a node - for a list of what is missing.
On a phone the roadmap has two rows: the name, Today and the menu on top, and under them the switch Tickets · Timeline · Board and Display. Tickets shows the list as a view of its own; on the Board the groups (Now, Next, Later, Done) are stacked, and a tap on a heading folds or opens one. The zoom (week, month, quarter, larger, smaller, fit all), "Show sprints" and undo and redo are in the Display sheet. On the timeline a finger scrolls even over a bar; a tap opens the details as a sheet, with the dates first and the dependencies under "More details". There is no dragging or linking with a finger - the date fields and the sprint choice in the sheet do that. Hold the phone sideways and the header and the tab bar step aside, so the timeline gets almost the whole screen; the Focus button brings them back.
4. Sprints and higher-level sprints
Under Sprints & PIs you create sprints one by one or as a series and group them into higher-level sprints (often called PI - you can change the word). Show sprints puts them on the timeline with their dates. Tickets can then only be dropped into sprints; putting a ticket into a different sprint is confirmed first, and its days follow the new sprint. You can assign Planning and Retro sessions to a sprint in their settings. In a planning session each ticket can be planned for a sprint (or planned freely); the backlog shows a fold-out bar per sprint with how full it is against its capacity in story points (switch “By sprint” off and only the list of tickets remains), and a sprint can be made or changed there - everybody else sees “Please wait a moment” meanwhile.
5. Change the kind
You can change the kind later. Before it happens you see what is lost (tickets or features, dependencies); Keep sprints in the timeline leaves the sprints in place. Tickets you kept in your profile stay there.
6. Share, copy and export
With the share link (from the Private plan) people without an account see the roadmap read-only: titles, dates, status and progress - no descriptions, estimates or names. Stop sharing or Generate a new link invalidates the old one. Export as CSV and Print / as PDF are in the menu behind the three dots.