RELATED IDEAS
Improve element positioning in custom roadmaps
Custom roadmaps are a useful tool to show work for multiple teams. One of the most useful features is the ability to show "compact bars" (see screenshot #1), as this minimizes the vertical extent of the roadmap and renders information more digestible.
However, the feature is currently sub-optimal, as items which do not interfere with each other still get placed in different rows (see screenshot #2) - this partially negates the usefulness of custom roadmaps, creating wasted space and exceedingly lengthy roadmaps which are confusing to the audience.
I took the liberty of moving elements around in the page DOM to create a more compact view (screenshot #3), and the results are much more pleasing. I'm able to show related work from 3 separate teams in a very concise view.
It feels like this would be a small modification, likely making the positioning tolerance/padding between report items less "zealous", but it would go a long way in making custom roadmaps more usable! Given that there has not been a lot of attention put on roadmaps/reports lately, I hope you'll consider a small but impactful change.
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Thank you Austin, that works wonderfully!
Hi Gianmarco, thanks for the idea! The reason for the extra space in this situation is because by default the labels on your roadmap bars will float as you scroll the roadmap horizontally. So the extra space is determined by the space needed to accommodate the label as it scrolls past the bar -- to prevent it from overlapping with the next bar.
This is helpful when you have a roadmap that needs to scroll beyond the timeline shown on your screen. The good news is that there is also a setting to turn this off if you don't need it for your particular view. On your custom roadmap, click the gear icon and choose Customize style. From here, uncheck the option to Show labels while timeline scrolls. This, in combination with the Compact bars option should give you the view you are looking for!