Your first roadmap in 15 minutes
This playbook takes you from an empty workspace to a roadmap you could show someone. It follows the five-step spine end to end.
Use this when
- You have just installed Roadmap Flow and have nothing yet.
- You want a fast, honest first pass — not a perfect roadmap.
What you need before starting
- A rough idea of three to six pieces of work worth showing.
- A sense of which product areas they fall into.
- Fifteen uninterrupted minutes.
Step-by-step flow
- Open a workspace. Pick a folder on your computer. This is where your roadmap will live.
- Set up a few workstreams. In Config, add two to four workstreams for the product areas your work falls into. Give each one a one-line outcome.
- Add your items. On the canvas, use Add item for each piece of work. Give each a title, a status, and a priority. Do not overthink it.
- Place them in time. Open each item and set a horizon (Now / Next / Later) and, if you know it, a target period.
- Assign owners. Add owner teams in Config and set an owner on each item.
- Look at it three ways. Switch the canvas between Stream, Board, and Timeline. The roadmap should make sense in at least one of them.
- Run Check. Open the Check tab and fix the quick issues — missing owners, missing horizons.
- Export. From Share, export a PDF with the Executive preset.
What good looks like
- Every item has a status, a priority, and an owner.
- The Check score is amber or green, with no critical issues.
- The Timeline view tells a believable story about sequence.
- You have a PDF you would not be embarrassed to send.
Common traps
- Adding twenty items in the first pass. Start with the six that matter.
- Inventing precise dates you do not have. A horizon is enough at this stage.
- Skipping Check because the roadmap is "just a draft" — Check is fastest to act on while the roadmap is still small.