Architect’s Guide to Effective Roadmaps
At TrailblazerDX ’23, Taylor Grimes and I delivered a session on creating effective roadmaps. Roadmaps are essential tools organizations use to plan and execute their strategies, so it’s no surprise that this session was one of the most bookmarked in the architect track. We are following up here for those that couldn’t be there in person to provide an overview of roadmaps, the different types of roadmaps, what makes a roadmap effective, and how to create one complete with resources to help you get started fast.
Key Takeaways
- Architect’s Guide to Effective Roadmaps presented at TrailblazerDX ’23 focused on creating prioritized and well-defined business value-oriented roadmaps.
- Two general styles of roadmaps were categorized based on purpose and audience, with each style having two types of roadmaps with varying levels of granularity.
- Collaboration with dependent teams, development of a Capability Map, and Capability Gap Analysis are essential in creating an effective roadmap.
What is a roadmap?
Let’s start with what a roadmap is not. A roadmap is not a statement of work or a requirement document. It is not a long-range planning tool that spans over five years or a task or feature-oriented project plan. Roadmaps are not focused on the details and complexity of the project, nor are they everything for everyone. Instead, a roadmap is a prioritized, validated, and well-defined view of what needs to be done to get from the current state to the desired future state. It is a plan to achieve the business objectives in a phased delivery that provides visibility into the next 12–24 months. Roadmaps are business value-oriented, focused on the audience and purpose, and ideally presented in a single view.
Types of roadmaps
Roadmaps are critical to empowering stakeholders to make the right purchasing and technology choices. Still, it can be difficult to know what type of roadmap best supports a given scenario, what kinds of data should be shown, or what type best communicates with different stakeholders. Unfortunately, a single roadmap typically cannot convey meaning to every possible stakeholder.
Similar to the Salesforce Diagram Framework guidance, we categorize roadmaps into two general styles based on purpose and intended audience. Each style has two types of roadmaps allowing you to zoom into greater levels of detail, finer granularity, and reduced surface area or scope.
Business Roadmaps
Business roadmaps prepare the business for change, help stakeholders stay aligned on corporate objectives, and ensure IT investments align with business priorities. Business roadmaps can be further classified into Capability Roadmaps and Feature Roadmaps. Capability roadmaps show executive stakeholders the capabilities that will be enabled, while Feature Roadmaps zoom into a specific capability to show its supporting features and functionality to help business stakeholders with resource planning, budgeting, and change management.
Technology Roadmaps
Technology roadmaps prepare technology teams for change and help technical stakeholders with budget and resource allocation. They also help implementation teams understand where their projects fit in the bigger picture and identify any cross-team dependencies. Technology roadmaps can be further classified into System Roadmaps and Component Roadmaps. System Roadmaps show the systems that will be implemented within a given timeframe to assist with resource planning and budgeting, and Component Roadmaps provide details on specific technology components.
What Makes a Roadmap Effective?
To stay focused on your roadmap’s purpose and audience, consider the following characteristics when you are creating and delivering your roadmap:
- Collaborative: Builds alignment and support through high levels of participation
- Assertive: Leverages authority to state a point of view or defend a position
- Analytical: Uses logic and facts to reason objectively
- Accommodating: Looks for common ground to arrive at an outcome
- Inspiring: Finds ways to engage others and communicate a position with optimism.
For example, to build an assertive and analytical roadmap, show the required phases with a logical, pragmatic path forward. Establish a theme for your approach, such as a simple crawl, walk, run approach or one of the approaches below:
- Prioritize low-hanging fruit first
- Tackle BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) first
- Deliver foundational, strategic, and then transformational initiatives.
A collaborative, accommodating, and inspiring roadmap helps you gain sponsorship and enhance team collaboration. These characteristics will allow you to defend your approach, highlight your plan’s benefits, and handle conflicting stakeholder priorities. Address conflicts and increase collaboration with cross-disciplinary teams by showing how your roadmap aligns with business value statements, corporate priorities, company objectives, metrics, and KPIs. Be sure to address the risks of your approach and any other approaches you considered.
Steps to create a roadmap
Creating a roadmap requires collaboration with dependent teams to develop a Capability Map detailing the business drivers and capabilities needed to achieve the vision. A Capability Gap Analysis should then be performed to determine where you are today and help you focus on what needs to be done to activate new capabilities. Refer to your gap analysis and business objectives to decide your phased approach and priorities. Then select the style and type of roadmap based on the specific audience and purpose, and confidently deliver your roadmap!
Resources to get started easily.
- Business Capability Roadmap
- Business Feature Roadmap
- Technology System Roadmap
- Technology Component Roadmap
- Business Capability Map diagram template
- The Roadmap Explorer enables you to plan your roadmap in alignment with Salesforce innovations
- Building a Transformational Multi-Cloud Roadmap on Salesforce+
We didn’t cover the following roadmaps in this post, but you can use the older templates below for product and program roadmaps:
