Lookin’ For Direction?
It’s almost summer and we’re gearing up for travel and vacations, so I thought it was a good time to talk about roadmapping. Business roadmapping is like preparing for a road trip, and before we head out on the highway, we want to create a map or view of the path ahead. Types of roadmapping span from knowing ahead of time the exact right and left turns or tasks to be done, to being agile and ready for adventure of whatever way the business takes us.
A roadmap is a picture of how the direction or path of something is intended to progress with time.
While a roadmap is the output – either a document, picture, or spreadsheet, the value is in the process and art of roadmapping. It’s an ongoing dialogue and set of decisions that chart a path as a function of time. The real value of a roadmap comes from the conversation that it creates and the questions generated and answered while developing it, test driving and aligning it to the intended purpose, and keeping it as a living conversation and changing picture of the path ahead.
What’s In Your Lane?
Business roadmaps have a typical format with time depicted on the x-axis and content of the area of interest or ‘capability lanes’ along the y-axis mapped as to how things change in the respective lanes versus time. Simple right?
The first decision is what cadence to use in setting time on the x-axis. Is it days, weeks, months, years, or product cycles or generations? The next decision and more challenging is to identify what will be the directional groupings or capability lanes? Both of these foundational decisions in creating the roadmap framework depend heavily on the roadmap purpose, what it is intended to depict, and who will be using it? So let’s look deeper into the different purposes where roadmapping is used in business.
The Flavors Of Roadmapping
The driving purpose for roadmaps in business fall into four categories: Execution, Planning, Strategy, and Ecosystem Alignment.
Execution and Planning roadmapping are more common and straightforward, as they tend to be more linear in the progression of parameters in the capability lanes. They are frequently generated from previously defined goals or objectives and metrics, and hence tend to have more specificity and known information used in developing these roadmaps.
Strategic and Ecosystem Alignment roadmapping is more challenging, as typically the cadence and capability lane progressions are unknown. A good place to start is framing the first time-node and setting up the framework that shows the assumptions driving the respective roadmap content or parameters and when those assumptions might change over the x-axis. It’s more important to map a logical progression with rationale documented, than on the precision or accuracy of the content in the capability lanes, especially for further out time-nodes. By putting in a process to discuss and update roadmaps on a periodic bases, new information can be added further out in time, and assumptions and capability parameters closer in time can be continually refined to increase accuracy.
Ecosystem Alignment roadmapping is essentially aligning the strategic roadmaps across critical elements of the value chain. Hence developing strategic roadmaps is a stepping stone to go bigger and create ecosystem roadmaps with respective partner organizations or companies. Ecosystem Alignment roadmapping is typically larger in breadth and complexity, as they become a nesting series of conversations, collaboration, and coordination.
Core Components of Roadmapping
In developing roadmaps and building a roadmapping process, here are five important components to consider:
Purpose: What will the roadmap be used for? For example it could be product roadmaps to share approved product plans with customers (Planning purpose) or to share future thinking to get customer inputs (Strategy purpose), or business roadmaps to communicate across an organization it is headed (Planning or Strategy purpose) or it could be a roadmap to get everyone on the same page on the tasks and responsibilities and schedule for a project (Execution purpose). Additionally consider who or what type of organization is the intended user of the roadmap? A marketing organization would have a different mindset and language than if the intended user is a technology group.
Cadence of Time: Is there an underlying expectation of how the parameters or content on the y-axis will progress on a cadence along the x-axis? For example in semiconductor industry Moore’s Law sets the rhythm and pace for technical performance increases for each generation of products, or industry selling cycles might set the rhythm for new product introductions with an evolutionary path and then a step-function in innovation such as in automotive model year changes, or cellular phone software upgrades on a faster cycle than new hardware introductions. For project execution roadmaps, they might have a budget or resourcing cadence that drives the roadmap.
When there is no obvious cadence, it’s important to go deeper into the purpose and end use of the roadmapping? For example in enterprise or application software there isn’t an accepted cadence like in Moore’s Law. Thus, defining the cadence comes from understanding user needs and at what pace those are changing, and when might be pivot points for jumps in capability.
Directional Groupings: Directional groupings are along the y-axis and become capability lanes depicting the directional path or progression for that entity. They must make sense and be in the ‘language’ or frame-of-reference of the intended roadmapping purpose and user. A Strategy roadmap intended for internal use with technology and product groups will have a different set of directional groupings than a Planning roadmap intended to show committed products with customers. An Execution roadmap’s directional groupings will be more action, task, and resource focused compared with product Planning roadmaps.
Foundational Assumptions: Calling out assumptions is important especially in Strategy and Ecosystem Alignment roadmapping to indicate rationale for transition points along the progression of the capability lanes, where the future path is less known and more of an intent than reality. Essentially assumptions are the pillars that hold up the capability lanes.
Joints Of Dependencies, Risks, And Decision Points: As in real traffic, not all lanes are independent. It’s valuable to call out places to watch for changing assumptions, merge points where two lanes might come together (especially important in execution and planning roadmaps), and check-points for considering stopping a product line or project or doing a U-turn pivot based on how reality is playing out. These Joints get signals from the foundational assumptions and are placed into the roadmap lanes at key intercept points.
Roadmapping Tips
Here are some simple tips for generating purpose built and value centered roadmapping processes.
Start by clearly articulating the roadmapping purpose and intended users.
Choose the time cadence (x-axis) and direction groupings or capability lanes (y-axis) that support the roadmapping purpose and in a language understandable by the intended roadmap users.
Begin filling in one capability lane for current time-frame plus one time-node out. Document the assumptions being made. What questions does that uncover? What new information is needed to project the next time-node?
Repeat step three for the other capability lanes on the roadmap.
Hold roadmapping group dialogue sessions with the key users and stakeholders to walk through the roadmap framework, capability lanes, assumptions, and node-to-node capability progression.
Make updates to the capability lanes and documented assumptions based on the inputs and discussion, and identify key decision check points.
Continue repeating steps 5 and 6 as on ongoing roadmapping process.
Remember the roadmap itself is just an output, while the value comes from bringing together the right people and functions, generating good collaborative conversations, and documenting assumptions and decisions.
Now onward to roadmapping! Please share your insights and experiences.
コメント