A better tool for roadmapping
One of the things I love about Iterative Buffer Planning is how easy it is to implement.
Whenever I work with tech leaders to help them make actionable roadmaps, I fire up my trusty Miro template and start planning Focus Blocks and Recovery.
It's simple yet powerful.
At the start of such a collaboration, these leaders often ask which tools I recommend to create roadmaps. I always say, "Miro".
Whiteboards are fun and flexible. We can agree on a three-month roadmap in a one-hour session and share this plan with the rest of the organization. But this kind of flexibility has a downside.
As we revisit the whiteboard, someone invariably complicates the design. They'll cram 3 Focus Blocks in a single week. They'll include a Gantt chart with capacity planning. They'll add deliverables and Jira tickets.
We tend to overcomplicate roadmaps to the point where they are no longer actionable. Once a roadmap starts to look like London's subway map, it loses its usefulness and gets neglected.
On top of that, whiteboards have terrible version control. You can tweak a roadmap without informing a single stakeholder. Most whiteboard roadmaps still get shared as static pictures in a slide deck rather than something that's always up-to-date.
So when technical leaders ask me which tool I recommend for creating roadmaps, I say "Miro" because while it's not perfect, it's the best there is.
But that got me thinking: what would a better tool for road mapping look like? If I were to design the perfect tool for myself, what would it support, and what constraints would it add?
It would be simple by design.
It would not be ticket-based. That’s fine for tasks and bugs but not for problems.
It would have a timeline with a swim lane for each team.
It would make it trivial to arrange Focus and Recovery blocks.
It would have a publishing mechanic that informs stakeholders of changes to the roadmap.
So I started tinkering…
What started as a little proof of concept is turning into a nifty product that I use to build actionable roadmaps. I intend to finish it by the end of the year.
At the start of 2025, I want to be able to provide tech leaders with a better roadmapping alternative. Instead of Miro, I want to be able to point them to Planned Attention.
Let me know if you want to give that a test drive.