A 90-day rollout plan is the right artefact for a business making a big, structured AI push. Most businesses with ten people don't need that -- they need something they can print, pin near the kettle, and actually refer back to without opening a project management tool nobody else on the team uses. A one-page roadmap does a different job than a phased program: it's a quick-reference map, not a narrative plan.
What actually fits on one page
The discipline of a single page forces useful prioritisation. Rather than a comprehensive list of every possible AI use case, a 10-person business roadmap should name no more than five to seven things: two or three already in use, two currently being trialled, and one or two genuinely on the horizon but not yet started. Anything more than that on one page becomes unreadable, and anything less wastes the exercise.
Column one: what's live now -- the AI tools already in daily use, one line each.
Column two: what's being trialled -- in progress, not yet a settled habit, with a rough decision date.
Column three: what's next -- genuinely planned, not aspirational wishlist items nobody's committed to.
A single line at the bottom naming who owns AI decisions for the business (see our piece on AI accountability for why this matters).
Why the format matters more than the content
A 10-person business doesn't need a project charter or a Gantt chart -- everyone already knows roughly what's going on because the team is small enough for word of mouth. What it lacks is a shared, visible reference point that settles the 'wait, are we using that tool or not' conversation that otherwise happens repeatedly in different forms. The one-page format is deliberately low-effort to produce and genuinely gets looked at, versus a comprehensive plan that gets built once, filed, and never opened again.
Keeping it current without it becoming a chore
Revisit it monthly, not as a formal review meeting, just five minutes at the end of an existing team catch-up. Move things between columns as they progress, and be honest about removing something from 'what's next' if it's clearly not going to happen -- a roadmap cluttered with stalled aspirations is worse than a shorter, accurate one.
A worked example
A 10-person Hobart retail business built theirs around: live (AI-assisted product descriptions, customer email drafting), trialling (an inventory reordering assistant, decision due end of month), next (a customer FAQ chatbot, not yet started), with the owner named as AI decision-owner at the bottom. Total time to build it: about 20 minutes. Total value over the following quarter: it settled at least four 'are we doing that' conversations that would otherwise have eaten meeting time, at effectively zero cost.
What this replaces, and what it costs to skip
The alternative to a one-page roadmap isn't usually a more sophisticated planning document -- for a business this size, it's genuinely nothing at all, which means AI decisions get made ad hoc, forgotten, and re-litigated every few months. That re-litigation costs real time: a 10-person business having the same 'wait, did we decide on that tool or not' conversation four times a year at a typical team meeting is burning perhaps $200-400 in loaded staff time annually on a question a one-page document would have settled permanently for a twenty-minute one-off cost.
It also has a second, less obvious benefit: a visible roadmap makes it easier to say no to a new tool pitch from a vendor or an enthusiastic staff member, because there's already a named 'what's next' list to point to. Without it, every new AI idea competes on its own merits in isolation; with it, a new idea has to earn a spot against what's already planned, which is a healthier filter for a small team without much slack for constant tool-switching.
A note on where this sits alongside a bigger plan
If your business does eventually need a proper phased rollout -- typically once you cross 20 to 30 people or take on a genuinely complex build -- the one-page roadmap does not get thrown away, it becomes the summary view sitting on top of the more detailed plan. Think of it as the front cover, not a competing document, so the transition to something more structured later does not mean starting from zero.
Build the first draft today rather than waiting for a quieter week. A rough version filled in during a coffee break beats a perfect one that never gets started, and you can always tidy the wording once it exists.
If you want a starter template for this -- the exact one-page layout, ready to fill in -- ask through /contact and we'll send it over.
