Key considerations around Roadmaps
Roadmaps are a visual way to demonstrate the path ahead combining the expectations of the market, the business, and teams responsible for delivering against it. They can be created at various levels of detail, and typically outline a path for delivering on the overall organisational strategy, or that of a specific product.
Roadmaps are a key component to an organisation’s success as it:
Outlines the delivery runway which is critical in making prioritisation decisions.
Acts as a communication tool for sharing the overall direction and contribution across teams
Provides clear information about the different contributions by each team allowing for good quality prioritisation within products
Provides the overall visibility of work in progress allowing programme level decisions about strategic alignment and resourcing
Five key aspects
Key aspects to consider when assessing the health of your roadmap are whether it has/is:
Communication strategy
Effective decision management governance
Transparent journey
Documented and accessible
Identifies the value delivered for each item
A communication strategy for your roadmap is important to ensure that all teams are aware and aligned with what’s going on, and any changes are also as widely known and understood. The communication strategy also covers aspects post-delivery (such as adoption), providing updates to the wider business on the success of what the teams are delivering.
Good looks like a clear communication strategy, all your stakeholders identified and engagement plan is in place, and executed.
Without a communicated strategy in place, deviation from priorities, lack of awareness and engagement, and supporting activities could put the organisation at risk.
Effective decision management governance is important to reduce ad-hoc and isolated decision making in favour of timely, aligned decisions that are informed by the overarching strategy. Explicit governance assists with accountability, and provides a standardised framework to move leaders saying: ‘just-do-it”, to a trusted process that delivers quality.
Good practice includes clear guidelines in place for what decisions go through this governance with a clearly defined structure and responsibility, but also being clear what smaller decisions remain in the teams as part of evolution in delivery rather than needing a formal process.
Without a decision management governance framework, delays, distractions and frustration within delivery teams can occur quickly and often cause missing deadlines.
A transparent journey shows the teams not only what they’re delivering, but how it is the building blocks to the overall strategic outcomes. This is good for morale and motivation, informs decision making which factors in future state, and ensures that what the teams are delivering does tie back to the strategic outcomes.
Good practice ensures teams know what’s going on, the direction the business is taking and understanding the ‘why’ behind the strategy and roadmap deliverables.
Without a transparent journey, there is no coordination between teams, no confirmation that what is being delivered aligns with the strategic goals, and potentially a volume of redevelopment which impacts how much gets delivered and timelines, as well as customer perception.
A documented and accessible roadmap is important to ensure teams can constantly refer to it, providing a single source of information for all delivery teams and stakeholders. This is critical for making quality decisions within a single product, but also ensuring inter-product alignment decisions and comms are relevant and high quality.
Good practice means the roadmap is in a language and level of detail for all stakeholders, then setup in a common tool or stored in a central location where everyone can access it.
Without a documented and accessible roadmap, there is a risk that teams may work from an outdated copy, and deviate from the required outcomes impacting customer outcomes.
A roadmap that identifies the value delivered for each item is important in providing metrics to measure success, setting goals to achieve and articulates the value the teams are delivering to the business and its customers with what they deliver. It also forces those creating the roadmap to ask themselves those questions, stress testing its place in the roadmap.
Good practice means including the value for each item on the roadmap defined and documented in a standard way, covering off metrics, goals, and contribution to the overarching strategy.
Without clear definitions of value for all outcomes and items in the roadmap, it will be impossible to align across multiple teams when trade offs or support is required. Further it will be impossible to make judgements about which implementation methods are more appropriate (cost).
Common challenges
Some key common challenges that can occur are:
Opposition to publishing a roadmap; this often comes from leadership misalignment or inability to agree. Getting the buy in and taking everyone on that journey is foundational to having everyone moving in the same direction.
Multiple roadmaps are published, either over time, or from different departments. I.e. Product Strategy roadmap vs Strategy & Transformation Roadmap. They must not contradict each other, ideally there is only one holistic roadmap.
Constant changes without governance creates chaos; governance helps with this but doesn’t solve it. Ensuring management are aware of the consequence of constant change is challenging but important.
Three key takeaways
Can your team access your roadmap today?
How do you use a Roadmap to effectively manage-up?
How does your roadmap tie back to your strategy?
