Time, composition and linked documentation
Roadmap timeline — phases on one axis
A programme roadmap: phases as bars on one time axis, the gating dependencies between them declared.
timeline.basic@1New DDN source
Why use it?
A roadmap is the schedule at phase granularity — sequence and overlap are the argument, task tracking lives elsewhere.
When it helps
Programme communication: steering packs, planning baselines, dependency-aware phasing.
How to read it
- Each bar is a phase with declared start and end dates; arrows are the finish-to-start gates.
- Overlap between bars is a declared choice — find the gate that still holds across it.
What you need
- The phases with start/end dates
- The gating dependencies
- The status per phase
Things to check
- Do not track tasks on the roadmap — one bar per phase, or it stops being one.
- A phase with no gate in or out is either the boundary of the programme or a missing dependency.
Scope of this diagram
Declared dates and dependencies (finish-to-start validated); capacity and criticality analysis belong to the PERT chapter.
Work with the converted example
- Open the viewer and select
roadmap. Inspect the rendered view and its source. - Open the designer. Keep the selected profile and inspect its legal palette and property controls.
- Change one displayed title or an appropriate data value. Apply the edit and check the resulting diagram.
- Run the verifier and review its diagnostics before moving complete content into review.
- Download your edited DDN source to retain the change.
The example uses the indentation-based ddn-next-1 dialect. The language guide explains reusable definitions, dotted data rows and explicit property blocks.