Planned Innovation — Converting Strategy to Action with an Integrated Roadmap
You might recognize the name Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, but what about Katalin Kariko or Drew Weissman? They created a platform for mRNA vaccines that in 2020 produced the fastest vaccine ever developed, which helped slow the global COVID pandemic.
What is the real difference between these cases? Both changed the world. The answer lies in the two words, discover vs. create. One was an accident. One was not. Innovation can be planned and accelerated in medicine, information technology, and other sectors.
So, how can you accelerate innovation and convert strategy to action? Here are five steps.
1. Capture the business strategy to determine a common set of goals
Enterprises large and small typically have strategic planning exercises, and these usually produce materials in various forms. Chances are that thought leaders and executives also participate in planning cycles that often result in more cycles rather than plans. These can be quite elaborate, and many times they’re siloed to represent business domains and areas of interest that then can be parsed out and divided into those constituencies. Context is lost and the plans don’t make it to the “ground” intact, if ever. I was surprised that when I actually looked for IT strategy material online it was not hard to find, very good and very insightful. My two main thoughts were “Everyone should see this!” and “How can I simplify this so it’s easy to communicate quickly?” That would be the “big picture” we could share with our CIO Hybrid Cloud Platforms Architecture Chapter to form our integrated roadmap.
Form a single-page strategy organized by business domain, and within that, list high-level strategic outcomes and a short list of capabilities needed to realize them.
2. Brainstorm the specific capabilities we might add to our hybrid cloud platform to enable strategic goals.
We collected any roadmaps if they existed, and asked individuals and thought leaders for random, ad hoc brainstorming. In some cases, nobody had ever been asked for a roadmap beyond the “next quarter.” The idea of how to get to that strategic place really had little traction beyond 90 days. The thought process and reactions ranged from cathartic to stunned.
This was going to be good.
We organized this input and tried to consolidate it. The good news is that the consolidated list of capabilities at that level also fit on a page (I made sure it did.). This allowed us to add the “why?” that I could see in those themes and combine it into categories. Given this shorter list of capabilities against the backdrop of our platform it began to surface who would be the owner to deliver the capabilities. They became real even though they didn’t exist yet.
3. Make a first pass
We looked for a community forum to kick off roadmap development. We chose our CIO Hybrid Cloud Platforms Architecture Chapter.
We asked them to:
· Look at the one-page strategy.
· Look at the platform and the capabilities we need.
· Look at the outcomes we want to achieve to inform prioritization.
· Look at the dependencies to inform sequencing.
· Make a first pass at what parts you need to implement first and which quarter you might do that over the next year.
· Come back to this forum and present your first pass.
In retrospect, this prep work got us most of the way to our roadmap.
4. Come together to build it
Include all stakeholders, whether they will be doing the work reflected by the roadmap or not. We want one view of strategy, and one roadmap, and for everybody to pull for that common destination as our “North Star”. We scheduled an in-person workshop to build and align the entire roadmap across stakeholders and connect the pieces. Tradeoffs, priority, and timing were all aligned together.
This single output and this way of working was just as important as what we had on paper. We came together as a team and learned a lot about adjusting to a post-pandemic digital workplace. Deciding who should be in the room, or could be, and how to deal with who could not be there in person was enlightening, and we didn’t lose sight of that. We took actions away from that, too.
5. Take concrete actions towards realization
Now that we had the benefit of an integrated roadmap organized by quarter, we committed concrete objectives and key results (OKRs) for the next quarter. This is a process we already use effectively, but now it has been elevated. We know why; we know where it leads us. We know what we will get from it. We can cite the strategy. And we can see it in the work we do. Now we are creating, not just discovering.
Summary
Roadmaps do not navigate information technology. We do. The roadmap is a tool. When you have clarity on the strategic destination, everyone knows why it matters and how the work they do connects to it. An integrated, platform- based roadmap with a single view of how to get there brings the future of IT closer. It’s right around the corner. Do you know your next turn? How about your next three? Creation is not an accident. What will you create?
Steven Fiscaletti is Chief Digital Business Architect of CIO Hybrid Cloud Platforms at IBM based in Southbury, CT. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
