Roadmap It’s the Age of Empires

For a long time I thought of roadmaps as a list of features that need to be built in a reasonable time frame. Once a roadmap was published, I felt committed in pursuing that plan. This, combined with the fact that we had less than ten people working on the product in the beginning, is why I advocated against publishing roadmaps and discussing future features until they are ready to be tested. I feel much more comfortable sharing the ActiveCollab Roadmap with you and discussing our plans. I have learned a lot about the concept. A roadmap is a map, and not a list. The Roadmap items are not commitments but options. These are places we would love to explore and settle down on. Likewise, there are items with high uncertainty that shouldbe approachedcarefully.The Age of the Empires
In the early 2000s, I spent hours playing Age of Empires. I like the idea of road mapping because of the terrain, discovery, as well as the dynamic of building. Although it is not perfect visualization, it is better than a list with items to build in a specific order. You have things you have built, areas you are currently working on, and areas you plan to move to next. Some builds require preparation and time. Each step adds value and eventually leads to something greater. This is how time tracking, budgeting, as well as profitability features were created. To finally reach project profitability, we started with stopwatches. We then moved to a team-timesheet while simultaneously building internal hourly rate structures. A different team switched from a team timesheet to a personal timesheet around that time. They also integrated stopwatches into their hourly rates, which helped them finally reach profitability.
Another important detail in real-time strategy games such as Age of Empires is the fog of war. The features you have built are clear and easy to understand. Although the features you are currently working on are clear and well-defined, there are still surprises as they aren’t yet finished. The foggy future is a sense of the terrain, and value. There are still many opportunities and problems lurking in the fog. Our initial plan was limited and focused on time tracking, following the success of Workload, integrated stopwatches, and Workload. We discovered many opportunities to improve the product as we built, discussed, and tested them all. What is the project profitability? It was not part of the original scope. Fixed price projects? It was a distant possibility when we started, but customers made it clear that they wanted it addressed sooner than we did. What is Stopwatch on the Personal Timeshee? It wasn’t in the original design. We made it happen while we were developing the feature. We shared our plans, changed them, delayed releases due to new discoveries, and improved the features based upon the feedback. It felt natural. Here are the main features that were built in this way:Task dependencies
Available
Automatic rescheduling
Workload
Stopwatches
Timesheets for personal and team members
Project profitability and internal budgets
Project budget types
All of this was released within the last 18 months, with a lot more smaller features, improvements, fixes, and fixes. The Big Book of Team Culture
This article is only a part of our Big Book of Team Culture. This ebook is free and will teach you how to build a team, improve teamwork, be a leader in modern workplaces, and create a positive team culture. We are grateful that you have subscribing. All Newslet