Project Roadmaps
The Ubuntu project houses many teams who work on a variety of different opportunities, problems and challenges. We are keen to ensure those teams can be as successful as possible, and we are encouraging teams to build cycle-wide roadmaps that can help keep track of progress. The idea is simple:
- The team works together to build a roadmap using the template below that sets out some goals for the forthcoming cycle.
- With the roadmap complete the team checks in on progress at every meeting. This is a good opportunity to coordinate the work together, remove blockages etc.
- At the end of the cycle the roadmap is reviewed and a new one is created.
Roadmaps provide an excellent way of giving a team a sense of direction and drive, and when combined with meetings it can make a team feel productive and effective.
How to create a roadmap
Creating and documenting a roadmap is simple:
- Create it - at the bottom of this page click on the next release cycle and create your roadmap in there in the namespace by using your team name (e.g. wiki.ubuntu.com/Roadmaps/Lucid/LoCoCouncil).
Apply the template - copy the text from the Roadmap Template into that page.
Decide on goals - work with your team to document a set of goals that you would like to focus on. Try to be realistic in how much you can achieve in six months: it is better to underpromise and overdeliver.
- Check in regularly - at each team meeting you should briefly check in on the Roadmap and see how progress is being made. Use this as an opportunity to help people achieve their work, identify if anyone is having problems and unblock problems. You can then update the whiteboard on the project blueprint.
If you have any problems or questions about this, ask in #ubuntu-community-team on Freenode.
Use a launchpad Blueprint
Launchpad provides very nice features for tracking your roadmap. The reasons for having a blueprint are many:
- Blueprints are much easier to subscribe to then to track individual changes to a wiki page.
- Project Management 101 shows that writing things down after people agree to them makes it much more likely to actually happen.
- When the success criteria are done you can also mark the blueprint as implemented, then we have an automated list of all successful roadmaps.
- The blueprint whiteboard can be used to track progress, and every time it's updated subscribed members will be notified.
Launchpad blueprints allow you to describe dependencies and generate charts about what needs to be done first (eg: https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-it/+spec/promozione-goal for the Italian team)
- Blueprints require you to name a specific driver to manage and track your progress.