Creating a technology roadmap is a time-consuming process, and it’s wasted energy if it doesn’t help you reach your business goals or (worse yet) is forgotten by the next quarter.
To maximize the value of a technology roadmap, its action items must directly help achieve company goals and create a clear map to get you to your success metrics.
If you’re struggling to figure out how to align your technology roadmap with your business objectives, this guide will show you how.
Meet With Decision Makers
Don’t start writing your Technology Roadmap before meeting with each of the decision makers!
All too often a meeting to present and ask for final sign-off on the Technology Roadmap with a decision maker goes very badly. Many or most decision makers want to share their priorities and tech vision before anyone starts writing a formal technology roadmap document.
Come to the meetings well prepared to talk about what other companies that the decision maker respects are doing with technology. A fast way to learn about what other companies are doing is to talk to a business analyst which has this specialization.
The consultants in StackPlan’s directory are a great fit if you’re looking to impress your decision makers and don’t have time or people to do firsthand research with other companies.
Once you’ve talked with all decision makers and have their input, you can move onto the next steps.
Understand Your Business Strategy
What are the goals for your business? Review your organization’s quarterly and yearly goals, employee and business unit key performance indicators (KPIs), and even mission and vision statements. Make sure your technology roadmap directly links to as many of these factors as possible, with clear goals for short and long-term success.
These goals will look different for each company, but they might include breaking into new markets, expanding your team, growing revenue, serving a cause, or boosting brand awareness.
No matter your business strategy, make sure it’s clearly defined with easy metrics that tell you when and if you reach them. This will make it much easier to link into your roadmap later on.
If your current strategy feels too broad, remember SMART goals:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-based
Identify KPIs
Around 95% of leading marketers believe KPIs need to link to broader business goals to be effective. Your KPIs are a set of quantifiable measurements that show your company’s performance. Without KPIs, it’s incredibly hard to determine your business’s strategic, financial, and operational achievements, which ultimately show you if your IT roadmap is working.
KPIs will differ between companies, but some common ones include:
- Revenue growth
- Revenue per client
- Profit margin
- Client retention rate
- Customer satisfaction
Spend some time figuring out how you will measure the success of your roadmap based on your business objectives. For example, if you have a goal to boost revenue by 15% annually, a great KPI is your revenue growth per quarter. This will show you if you’re on track to hit that goal by the end of the year.
As well as your KPIs, make a note of product development timelines if this is relevant. Your KPIs need to be achievable, so information on development timelines is crucial. After understanding your KPIs, you can analyze how your tech stack helps (or hurts) your ability to reach those goals. If you don’t have the right tools and software, build a technology roadmap to close the gap.
Even after identifying KPIs and assessing your software, it’s hard to know what the “right” solution or tech stack is. This is where a business analyst or software consultant can help. A trained, experienced software consultant helps SMBs identify the right solutions to achieve their goals while meeting their time and budget needs.
Brainstorm Tech-Related Initiatives
This is the step where you can get creative. Look at your business objectives and KPIs and brainstorm initiatives that will help you achieve your goals.
Get the necessary departments and teams involved, and ask for critical feedback on what could be improved to help move your company forward. Here are some examples to get you started:
- Faster order processing could boost sales, which means you need better sales management software.
- Streamlined communications improve collaboration, which means you need improved communication tools.
- Mobility solutions enhance flexibility, which means you need mobility management solutions.
The more ideas you can come up with at this point, the better. So get your teams involved and get everyone excited about improving processes. You’ll begin prioritizing and organizing those ideas later on.
Map Initiatives to Objectives
By this point, you should have some great insights into your objectives and some concrete solutions that will help you reach them. This is where you begin mapping those initiatives to your goals to show real-world benefits.
Here are some examples:
Project A
Increase Productivity
by 15% by 2025
Project B
Saves $50k annually
in redundant licensing
Project C
Cuts the Product Launch Schedule by 30%
Creating these maps not only helps you prioritize which projects need to come first but will help secure stakeholder buy-in. It’s important to get key stakeholders and decision-makers on board with your tech roadmap, so having visible goals, research reports, case studies, proof points, and statistics will get everyone on the same page.
Once you’ve mapped out your objectives, you’ll be able to see which should be prioritized for the next year, which can come over the next three years, and which are better suited to long-term strategic planning.
Congrats! You’ve just drafted a strategic technology roadmap that links to your business objectives.
However, do you know if the business’s most important objectives are covered in your roadmap? If you’ve linked to all one of the business’ top 5 objectives, the skipped-over objectives will inevitably ruin your year. Tools like profit trees are exceptionally helpful in forcing the business to prioritize which objectives matter most as they separate the ideas that have the greatest impact on ROI from good ideas that are not mission-critical this year.
Incorporate Organizational Changes
Although that may feel like the last step, there’s plenty more to do. Without organizational changes, your roadmap won’t be effective, so you’ll need to look into departments that require infrastructure changes, workflow alterations, software updates, and other fundamental improvements that allow the roadmap to start.
To ensure you get sign-off, this should be a comprehensive report showing the investment needed, timelines, training requirements, and any other important factors.
Link all of this information into your tech roadmap to make it clear when and how these changes will happen.
Final Review with Decision Makers
Finally, it’s time to get sign-off from key decision makers. Each stakeholder will have different priorities in the business, so it’s your job to make sure to align your pitch with their views. If you started this process with a decision maker meeting, this should be easy to do!
You’ll also need to ensure that the new roadmap aligns with long-term business goals and that success metrics are signed off. There’s little point in working on a technology roadmap if your business leaders aren’t aligned.
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