A popular visualization within Enterprise Architecture is the Roadmap or Gantt Chart. Sometimes also called a Masterplan or Timeline.

The roadmap diagram presents a timeline showing periods and status information of e.g. applications, projects, servers or business units. Sometimes the elements carry just one period, e.g. productive from until. Sometimes the elements have different life-cycles with different start and end dates.

A roadmap helps to show and map the evolution of your Enterprise Architecture over time and this to identify potential dependencies or interference between elements due to gaps or overlap in their life-cycles.

Here is an Example of a roadmap with different life-cycles for the applications, e.g. Development, Test, Production, Phase-Out:

Application Life-Cycle Roadmap

This roadmap was technically generated with d3js and the gantt chart extension based on an Enterprise Architecture Repository, currently in development.

If you are interested in these visualizations and a new tool for EAs and CIOs, please join my startup search phase.