Roadmap update

[kaleygel]

Project overview

Our roadmap also is currently tied to github enhancements, however we should aim to separate this pipeline to a manual update in order to curate the content.

Right now, our roadmap needs to be flexible to highlight and support our monthly planning & release cycles. It is unlikely to have more than ~2 month cycles in advance.

Idea

What if, instead of a traditional roadmap, we used this section to infuse a bit more "fun" and looked at the annual calendar as an "advent calendar" -- one that unlocks the next month tile as we near (or finalize) monthly releases.

After unlocking, each month could popup in a shadowbox that highlights the release person, a short bio about them + release theme & overview

Starter Content

Title: 2026 Roadmap
Subhead: We plan and ship in monthly cycles. Each cycle is named for a cultural, literary or scientific pioneer whose story connects to the work we're doing.

Januaury 1.1 Release - “Mary Elizabeth”
Ship date: January 30th, 2026 // Comms date: February 11th, 2026
Theme/ title: Removing our waitlist!

Mary Elizabeth Anderson invented the windshield wiper after a trip to NYC during a snowstorm.

Core Features & Accoutrements

• Datum Desktop MVP (508)
• Opt-in or out of marketing lists (488)
• Developer experience upgrade w/ Datumctl CLI (217)

Design & prototyped

• Datum Desktop E2E design (557)
• Aligned product naming and structure

Run the cloud

• Informally squash bugs with a few friendly users
• Practice incidents and status page

Research & scoping

• Domains and DNS next phase of work (link)

1.2 Release - “Blankenbaker”
54 years ago, in early 1971 John Blankenbaker released what is regarded as the world’s first desktop (or personal) computer: the Kenbak-1. Only 50 were made.

Ship date: February 27th, 2026 // Comms date: March 11th, 2026
Theme: Datum Desktop in the wild

Core features & accoutrements

• Datum Desktop 1.0 (558)
• Domains and DNS scrubbing (pending resource)
• Display & Revoke Active User Sessions with proper design (920)
• SDK generation (create enhancement and track with Gianluca)
• Datum UI renovation project is in progress (537)
• AI Edge (revised user flow, portal elements, etc (needs overall tracking issue)
• Implement activity logs for DX and UX

Designs & prototypes

• Slightly finer grained roles
• Machine accounts

Milo foundations

• Semantic / human readable activity logs (469)
• Search infrastructure (524)

Run the cloud

• E2E Tests and Regression Testing (915)
• Ability to support Datum Desktop and DNS with new users (587)
• Rebrand and support Cloudvalid (51 + 1542 + 1445)

Research & scoping

• Milo roadmap documented with key enhancements published
• Galactic VPC
• Start lab region support (BlueField)(Infra: lab access control 1478, unique BGP configurations 1280, add BlueField compute type 1514. Dev:176 Integrate Tetrate Agent Router with Network Service Operator, 177 Tetrate Agent Router Deployment in a Datum Project)

March - December should be just the month names, unclickable until we "release" them

[olliemiller]

@kaleygel @jacobsmith928 First designs ready to review:

I've leaned into the idea of having a custom style illustration each month. It would be lovely to have beatifully crafted illustrations of all different styles to go with each (ala google doodle). Realise this might be a stretch though. So I'm happy to explore fallbacks.

Jan-Mar view - xl
Jan-Jul view - xl
Jan modal window - xl

Thoughts, ideas and ALL emotions welcome 🙂

[jacobsmith928]

@olliemiller i think illustration will be worth it, and help tie things together across mediums.

Regarding the broader design here, two things:

• I think we need to make room for backlog issues. See the toggle I suggested in my lovable prototype?
• Considering the investment in each of these milestones, I would be more comfortable with a full dedicated page (much like an event detail page) versus a modal. This would allow us to deep link but also over time iterate the content and calls to action (for instance invite comments, sign folks up for updates, etc).

[olliemiller]

@jacobsmith928 Gotcha - here are those updates 🙂

Backlog tab
Release page

[jacobsmith928]

@olliemiller my feedback:

• The Backlog tab looks great. We might want to just help folks clearly click through to GitHub
• The release page is okay but could we really reduce the image here? Maybe it can be more like an author byline on the sidebar? It could include the name, milestone number, date, link to details.
• For the release detail content, I think it'll be more narrative and then link out to the GitHub milestone page for details.

The roadmap landing header still feels pretty spacious, especially with the tight line breaks for the subtitle.

[olliemiller]

I caught up with @kaleygel about this. We agreed I'd produce an interim version we can use for the next few months while we source/finalise the illustrations. Here they are:

Roadmap page - xl

Detail page - xl

[kaleygel]

Thanks @olliemiller this is a great interim solution while we refine to get it even better ;)

Can you make a few updates and then we'll ship it to dev:

1. For simplicity, let's just link directly out to the repos (we can skip the detail page for now):

Jan release: https://github.com/datum-cloud/enhancements/milestone/4
February release: https://github.com/datum-cloud/enhancements/milestone/5
March release: https://github.com/datum-cloud/enhancements/milestone/7

2. For the subhead text - can we use more width ? We're still really narrow in our columns, and it feels crunched

3. Since it's a roadmap can we have a "Upcoming" and "Previous milestones" sections - so the march one is first on the list showing that we're actively working on it, and it's clear the other two are older?

@felixwidjaja @ronggur @AriaEdo With Ollie's next updates, this will existing roadmap. Please note, with this, we'll remove the direct connection to Github and instead manually make updates.