Business Roadmaps: From Here to Success
1 Big Lesson Learned — You must know your starting point
Business Roadmaps paint the picture of how to achieve the organization’s vision: — navigate the path from today to the future state.
Roadmaps are a potent communications tool by visually presenting the initiatives critical for achieving the organization’s objectives. You see the business unit and department interdependencies. Dive deeper into the supporting layers, and the Roadmap delivers the classical project implementation timeline.
My consulting experience is CFOTech, which emphasizes corporate performance management (CPM).
C-Suite Leaders, notably CFOs, want to understand their technology return on investment. Using technology to improve internal processes is good, but understanding how the solution moves the organization forward to achieve larger objectives is the brass ring.
I’ll bet you can already see the business roadmap value.
You can’t construct a solid roadmap without a thoroughgoing analysis of the state. The current state is messy — the kludgy workflows, outdated technology, poor data quality, or dysfunctional teams. Don’t overlook your strengths- glowing customer loyalty or dedicated employees.
Goals Grid
My recommendation: capture the current state using a Goals Grid. [1] A Goals Grid is a 2x2 matrix. Here is a blank example.
The Goals Grid’s power is building team consensus on the necessary trade-offs to achieve the vision. You capture the diversity of the team’s understanding and preference. One group’s “Preserve it” may represent another group’s “Eliminate it.” You get the hint there can be a ripple effect across goals and quadrants. Seeing the diversity of views is essential for the final goal/objective agreement. As the quadrants are updated, you can see risks and opportunities. And — seeing the aggregated list of activities (the responses) proves an excellent method to cull the list to the critical few.
How To Use
The recipe for starting a Roadmap
- Establish the vision. Here is an example vision statement — “Be the go-to bespoke bamboo bike frame builder — offering modern designs and using cost-effective build methods. Provide our teams with meaningful financial and operational information that is easy to understand and supports actionable decisions.”
- Complete the Goals Grid. Ask your leadership stakeholders to complete the Grid with the Vision statement as the target. Depending on the size of the participant groups, you can conduct a second round, focusing on the hands-on members, to complete a Grid as a team exercise. For example, each team (Accounting, Marketing, and Materials) submits one completed Grid.
- Analysis and Consensus Building. The raw material is collected, and stakeholder consensus can be fostered. Stakeholders have a clear current state picture. Priorities and a foundational understanding of organization capabilities, processes, information, and technology are established.
Wrap-Up Thoughts
The Goals Grid asks about the current state:- the question “where are we now?” regarding how we achieve the vision. The observations consist of people, processes, and technology. My previous projects’ current state analysis captured issues. Good — but not sufficient in retrospect. What was missing and Goals Grid addresses is the push-pull tension between goals, quadrants, and people.
With better insight, the stakeholders and I can shape objectives and identify initiatives with realistic outcomes to populate our Roadmap.
Isn’t that how we can be successful?
Reference
[1] The Goals Grid: A New Tool for Strategic Planning, by Fred Nickols and Ray Ledgerwood @ 2005
