The Strategic Roadmap is a bridge (link) between strategy and execution. The Strategic Roadmap is a visualization of the company’s strategic plan. Understand the activities that are completed within the given time frame. It gives the company a complete view of what is going to happen. The product team can employ a roadmap to progress the discussion — the roadmap guides prioritizing tasks, assigning resources, and tracking dependencies. The Strategy Roadmap provides a visualization of critical outcomes that must be achieved at a specific time to achieve the organization’s strategic vision.
Strategic Roadmap
The key is to demonstrate the strategic roadmap results by clearly understanding what capabilities, gaps, and priorities are in place for the organization. It serves as a link between product strategy and execution plan. The Strategic Roadmap describes the “reasons” for future product changes to achieve your strategic vision. A roadmap is a strategic plan that includes critical steps and milestones needed to define goals and desired outcomes and achieve them.
It also serves as a communication tool and is a high-level document to clarify the strategic thinking (“why”) behind goals and plans to get there.
Four Phases to Designing a Strategy-Based Team Roadmap
- Show vision and strategy: Have the product team ever seen a tourist follow a guide waving bright colors? The Product Manager should look like that guide. The product manager’s appointment is to ensure that the people following him understand the right approach and work together. Please do not give a snapshot of a strategic roadmap until the product manager reminds everyone of his company’s vision and product strategy for every presentation.
- Tell stories by topic: Product teams perform for a company that designs the next generation of car stereos linked to the Internet. The company’s vision is that the “Driver can enjoy his favored harmony wherever he goes.
- Focus on problems, not solutions: There is another trap to trap. In particular, companies familiar with functional-based roadmaps such as Shiny Object Syndrome will focus on solutions rather than issues.
- Set a course of action: What do we have to do to bridge the gap between our most important capabilities? Once the product manager has evaluated his capabilities, define the actions the product team needs to change to fill the gaps in its capabilities. These actions should consider human changes, process changes, and physical changes.
Why Do We Need a Strategic Roadmap?
A business plan is a paper idea. The strategy roadmap is practical. Agile teams and leaders often outline strategic plans to achieve their company’s vision. However, most leaders do not define a way to achieve this vision. The Strategy Roadmap fills the gap between creating and executing a business strategy, so team members know what to do.
The roadmap provides a visual representation of what tasks need to be performed. It can also help clarify the role and responsibility of the stakeholders and assess whether there are sufficient resources to achieve the goal. Finally, it can also be used to communicate with teams and stakeholders. Without a roadmap, organizations lose their vision and communications, and the team fails.
Verdict
A strategic roadmap is simply a business vision. The business roadmap that shows the steps to achieve the mission is a long-term goal and deadline. The keyword here is “long term.” In other words, no product features or short-term wins are included, and this roadmap is provided for broad goals such as funding rounds and MR objectives. This roadmap is typically owned by a senior-level stakeholder but should be accessible to all employees (not editable, but viewable). Companies encourage each department to coordinate in line with the business’s growth plan and develop a project that the team contributes directly to the growth by granting this access.