It's time to build your IT roadmap

A competitive business landscape demands the ability to innovate quickly, which makes it critical for organizations to have the right technology solutions in place to be ready for future market needs. Business leaders and managers often ask themselves how short- and long-term business goals can be matched with a specific technology, all while keeping costs and risks low. One answer is the IT roadmap.

In the 1970s, Motorola created the technology roadmapping process. Since then, companies around the world have turned to this strategy to run complex projects. In today's era of rapid development, however, IT roadmaps have evolved. They provide a structured visual platform that represents the culmination of the planning, strategy and information coordination provided by a group of stakeholders from different areas of an organization.

An IT roadmap helps communicate how the organization's technology investment will support its overall business strategy. In many organizations, the roadmap becomes the action plan for engineering and IT teams and assures business executives that their investment will produce financial returns.

Given this changing environment, this may be the time to reassess your IT roadmap. After all, now more than ever, IT must act to sustain and support company growth by simplifying and optimizing business processes. It is an area that leads disruption and must always stay ahead of, and aligned with, business needs.

In this article, we go over some important points for building your IT roadmap. Read on!

Main uses and benefits of an IT roadmap

With an IT roadmap, an organization can identify what technology it needs (or how it can adapt the technology it already has) to meet specific business objectives. These can be near-term goals or major multi-year objectives. The roadmap also defines the core processes for when and how the technology solution will be implemented.

For company executives, an IT roadmap provides the information needed to make sound technology investments, answering questions such as:

• What is the current state of all technology across the organization?
• Are the right technologies in place to support the organization's core capabilities, as well as its critical business functions, if the organization goes through an unexpected disruption?
• Is there a different technology supporting similar capabilities within the organization that could be leveraged?

As the business grows, IT will also need to adapt and, in many cases, expand significantly. Effective planning helps keep technology costs down and reduces the organization's overall risk exposure.

An IT roadmap can also be used during periods of expansion or transition, such as an acquisition or a company relocation. Here are some types of IT projects that a roadmap can make easier:

• Software migration
• Systems consolidation
• Business continuity
• System upgrades
• Small improvements to the environment
• Implementation of new technologies

How to build an IT roadmap

IT roadmaps offer a great deal of flexibility. There are no set standards for what they should include, so it is important to stay focused on your business's specific needs. Below are the main elements your roadmap can include:

1. Start with a goal

A critical element of an IT roadmap is identifying the strategic goals the organization wants to achieve. From those objectives, you identify the technology solutions that would help reach them.

If your technology decisions are based only on what your organization currently uses, you end up with a very narrow view of the possible solutions. An IT roadmap with clearly defined objectives allows the organization to evaluate its internal systems as well as systems it may never have considered.

2. Focus on the top priorities

Roadmaps are not to-do lists. With technology constantly evolving, along with the challenge of planning for the future, it is easy to see how IT roadmaps can go wrong. When your roadmap communicates that you know the why, the what and the how, and that you have an action plan, you stay connected to your business strategy and keep a sense of key priorities, even as new information comes in.

3. Get outside opinions

The beauty of an IT roadmap is that it allows a broader view of technologies. This underscores the importance of making the roadmap a collaborative process. In other words, an IT roadmap is stronger when it includes the perspectives of business partners, vendors and consultants.

That is why it can be a good idea to spend time outside the office developing technology partners. This is how you get a real sense of the competitive landscape and discover technology alternatives that can help improve your company's business positioning.

4. State your mission

Your IT roadmap should have a clear mission statement that conveys the strategy behind it. This usually comes from the CEO, CIO or CMO in the form of a list of initiatives, which can be turned into a mission statement. Having a mission statement helps everyone involved understand the overall objectives.

5. Create a list of tactics and prioritize it

These tactics relate directly to the goals outlined in the mission statement. Tactics are usually high-level initiatives. Each tactic should have a timeline and be made up of smaller tasks or work items (also with timelines) that can be assigned to an owner.

6. Align your tactics with a budget (or cost estimate) and a business case

Aligning your tactics with a budget (or cost estimate) makes it easier to set the priority of each action. It also serves as a checkpoint if priorities change.

7. Prioritize clarity

Finally, make sure the IT roadmap is visual, accessible and clear enough for anyone to look at it and answer these three questions:

• What are we doing?
• Why are we doing it?
• How does it relate to our goals?

Did you find these tips for building your IT roadmap useful? The Intellevo team is available for a no-commitment conversation and to contribute to your company's IT roadmap. Get in touch with us!