Chapter 05 · 6 min read

Roadmap & versioning

A design system feels unstable when teams cannot tell what changed, what broke, and what is safe to adopt.


Ship around decision boundaries

Release when a meaningful decision is complete: a token set, a component family, a pattern or a migration. Avoid releases that bundle unrelated fixes into one hard-to-read event.

Deprecate before removing

Give teams a replacement, a migration path and a date. Mark deprecated items in Figma, code and docs at the same time so nobody discovers the change too late.

Keep the changelog public

The changelog is a trust object. Write in plain language, link to examples, and say who is affected by each change.

A roadmap is not a promise to build everything. It is a promise to make choices visible.
MDRelease notes templateSemver guidance includedDownloadXLSXDeprecation registerOwners, dates and affected teamsDownload
ResourcesFigma libraries, token exports, workshop decks and the standards index.