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Nine business roadmap examples for scaling your organization

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Business roadmaps can take on countless forms—depending on the business function the roadmapper is in charge of.

To help narrow the scope for any business planning its own growth, we’ve outlined 9 business roadmap examples below that are aimed at organizations looking to scale. ( Btw, all of these roadmaps are available in our roadmap template library, which you can check out here! )

We’ll also be offering examples of each type of business roadmap that fall under two general formats: timeline roadmaps (roadmaps planned with specific dates in mind) and swimlane roadmaps .

Timeline-view roadmaps are, as the name suggests, roadmaps that lay out a specific timeline for a plan or strategy. These roadmaps usually highlight time-based elements per each initiative on the roadmap (like milestones, key dates, and dependencies). Swimlane-view roadmaps, on the other hand, offer fuzzier “buckets” of time for initiatives on the roadmap like backlog / in progress / completed.

Searching for the right tool for your roadmapping needs? Let our roadmap tool guide help you.

1. business roadmap.

For a company that needs a flexible document that effectively presents key business goals, dates, and plans of action relevant to all stakeholders.

What’s a business roadmap?

A business roadmap is a visualization of your company’s major objectives and strategies. Stakeholders use business roadmaps to illustrate initiatives and deadlines happening in different departments.

Like a business plan, a roadmap gives the long view of where your organization is going and how it will get there. For businesses to succeed, stakeholders need a shared understanding of the big picture. Business roadmaps knock down silos between teams and provide a clear vision of the future.

For a more detailed breakdown of what a business roadmap is and isn’t, check out our guide: What’s a Business Roadmap?

Business roadmap examples

This view also lets teams see how their work is contributing to efforts to grow the business, which in turn can help businesses see and squash any silos between departments and stakeholders.

For businesses that aren’t ready to allocate specific timeframes to every single initiative on their roadmap, that’s where a swimlane-view works really well. By showing each department’s individual projects and strategies, you can have swimlanes dedicated to each team and then organize items by any timeframe.

Think of this type of roadmap as a snapshot of each team’s primary objectives for certain periods of time. Someone should be able to look at this roadmap and quickly understand what each team is trying to achieve in each timeframe.

Align all your stakeholders around the business goals that matter using our business roadmap template .

2. Strategic roadmap

For companies with a strong vision that need a visual blueprint to stay on top of the goals that matter the most to the business.

What is a strategic roadmap?

Simply put, a strategic roadmap communicates your business’ vision. Outlining the steps to achieve your mission, a business roadmap hinges on long-term objectives and deadlines. The keyword here is long-term. That means it doesn’t include product features and short-term wins; this roadmap is reserved for overarching goals like fundraising rounds and MRR targets.

Generally owned by senior-level stakeholders, this roadmap should be accessible to every employee (not to edit per se, but to view). By granting this access, you align your individual departments on your plans to grow the business and you encourage teams to develop projects that contribute directly to said growth.

Strategic roadmap examples

For organizations planning their business growth strategy over the next few months, quarters, or years, a timeline-view of the strategic roadmap works really well. Businesses can use this time-based view of a business roadmap to track key initiatives and milestones that each of your departments will undertake to contribute to the overall mission.

A swimlane-view of the roadmap is perfect for businesses that are less strict about the “when” of their strategic planning. This roadmap assigns each team an individual swimlane and organizes their respective strategic initiatives by status. This way, any stakeholder can quickly glance and know what strategic project is upcoming, in progress, or completed.

Plan to achieve your big vision with our ready-to-use strategic roadmap template .

3. Startup roadmap

For early-stage companies that need a way to communicate and align on what to build first, in what order, and how to deliver it.

What’s a startup roadmap?

While a business roadmap can be adapted for any size organization, the common roadmap template might not be as applicable if you don't have many teams or resources. That’s why we suggest a startup roadmap for businesses still finding their footing.

A startup roadmap helps smaller businesses plan how they’ll hit the ground running and then scale to a much larger size. Because starting your own business is very much a roller coaster of an experience, a startup roadmap helps bring some clarity to the messy and experimental process.

Startups tend not to be heavily process-oriented. As a result, startup roadmaps lean more on the high-level and flexible side, so as to adapt quickly to the often chaotic startup environment. The roadmap is a small business’ way of zooming in on its end goal (hint: business growth) and mapping out a feasible plan to achieve said goal.

Startup roadmap examples

The truth is, as a startup, you’re probably not too strict about timelines. So, that’s where a swimlane-view of the startup roadmap is most useful. For startups that just aren’t as confident (or trusting) of their timelines, apply a Swimlane View for your business where the focus is on the status of the project, not when it’s getting pushed out.

Startups, we got you. Chart your growth with our customizable startup roadmap template .

4. Business development roadmap

For companies that need a way to organize teams around a market-share growth plan.

What’s a business development roadmap?

For super-speedy businesses barreling towards major growth by the end of the year, a business development roadmap is an ideal asset for your toolkit. This roadmap highlights the essential tasks that contribute to rapid revenue and market-share growth, often in a one-year timeframe.

Sales, marketing, and product teams champion this roadmap, as they use this tool to plan and communicate their business development projects that play a hand in aggressive business growth. For example, sales can use this roadmap to visualize their “land and expand” strategies, while product can outline initiatives like a referral program or live chat that will capture more customers—and ultimately rake in $$.

Business development roadmap examples

Milestones can clearly highlight the KPIs the business wants to hit during this growth period, thereby giving your teams specific goals (and deadlines) to strive towards. On top of that, you can also explicitly communicate external factors, like changes to privacy laws or updates to a certain OS, that could muddy the “biz dev” waters.

For the less deadline-oriented businesses, a swimlane-view lets you bucket your business development tasks into loose buckets such as quarters. It’s a sweet and simple way to manage all the teams’ expectations on when certain things must get done.

Reach your biz dev goals (even) faster with our business development roadmap template .

5. Business intelligence roadmap

For managers and their teams that need a tool for keeping track of and visualizing the different areas of BI everyone is working on.

What’s a business intelligence roadmap?

For business intelligence (BI) teams that want to maximize their effect on organizational decisions and growth, enlist a business intelligence roadmap. Owned and operated by BI managers and their teams, this type of roadmap visualizes and communicates all aspects of BI, from data mining and analysis to querying and reporting.

BI managers can use this roadmap to plan how their team can optimize internal business processes to be more efficient, which leads to better-informed decisions by the business. An added benefit of this roadmap is that it helps BI managers inform the rest of the organization and C-level executives about what BI is doing and how they plan on being a part of the business’ bigger picture.

Business intelligence roadmap examples

The swimlane-view of the BI roadmap hones in on the BI team’s higher-level goals versus the dates that they’re hitting. Assigning BI tasks to different business verticals like data governance, process improvement or architecture & infrastructure, this roadmap then organizes tasks based on BI goals like strategy, growth and efficiency.

Build your own business intelligence roadmap with our ready-to-use template (just like above ☝️).

6. Data strategy roadmap

For teams that need to communicate how a company’s data operations will evolve over time, as well as what resources will be required to achieve them.

What’s a data strategy roadmap?

A data strategy roadmap tells the rest of your organization how you’ll improve your business’ data operations—such as data collection, storage, management, and application. Well-planned and properly stored data = better business decisions = better organizational growth.

This roadmap tends to fall into the hands of your CIOs, CTOs, and data teams. These data-leaning individuals use this roadmap to ensure their business’ data strategy fits nicely with not only their business processes, but security and information management best practices.

Think of this roadmap as a way to answer any pressing questions—internally and externally—regarding how your business handles data. Are you legally (and ethically) collecting the right data from your users when they visit your website? Are you storing any “unclean” data that should be expunged from your records? What security protocols are in place in case of a data breach?

Data strategy roadmap examples

For more flexibility with your data strategy, apply a swimlane-view . Rather than mapping data initiatives across an extensive timeline, the team’s activities and tasks are sorted into smaller time frames like months or quarters. This way, the team (and organization) can see which types of data security initiatives are getting priority and when.

Get your data strategy in order with our data strategy roadmap template .

7. Enterprise architecture roadmap

For enterprise businesses that need a way to communicate—and align stakeholders on—a plan for evolving the organization’s infrastructure.

What’s an enterprise architecture roadmap?

Enterprises need a roadmap to bring clarity to the chaos. Designed for your big corporations and complex, towering businesses, an enterprise architecture roadmap presents how an enterprise will evolve its own infrastructure in the coming years.

Focusing on organizational agility, efficiency, and stability, this business roadmap illustrates the steps that will be taken to evolve the enterprise’s architecture from status quo to end goal. Mapping and planning this evolution communicates to the rest of the organization how the enterprise will stay competitive and brace itself for changes in the market.

Enterprise architecture roadmap examples

For enterprises that want to provide a quick summary of their business growth, a swimlane-view may be more your speed. Charting enterprise architecture projects across flexible timeframes like months or quarters, this roadmap provides an overtly transparent depiction of which project will be completed when.

Start planning how your organization's infrastructure will evolve using our enterprise architecture roadmap template

8. eCommerce roadmap

For eCommerce businesses that need a way to visually map and communicate future growth, customer acquisition strategies, and optimization efforts.

What’s an eCommerce roadmap?

An eCommerce roadmap aligns the various marketing, design, merchandising, and development initiatives involved in sustaining and growing an ecommerce platform. Milestones come in handy by marking common deadlines, such as collection launches and important seasonal retail dates.

This type of roadmap can help an organization plan the development of an online business, coordinate cross-departmental efforts, and better identify business opportunities.

eCommerce roadmap examples

And with the swimlane-view , you can get a high-level, less time-sensitive version of your ecommerce strategy.

Keep your stakeholders aligned on how you plan to grow your eCommerce business using our enterprise architecture roadmap

9. Capability roadmap

For teams that need a way to visualize the plan around resources for big, future projects.

What’s a capability roadmap?

You know those big projects you’ve always envisioned, but they’re so grand they take years to implement? A capability roadmap helps you plan how to execute these projects.

Plotting the large-scale goals a business wants to tackle in the next few quarters or years, a capability roadmap revolves around potential rather than your present projects. It plans the super-ambitious, game-changing goals beyond features and releases. Think launching five product lines in three years, or opening up a global office in Europe, or owning 25 percent of the market share in two years.

Capability roadmap examples

If a timeline is too detailed for your capability plans, a swimlane-view might be more up your alley. Organizing your plans into loose and/or fuzzy time buckets like years or “Future,” this roadmap view offers a digestible snapshot of how and when each team plans on tackling capability initiatives.

Try this template for free + check out the other 35+ roadmap templates in our library and find the perfect roadmap for your organizational needs.

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From Strategy to Execution: How to Create a Sustainable, Repeatable Implementation Plan

By Kate Eby | December 14, 2017

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In this article, you’ll learn the fundamental elements of a strategic implementation process, and how you can create a comprehensive implementation plan. We’ve also included free, downloadable implementation plan templates to get you started. 

Included on this page, you’ll find the components of an implementation plan , how to write an implementation plan , and tools for successful implementation planning .

What Is an Implementation Strategy?

An implementation strategy is based on a strategic plan , which defines the strategy used to accomplish certain goals or make decisions. Organizations can make strategic plans to guide organizational direction, a particular department’s efforts, or any project or initiative.

Implementation strategy is the process of defining how to bring the strategic plan to life. To execute the objectives outlined in the strategic plan, you must define how you will implement each aspect, from funding and personnel to organization and deliverables. Therefore, without an implementation strategy, it can be difficult to identify how you will achieve each of your stated goals and objectives. 

Ray McKenzie is the Founder and Managing Director of Red Beach Advisors . He breaks down the differences between strategy, implementation, and execution: “Implementation planning is the act of developing a tactical plan to complete a strategic initiative. Strategy is the overarching plan to move the organization, department, or project forward. Implementation is the act of putting the strategy into place utilizing resources within an organization or department. Execution is completing the tasks as part of the implementation plan to complete the strategic initiative through resources of the organized team.”

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What Is the Strategic Implementation Process?

The strategic implementation process refers to the concrete steps that you take to turn your strategic plan into action. The implementation tactics you use and steps you take will depend on the specific undertaking, organization, and goals.

A strategic implementation plan (SIP) is the document that you use to define your implementation strategy. Typically, it outlines the resources, assumptions, short- and long-term outcomes, roles and responsibilities, and budget. (Later on, we’ll show you how to create one.) An SIP is often integrated with an execution plan , but the two are distinct. 

The SIP outlines the activities and decisions necessary to turn the strategic goals into reality, and the execution plan is a schedule of concrete actions and activities to achieve goals and drive success. You can consider your strategy “implemented” once you determine that you have the requisite resources to meet your strategic needs, but you haven’t “executed” until you’ve actually taken action and achieved objectives. You can read more about the differences between strategy, implementation, and execution in this article by the Harvard Business Review . 

The strategic implementation process is often compared to the following activities:

Jennifer Hancock is the author of several books and Founder of Humanist Learning Systems , an organization that provides online personal and professional development training in humanistic business management, along with science-based harassment training. She describes the difference between organizational and implementation planning: “Organizational planning is the structure of the organization: What work needs to be done? How does it relate to the other work that needs to be done? Who is responsible for getting it done? How are the parts of the organization going to work together to accomplish shared objectives? Implementation planning has to do with specific projects and processes. For instance, an organization may have an HR department — that is, organizational planning. Implementation is when the HR department rolls out a new set of benefits or a new health care plan.”

‌ Download Organizational Change Management Plan

• Strategic Management Process: This is the ongoing effort to manage an organization, including both the decisions and actions that flow from the organizational strategy. Continuous strategic management can inform organizational planning by providing a strategy that outlines the organization’s goals. 
• Change Management: Change management is how you prepare and manage organizational planning, from the high-level processes and culture down to individual roles. Effective change management involves strategy and careful monitoring so that you can plan for change rather than react to it. 

Download Change Management Process Template

• Differentiated Planning: This is a reordering method that you can use to identify which resources you need based on the frequency with which you typically use them. Separate the items on your reorder list into three categories: routine, regular, and rare. This will give you a rough idea of the different demand levels for each resource, so you don’t have to spend time considering whether or not to restock. Because identifying and accumulating resources is an important component of implementation planning, it’s useful to understand differentiated planning. 

Why Implementation Is Important

Implementation planning largely determines project success because without it, your strategic goals remain unactionable. Therefore, implementation is the necessary step that transforms your strategic plans into action to achieve your goals. 

There are many examples where implementation planning heightens project success. In fact, the Harvard Business Review reported that companies with an implementation and execution plan saw 70 percent greater returns. 

McKenzie says that implementation planning is critical to project success. “This is the stage which allows the planned strategy to be executed,” he says. “The primary benefits to implementation and implementation planning are the abilities to outline the tasks needed to complete the project, identify the personnel and resources needed, and document the timeline for project completion to ensure you’re meeting the strategic goals.”

Hancock agrees. “If you don’t implement your plan — you don’t get anything done,” she says. “So, implementation is crucial. [Even] if you have the best plan in the world, it’s totally irrelevant if you don’t put the plan into action,” she adds.

Fiona Adler writes about entrepreneurship at DoTheThings.com and is the Founder of Actioned.com , a productivity tool for individuals and teams. With an MBA, multiple business successes, and a family living in a foreign country, she enjoys pushing the envelope to get the most out of life and loves helping others do the same. Adler explains that implementation is often more crucial than the strategy itself. She says, “In my opinion, implementation is far more important than strategic planning. After all, it doesn't matter if you have the best plan in the world. All that really matters is what you end up doing!”

The practice of implementation planning is also important in some of today’s organizational shifts. Most notably, implementation plays a part in the current shift from reactionary to strategic companies — in other words, organizations that plan for change and adaptation rather than react to it. Additionally, implementation supports the movement toward employee-oriented organizations, which it does by valuing communication, encouraging mutually-supported goals, and emphasizing accountability. Implementation planning is necessarily a human (and team) endeavor and making it a part of your daily processes helps ensure collaboration, trust, and transparency among project team members all the way up to C-suite management. 

What Is the Implementation Plan of a Project?

Implementation plans are commonly used for discrete projects, technology deployment within a company, and inventory planning. You can also create an implementation plan for personal use if it will help you organize and take actionable steps toward your goal(s).

A project implementation plan is the plan that you create to successfully move your project plan into action. This document identifies your goals and objectives (both short and long-term), lists the project tasks, defines roles and responsibilities, outlines the budget and necessary resources, and lists any assumptions. A project implementation plan sometimes includes a rough schedule, but teams usually set the hard timeline in the execution plan. 

In the following sections, we’ll delve deeper into each component of an implementation plan and show you how to write your own. 

Components of an Implementation Plan

The following are the key components of and questions that drive a successful implementation plan:

• Define Goals/Objectives: What do you want to accomplish? The scope of these goals will depend on the size of your undertaking.
• Schedule Milestones: While task deadlines and project timelines will be formally set in the execution plan, it’s a good idea to outline your schedule in the implementation phase.
• Allocate Resources: One of the core purposes of an implementation plan is to ensure that you have adequate resources (time, money, and personnel) to successfully execute. So, gather all the data and information you need to determine whether or not you have sufficient resources, and decide how you will procure what’s missing.
• Designate Team Member Responsibilities: Assign roles. This doesn’t necessarily mean you must define who will execute each individual task, but you should create a general team plan with overall roles that each team member will play. 
• Define Metrics for Success: How will you determine whether or not you are successful? What data (whether quantitative or qualitative) will you use to measure your results, and how will you accrue the necessary data?
• Define How You Will Adapt: Make a plan for how you will adapt, if necessary, to changes in your plan. Be sure to consider factors outside your control that could significantly alter the schedule or success of your project, and create emergent strategies ahead of time, so you don’t get derailed down the road — doing so helps build a culture of flexibility, agility, and fast action. 
• Evaluate Success: In addition to defining your metrics for success, decide how often you will evaluate your progress (e.g., quarterly reviews). 

In the following section, we’ll break down each element of a successful implementation plan to show you how to write one yourself. 

How to Write an Implementation Plan

Implementation plans are split into sections. Each section should be detailed, combining the information from your strategic plan and incorporating the necessary research and data to make your objectives actionable. Here’s how to write each component in an implementation plan:

• Introduction: The introduction of your implementation plan explains the purpose, vision, and mission statement of your project or initiative. You should identify the high-level risk areas, include any assumptions, and describe how you will identify the value stream in your proposed work. 
• Management Overview: In this section, you describe how implementation will be managed. This includes who is managing it, the underlying roles and responsibilities, and key points of contact. You should identify the strategy director, who is the person that develops and steers the strategy (this may or not be the same person who is leading implementation). 
• Major Tasks: This is where you list and describe the specific tasks, actions, and targets in implementation. You should also note the status of any tasks that are already in progress. 
• Implementation Schedule: You do not need to create a detailed, inflexible task schedule in your implementation plan — we’ll talk later on about how to create a schedule in the execution plan. At this stage, it’s appropriate to simply list the task order and predicted phase durations to roughly outline and allot for all the many moving pieces. 
• Security and Privacy: Discuss the privacy features and considerations of the software tools, processes, or information that you may use in implementation. Address security issues and how to handle sensitive information (personal data, medical history, financials, etc.). 
• Implementation Support/Resources List: Describe the various tools, activities, and departments that you require to support successful implementation. These might include hardware or software tools, facilities, and additional external human resources or services.
• Documentation: In this section, you must attach any other documentation that supports your implementation plan. This could include your strategic plan, confirmation of adequate materials and resources, and a history of past successful projects. 
• Monitoring Performance: Define the metrics by which you will measure success. How and when will you review your progress? 
• Acceptance Criteria: How will you define implementation “completion?” This differs from performance monitoring because rather than defining metrics for milestones and appropriate implementation, here, you describe how you will know when you have buy-in from management on your implementation plan. 
• Glossary: Define any key terms used in your implementation plan. 
• References: Indicate where you received your information, or list people who support your plan.
• Project Approval: If you need management’s approval before moving into execution, this section provides space for official signoff. 

To make it easy, you can also use a template to write your implementation plan. This will ensure that you don’t overlook any steps or sections and also provide a professional layout that you can use to deliver to management, clients, or other stakeholders. Download the template for free, and edit the fields to fit the needs of your specific project  — for example, for enterprise resource planning (ERP) . 

‌ Download Project Implementation Plan Template - Word

Software deployment is another common category of initiative that merits an implementation plan. Use the following template to create a software and systems implementation plan. 

‌ Download Software Systems Implementation Plan Template - Word

Implementation Planning Best Practices

Although you should include all the detailed aspects listed above in your implementation plan, simply having all these components will not ensure success. Instead, you should focus on the process of implementation and foster the following behaviors within your team:

• Create a Designated Implementation Team: An implementation team is the team responsible for ensuring successful implementation of a particular initiative. While it’s possible to move through implementation without creating a specific, organized body to oversee the processes, doing so heightens your chances of success. 
• Create a Shared Vision among All Team Members: Establish “why” you are making strategic changes so that team members have both a greater understanding of the root cause and a deeper connection to their work. Ensure individual compliance, so people don’t feel like their voices went unheard. Adler emphasizes, “Involve the people who will actually be implementing the change during the planning phase. Ideally, the idea will even come from them. This inclusion greatly increases the buy-in and commitment that the team has to actually getting the project implemented.”
• Choose a Strong Team Leader: The team leader should coach and educate team members along the way and seek out guidance from past implementation plan leaders to improve upon existing implementation processes within the organization. Adler explains that there can be multiple team leaders with slightly different responsibilities: “Each initiative needs a team. The team includes a ’champion,’ someone who is ultimately responsible for getting the thing done. They should also have a ’management sponsor,’ someone that can help the team get through any blocks they might have,” she says.
• Define Actionable Goals: Stay specific, define current issues, and identify root causes. Methods for defining current problems include brainstorming, surveys, and new member information forms. You can also use the note card method: Ask each team member to answer three questions anonymously ( What is the single biggest issue facing our team?, What will be the most important issue in five years?, What is the best way for our team to be involved in these issues? ), separate the cards into piles with similar answers, and count which answers are the most common within the group. Use the highest ranking similar answers to stimulate discussion of how to proceed. 
• Create an Action-Oriented Plan: Regardless of the size or predicted duration of your goals, create a plan focused on incremental action (rather than on continual planning). Small steps add up, so stay positive and focus on the future. That said, Hancock reiterates that your plan must be realistic: “Make sure your plan is reality-based,” she says. “You need to know what problem you really should be solving so that you don’t end up solving proxy problems (problems you think are your problem but really aren’t — an example of this is praying for rain when your real problem is that you need water on your field). You need to know what is really going to impact your problem so that you don’t pray for rain, which doesn’t affect anything. And, finally, you need to know what you really need to do to get the work done. What resources do you need? Do you have the resources you need? Can you get the resources you need? If not, your plan won’t work” she continues.
• Value Communication: The team leader should not only value others’ input, but also make active participation an expectation. Open, honest communication keeps processes transparent and helps generate new ideas. 
• Continually Monitor Incremental Success: Perform analysis and hold regular progress meetings to analyze your development. Closely monitoring your progress enables you to make adjustments before crisis hits and allows you to adapt before processes or expectations become solidified. Additionally, treating incremental milestones as successes helps foster a culture where employees feel valued for their contributions. Adler explains, “Building a culture where employees expect that projects will be successfully implemented is important. Celebrate successes and reference previous projects frequently.”
• Involve the Correct People at the Correct Times: This includes defining when and why it is appropriate to involve upper management. As McKenzie says, “Include the critical stakeholders that are part of the project. The beginning of planning should only include the decision makers and not every team member that is part of the project. Outline the critical tasks that are needed first. Once the tasks are outlined, dictate the personnel who will be responsible for the tasks. Once you identify the personnel, then bring in the additional resources to find what other tasks are needed to complete the larger tasks. To draft a proper implementation plan, it is imperative to include the critical stakeholders to outline the initiative.”
• Publicize Your Plan: While you don’t necessarily want every stakeholder’s input at all times during implementation planning, you do want to maintain transparency with other teams and management. Make your plan available to higher-ups to keep your team accountable down the line.

Difficulties in Implementation Planning

While implementation planning is critical to successful execution, there are several hurdles:

• Unless you are disciplined about moving into the execution phase, you can get stuck in planning and never get your project off the ground. 
• In any project, you may struggle to gain buy-in from key stakeholders. 
• It can also be difficult to break down every goal into an actionable step. If you keep your goals tangible, you can more easily identify targeted actions that will move you toward them. 
• No matter how well you plan, all projects have a high propensity for failure. Don’t get discouraged, though — dedicated, strategic implementation planning will raise the likelihood of project success. 

Although the above hurdles can be time-consuming and tedious, they are investments that will help you create a culture of trust. Because implementation is an ongoing team effort, you can’t afford to lack buy-in and commitment from any member of your team or direct stakeholders. So, communicate often and honestly, and prioritize teamwork when implementing your strategic plan. 

Still, even though inclusion and teamwork are key to a successful strategy, McKenzie reiterates that implementation planning won’t work if too many people are involved. “Implementation planning often gets derailed due to the input from various people that are not involved in the project,” he says. “There needs to be a clear line between the implementation team who is responsible for the execution and final project completion and the customers, internal or external, who are the recipients of the project. The customers can outline their requirements, but the implementation, tasks, and deliverables should be guided by the implementation team,” he concludes.

Adler explains that another common mistake is taking on too much at once. “It takes a lot of work to get something significantly new implemented,” she notes. “For this reason, the fewer initiatives the business takes on simultaneously, the greater the chances of success. Each initiative will take its team members away from their 'normal' work to some degree, and the business needs to be able to support this. If there are six things the business wants to implement, it is better to take on one or two at a time than to try to tackle all six at once,” she points out.

Tools for Successful Implementation Planning

While the implementation plan itself is a relatively low-tech document, software tools can help you track and manage your progress. From Gantt charts to advancements in information and communication technology, you’ll find popular implementation planning tools and their benefits below.

A Gantt chart is a graphical bar chart that you can use as a project timeline, and many software programs exist that allow you to create these online charts. As you move from implementation to execution, a Gantt chart can help you track individual task progress, see relationships among tasks, and identify critical or at-risk tasks. 

Download Basic Gantt with Dependencies Template 

Excel | Smartsheet

You can use a PERT (program evaluation and review technique) chart to forecast project duration by creating a timeline for individual tasks and identifying dependent tasks. PERT requires you to forecast three separate timetables — the shortest possible, the most likely, and the longest possible — which forces you to stay flexible in your planning, so you can adapt your schedule as factors inevitably change over the course of a project. 

When you have successfully implemented your plan, you’re ready to move to project execution. Execution planning and monitoring is outside the scope of this article, but below you’ll find more helpful templates to move your project toward successful completion. 

Download General Action Plan Template

Download Project Timeline Template

Download Project Charter Template 

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Advancements in information and communication technology (ICT) have led to the development of cloud-based software that allows for anytime, anywhere access and multiple users. This technological capability is especially helpful for group work, in which multiple team members need to access a certain file simultaneously while also avoiding version control issues. For example, organizations commonly use cloud-based software to create a project management system or performance management system.

Using software to manage your implementation plan can provide the following benefits:

• Drive Accountability: By creating a single record of project progress, you build transparency (both in team members and processes) and reliability. 
• Keep Everyone up to Date: All users can access the most current information, which, in turn, cuts out unnecessary communication or erroneous double-work. 
• Improve Flexibility: Project management software can help you identify bottlenecks and potential problems early on, so you are able to adapt in anticipation. If you are attempting Agile project management, flexibility is crucial. 
• Support Organizational Commitment: Using a software tool often provides the transparency necessary to get executives to support your project. Once they have visibility into processes and progress, they will be more likely to grant the buy-in you need to procure resources and succeed.

When deciding which tool to use, consider the following:

• Buying Tools vs. Developing Software Internally: This will depend on the capabilities and availability of your in-house developers as well as on your budget. Additionally, consider whether or not you have the bandwidth to engage with a vendor and maintain the relationship over time. 
• Open Source vs. Free vs. Subscription: Open source software provides a great opportunity for organizations with limited budgets and development resources to build on top of the existing open platforms. There are also many free programs available (not open source). However, be wary that free options may have limited functionality. For organizations with larger budgets and a greater need for powerful functionality, most paid platforms bill on a subscription basis.
• Usability Requirements: Consider your team’s skill level. While you might be drawn to a tool with fancy functionality, it will be pointless (and perhaps even detract from project success) if it is too difficult for your team to use or learn. 

Ultimately, software tools are a fantastic way not only to elevate the accuracy of tracking project metrics and progress, but also to save time, build flexibility, and stimulate communication among your team. 

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What is a business roadmap? Best practices to achieve your business plan

Last updated: March 2024

A business (or company) roadmap is a tool that outlines the direction you will take to achieve your business plan and meet your long-term strategic goals. Company and product leaders use business roadmaps to communicate an organization's vision and plans at every growth stage — from early-stage startup to established enterprise company.

Build your own roadmap in Aha! Roadmaps. Try it for free .

This custom roadmap created in Aha! Roadmaps shows business goals and initiatives, success metrics, and progress.

Business roadmaps can help organizations of all sizes scale and innovate. Regardless of industry or market, these are essential tools that help everyone in the organization understand key objectives, communicate status, and take action. This guide offers definitions and best practices to help you learn about what goes into creating a business roadmap. The details of your own roadmap will differ based on the unique facets of your company, but there are universal elements that apply to any business.

Use the following links to jump ahead to a specific section:

What is the purpose of a business roadmap?

Business plan vs. business roadmap: what is the difference, what to include on a business roadmap, how to build a business roadmap, who uses a business roadmap, types of business roadmaps, get started with a business roadmap template.

A business roadmap helps you visualize exactly what needs to happen — and when — to transform a company’s vision into reality. You can lay out what will happen in a given month, quarter, or year (or whatever timeline you prefer for visualizing when you will achieve your goals). A business roadmap is flexible by nature. It can be as detailed or abstract as you need it to be depending on the business's maturity and the size of your team.

You might be wondering about the differences between business roadmaps and business plans. If you already have a defined business plan, why do you need another planning tool? To make things more confusing, some people even refer to your business plan as a type of roadmap.

Although there are some areas of overlap between a business plan and a business roadmap, there are also critical distinctions. Let's take a closer look at each tool and what makes them different.

• Roadmapping: Your starter guide
• How to build a brilliant roadmap

Vision vs. mission vs. strategy

A business plan is a detailed foundational document that is generally created at any company's outset. It is essential to running a business and is especially useful for new companies. More established businesses benefit from updating their business plans or creating new ones when expanding into new markets or developing offerings that fundamentally change how their businesses operate.

Here is what you should know about a business plan:

Now, let's focus on a business roadmap. A business roadmap is a visualization of specific aspects of your business plan in a given time frame. It contains active and upcoming work at a high level and is a helpful way to gauge how well the company is tracking toward achieving its business plan.

Broadly speaking, your business roadmap should include the most important strategic plans across the company. This includes goals, initiatives, and major themes of work from cross-functional teams. Because you will likely need to adjust your roadmap over time, be sure everything you add to it deserves to be there. The more you add to your roadmap, the more difficult it can be to change course when new opportunities arise.

You might find that you create a few roadmaps concurrently. For example, you could create a long-term roadmap that covers all aspects of business planning over the next three to five (or even 10) years. This might include high-level forecasts for revenue, marketing and sales, staffing, and operations — as well as new products or services you plan to develop.

Then, you could have a shorter-term business roadmap, either a year or six months at a time. This roadmap might include corporate-level goals and initiatives as well as those of specific functions. You want to show how the entire company will work toward overall business objectives.

To truly benefit from this adaptive style of planning, it is helpful to have all teams working within a shared strategic planning tool like Aha! Roadmaps . Because planning data is updated in real time, every roadmap that the team sees will automatically show progress as it happens. This aligns the organization around what you will achieve and provides clarity into how you will work together to do it.

Creating a business roadmap should be part of your strategic planning process. Most successful companies follow a goal-first approach to roadmapping.

Set goals: Establish what you want to achieve, from revenue to hiring.

Gather information: Seek input from organizational leaders and research your market.

Organize into themes: Identify patterns in your inputs.

Prioritize initiatives: Use those themes to define initiatives, making sure each one supports a specific goal.

Add time frames: Forecast resourcing and evaluate when each initiative would need to be completed.

Review and revise: Evaluate your progress against the roadmap often so you can spot challenges and adjust as needed.

As you build your business roadmap, remember to keep your goals in mind. They should inform all of your plans.

Anyone with a vested interest in your company’s success will benefit from having access to some version of your business roadmap. Because a business roadmap visualizes the company’s goals and objectives, you can think of it as a blueprint that all stakeholders can rally around and follow. Here are some of the types of people and teams who can use a business roadmap:

Angel investors

Business owners

Consultants

Entrepreneurs

Marketing teams

Product managers

Sales teams

Startup founders

Venture capitalists

What is the best way to engage with each person? What information do they need to do their job well? What is superfluous? Use the empathy you built and seek to share what can help them succeed in their role. Alignment happens when you provide the right information at the right time. Brian de Haaff Aha! co-founder and CEO

Each functional group should have their own roadmap — from product management to marketing and IT . There might be times when you need different types of business roadmaps or different views for different audiences. Unlike a startup roadmap, these are geared toward more established companies. Here are a couple examples:

Business development roadmap: A business development roadmap outlines strategic expansion efforts. This would include things like new partnerships, sales channels, or market shifts.

Business intelligence roadmap: A business intelligence roadmap focuses on tracking and planning all business operations . This would include strategic efforts to affect performance, such as change management, process improvement, or adopting new technologies.

• What is the role of a product operations manager?

Objectives and key results (OKR) templates

Business roadmaps vs. product roadmaps

• What is an agile roadmap?

Templates help you repeat success, standardize work, and save time. Define your strategic planning process and create a format for your business roadmap that works for your company. Then, templatize it. Standardizing your business roadmap template will help reduce inefficiencies. When people do not have to guess at how to do their planning, they can spend more time on strategic thinking.

6 business model templates for product builders

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Take a look at this roadmap template built on a whiteboard in Aha! software. You can easily customize the roadmap by adding your own goals, initiatives, milestones, and dependencies. This is a simple, lightweight way to get started with business roadmapping. For more robust roadmapping functionality, Aha! Roadmaps connects your visual plans to actual work. It also includes the whiteboard template below and many other dynamic roadmap views.

Start using this template now

FAQs about business roadmaps

What is the difference between a business roadmap and a business strategy?

A business roadmap is a visualization of your business strategy — a step-by-step, more tactical guide for how you will achieve a business plan. It ensures you can meet any long-term goals you set previously. And in particular, it involves your business's goals, initiatives , milestones , and dependencies .

A business strategy outlines how you approach your work in general. At Aha! we like to break it down into three components:

Foundation: This is where you define your strategic vision and tie it back to business models and positioning templates.

Market: The market includes your customer profiles as well as your competitors.

Imperatives: Imperatives bridge your overall strategy to the work you are going to deliver (i.e., your releases and features). In other words, imperatives link goals to the work items needed to reach them.

What is the difference between a business roadmap and a business vision?

Your business vision is all about defining what lies ahead. It covers why your company exists, where it is headed, and why you believe in that future. Because it impacts your culture, values, and strategic direction, it is important to map out this concept early on and adjust it whenever your future changes. On the other hand, a business roadmap conveys the near-term work you will do to achieve that long-term vision.

How often should you update your business roadmap?

Your business roadmap should be flexible enough that you can update it regularly and painlessly. As a general rule, you should adjust your roadmaps whenever your plans — and those plan details — happen to change. This keeps stakeholders aligned with what is happening throughout the organization in order to reach pre-defined goals.

If you already use Aha! software , we have some good news to share: Because changes you make to records in Aha! Roadmaps automatically update on your roadmap views, there is no work needed on your end to update any existing business roadmaps when plans shift. Everything happens in real time.

How should I plan my startup's first business roadmap?

The process of building a business roadmap is similar for startups and larger enterprises. Start by setting your goals and gathering insights from leadership and the market surrounding what your focus areas should be. You should then organize all of those insights into themes, prioritizing the initiatives that are most aligned with your goals. From there, add realistic time frames for completing each initiative and review your roadmap regularly to gauge progress and determine whether anything needs adjusting.

It is the actual content within a startup's business roadmap that will vary significantly. Both the goals and the work needed to get there will be much different from what you might see on a more established enterprise's roadmap. Rather than goals such as, say, launching an additional product line or expanding sales into a new country, an early-stage startup might aim to launch a Minimum Lovable Product and gain its first 50 customers. Startups seeking outside funding could set a goal to raise a specific amount of venture capital, whereas a bootstrapped startup might focus more on breaking into smaller markets and customer retention. No matter your startup's goals, though, they should appear on your business roadmap.

If you are curious about whether a product roadmap would work for your early-stage startup, try out this template . We also offer higher-fidelity business roadmapping options in Aha! Roadmaps that update automatically whenever your plans change.

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• What is strategy implementation? 6 key ...

What is strategy implementation? 6 key steps to success

Strategy implementation is the process of turning your strategic plan into action. Whether you’re executing a new marketing plan to increase sales or introducing a new work management software to increase efficiency—your plan is only as valuable as the implementation. In this article, we cover the pitfalls of strategy implementation and how you can avoid them. Plus check out different frameworks associated with this process to set you up for success.

Having a strategic plan is great, but unless you have the bandwidth, resources, and support to implement your plan it’s not going to drive actual change in your organization.

We’re going to cover the key steps of strategy implementation, including potential pitfalls and how you can avoid them, and introduce you to a few frameworks to help you successfully implement any strategy you’re currently working on.

The 6 key strategy implementation steps

Before you can implement your strategy you need to create a strategic plan .

Your strategic or implementation plan outlines the steps your team or organization needs to take in order to achieve a goal or objective. Your implementation plan is the roadmap to a successful strategy execution and should include the following steps:

Define your goals

Conduct proper research

Map out any risks

Schedule all milestones

Assign tasks

Allocate helpful resources

Once your strategic plan is set, it’s time to get it on the road! There are six steps to follow on your way to a successful implementation.

Step 1: Set and communicate clear, strategic goals

The first step is where your strategic plan and your strategy implementation overlap.  

To implement a new strategy, you first must identify clear and attainable goals. As with all things, communication is key. Your goals should include your vision and mission statements , long-term goals , and KPIs . 

The clearer the picture, the easier the rest of your strategy implementation will be for your team and organization—simply because everyone will be working towards the same goals. 

Step 2: Engage your team

To implement your strategy both effectively and efficiently , you need to create focus and drive accountability. There are a few ways in which you can keep your team engaged throughout the implementation process:

Determine roles and responsibilities early on. Use a RACI matrix to clarify your teammate’s roles and ensure that there are no responsibility gaps.

Delegate work effectively . While it can be tempting to have your eyes on everything, micromanagement will only hold you back. Once you’ve defined everyone’s roles and responsibilities, trust that your team will execute their tasks according to the implementation plan.

Communicate with your team and ensure that everyone knows how their individual work contributes to the project. This will keep everyone motivated and on track.

Step 3: Execute the strategic plan

Allocate necessary resources —like funding for strategic or operational budgets—so your team can put the strategic plan into action. If you don’t have the right resources you won’t be able to achieve your strategic plan, so this should be a top priority. Here’s how you can ensure that your team has the resources they need:

Start with the end in mind to effectively align your project’s objectives, key deliverables, milestones, and timeline.

Identify available resources like your team’s capacity, your available budget, required tools or skills, and any other unconventional resources

Define a clear project scope so you know exactly what your project needs when.

Share your project plan with everyone involved in the implementation process using a work management tool.

The better built out your strategic plan is, the easier it will be to implement it.

Step 4: Stay agile

You’ll inevitably run into issues as you begin implementing your strategy. When this happens, shift your goals or your approach to work around them. 

Create a schedule so you can frequently update the status of your goals or implementation strategy changes. Depending on the strategy you’re implementing, you can create weekly, monthly, or quarterly project status reports . Share these updates with your external stakeholders, as well as your internal team, to keep everyone in the loop.

Having a central source of truth where you can update your team in real time will help you streamline this process. Asana’s work management software allows your team to coordinate projects, tasks, and processes in real time but also gives you the freedom to get work done asynchronously —providing everyone with the visibility they need to understand who’s doing what.

Step 5: Get closure

Once you implement the strategy, connect with everyone involved to confirm that their work feels complete. Implementing a strategy isn’t like a puzzle that’s finished when the last piece is set. It’s like planting a garden that continues to grow and change even when you think you’re done with your work.

Getting closure from your team will be the second to last milestone of your strategy implementation and is a crucial step toward completion.

Step 6: Reflect

Conduct a post-mortem or retrospective to reflect on the implemented strategy, as well as evaluate the success of the implementation process and the strategy itself. This step is a chance to uncover lessons learned for upcoming projects and strategies which will allow you to avoid potential pitfalls and embrace new opportunities in the future.

What you need to implement a strategy

No matter how well thought out your strategy is, you’ll need these five key components to successfully implement any strategy.

You’ll need a team that not only understands the strategy you want to implement but also has the skills and bandwidth to support you. Appoint, hire, and train the right people for the job and ensure that the competencies needed to succeed are present in your project team.

Asana’s Customer Success team was invaluable to our implementation process. They took the time to understand our business and showed us how to create practical workflows and processes to get the most out of Asana. We couldn’t have done it without them.”

Effective resource allocation is one of the most important parts in strategy implementation. Resources can be both financial (e.g., cost of labor) and non-financial (e.g., time to implement strategy).

Organization

Everyone in your organization needs to know what their responsibilities are so they can be accountable for their part in implementing the strategy. This also means that the chain of command has to be defined and communicated so everyone knows who to communicate with during the implementation process.

The tools, capabilities, and systems you’ve put in place are another key component. You have to know what the functions of each of these systems are and how they will support your strategic management process during and after the implementation. 

The final key component is the organizational culture within your company. Rolling out new strategies can be confusing and stressful for teams. Ensuring that everyone knows what they need to know and feels valued and included is crucial for a successful and effective implementation.

McKinsey’s 7S framework

McKinsey & Company is a world-renowned management consulting firm that, among other things, created a framework of seven factors needed to implement a strategy successfully.

The factors can be split into hard elements (strategy, structure, and systems) and soft elements (shared values, skills, style, and staff). While the hard elements are easy to identify and influence directly, the soft elements are less tangible and typically influenced by the company culture versus a manager or other direct contact.

Let’s take a quick look at the McKinsey 7S Model, beginning with the hard elements:

Strategy: Your organization’s plan to establish or maintain a competitive advantage over others in the field

Structure: Your company’s organizational structure

Systems: The day-to-day procedures and activities performed by your teams

These are the soft elements of the framework:

Style: The leadership style in your organization

Staff: Your team and their general capabilities

Skills: Your team’s competencies and skills

Shared values: Your organization's core values

You can apply this framework to your strategy implementation process by looking at your organization’s shared values first and ensuring that they align with your hard elements. Next, identify how well your hard elements support one another and where changes could improve their interaction. After you’ve established that, do the same for your soft elements.

This analysis helps you identify elements that are working well and elements that need improvement. Applying this framework to your strategic plan and strategy implementation process helps you get a better feel for how well your organization can implement change.

The three Cs of implementing strategy

Business consultant and author Scott Edinger coined the three Cs of implementing strategy —clarity, communication, and cascade. They’re the three steps you should keep in mind if you want to implement your strategy successfully.

Let’s take a closer look at what they represent.

Clarify your strategy. Ideally, strategy was well received in the boardroom and your stakeholders and executives are on board. However, if it’s not clearly defined, you may lose your mid-level and frontline team members along the way. Your team can only implement a strategy they understand, so be clear with what your goals and strategic objectives are.

Communicate your strategy. A poster, announcement, or newsletter won’t be enough to communicate a new strategy to your organization. Diversify your communication strategy to ensure that teams know what’s going on and create opportunities to ask questions so everyone feels like they’re part of the process.

Cascade your strategy. A well implemented strategy cascades through your entire organization. Involve your organization’s managers and ensure that they understand the strategy so they can forward relevant information, tactics, and processes to their teams. While you may have informed your organization during the communication stage, this step is crucial in aligning every last teammate with your new strategy.

Next, let’s have a look at some of the challenges you’ll encounter during strategy implementation.

Strategy implementation pitfalls and solutions

A big undertaking like the implementation of a new strategy comes with its fair share of obstacles. Below are four of the most common pitfalls you’ll encounter when implementing a strategy plus a few tips on how you can create solutions for your team. 

1.  Overwhelming or meaningless strategic plan

Problem: If the strategic implementation lacks meaning and potential or if there is an overwhelming number of puzzle pieces to consider, it can really put a wrench in your implementation. 

Solution: Use SMART goals to ensure that your strategic plan is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. This framework will ensure that your strategic plan is both meaningful and possible to implement.

2. No implementation in sight

Problem: It’s great to have a strategic plan but without the resources and support from upper management, the implementation may never happen.

Solution: Your strategic plan should include clear goals, consequences, and requirements to inspire the actual implementation of your strategy. The clearer the document, the easier it will be to get the resources needed to turn it into action.

3. Lack of communication and ownership

Problem: A team that’s not 100% sure what the strategy actually is and doesn’t feel confident about their respective tasks can make your implementation process come to a halt before it’s even begun.

Solution: Clearly define each team member's responsibilities and delegate any relevant work. This gives team members a sense of ownership over the outcome of the strategy implementation. Ensure that your teammates have the authority and resources to execute their tasks.

4. Lack of accountability and empowerment

Problem: Low visibility and a lack of accountability can make your team feel helpless. 

Solution: Schedule regular strategy review and team meetings to discuss each team member’s progress, issues that are arising, and strategy shifts that can contribute to the success of your implementation. Track the progress to give your team a sense of accomplishment whenever they check off another goal they’ve met.

As long as you’re aware of the challenges, you can tackle them head on and avoid unnecessary setbacks.

Plan, implement, celebrate

Change isn’t easy but in order for your team to grow, it’s crucial that your organization does too.

Whether you’re in the midst of developing your strategic plan with a small project team or you’re already communicating your strategy to the entire organization, reliable project management software is critical in ensuring that everyone has access to the resources they need.

And once the strategy is successfully implemented, don’t forget to give yourself and your team a pat on the back. After all, celebrating milestones like these is important too!

Sources: Harvard Business School | MindTools | OnStrategy

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Agile roadmaps: Examples, frameworks, and how to create one

What is an agile roadmap?

Product owners and product managers use roadmaps to communicate the future direction of the product. The focus is typically on new features and functionality, but it isn’t necessarily restricted to these items.

Whereas a typical product roadmap might show expected release dates for these enhancements, in agile, the notion of sticking to deadlines becomes counterintuitive.

Agile development requires an ability to respond to change and address evolving needs at any particular moment. Agile teams also spend less time estimating and forecasting how long something will take and put that time back into experimenting and actually building the product.

As a result, we expect things to change in agile and dates quickly become wishful thinking or empty promises.

Another core principle of agile is fixed capacity. We achieve this by creating stable, long-lived, cross-functional teams. In doing so, we fix our capacity, meaning that scope and/or time are the dimensions that shift. Therefore, it is not possible to pin features to dates in agile.

When we do want to fix dates in agile, scope remains flexible. Both scope and time cannot be fixed in agile.

An agile roadmap, therefore, removes the notion of product deadlines . They still maintain the concept of time (i.e., feature A will come before feature B), but nothing is tied to a specific date.

What makes a product roadmap agile?

To understand what makes a roadmap agile, we first need to underscore a couple of core principles of agile teams .

First, as mentioned, agile teams seek to respond to change. Rather than fixing scope and/or a time, we fix capacity in agile.

From there, scope and/or time must be flexible. This is because, in agile, we value our ability to respond to change over deliver a planned scope of work within a specific timeframe.

The second core concept to agile is focusing on value — more specifically, outcomes over output. Agile teams understand that delivering a new feature or product doesn’t mean that people will automatically use it, pay for it, and derive value from it — and, at any rate, these things do not necessarily translate to better business outcomes (i.e., revenue , customer advocacy , retention , etc).

Therefore, in agile product development, simply delivering something on time is not a core measure of success. There is risk associated with spending too much time and money delivering things that do not impact the customers or business.

Agile roadmaps strip timelines away. More advanced agile roadmaps also focus on outcomes over fitting a list of features or tasks into time-bound releases.

Agile roadmapping frameworks

Let’s take a detailed look at two of the most popular agile product roadmapping frameworks:

Now-Next-Later

The most common agile roadmap model is known as the Now-Next-Later roadmap :

Grouping items into categories of Now, Next, and Later allow for flexibility. Things in the Next and Later columns can frequently change without impacting expectations around precisely when something will be delivered. This makes changing and adapting your roadmap easy.

The Now-Next-Later also still provides a notion of time while not allowing the work to become subservient to time. We know that things in the Now bucket will be coming soon, things in Next will come after those in Now, and those in the Later” group will arrive at some stage in the future. This allows for enough information to help set expectations without compromising flexibility.

As mentioned, more advanced agile roadmaps will communicate the outcome that the team is currently working toward. They may also indicate possible future outcomes.

If moving to zero timelines is too much of a leap for you and your company, a happy middle ground that many agile teams employ is bucketing work into quarters.

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Similar to Now-Next-Later, using quarters provides flexibility as far as exactly when within that quarter something will be delivered. A downside to using this model is that, when something moves beyond the quarter, it may be interpreted as falling short of expectations.

An agile roadmap using quarters would look something like this:

How to create an agile roadmap

Every agile roadmap will look different and depend on your product and company’s unique needs and vision, but the steps outlined below are a good starting point for creating your own agile roadmap:

• Craft your product vision
• Formulate your product strategy
• Set outcomes (optional)
• Map out your roadmap
• Share, review, and adapt

1. Craft your product vision

The first step to any form of product roadmapping is to ensure that you have a clear vision for the product. Your product vision should inform what goes onto the roadmap.

2. Formulate your product strategy

Strategy is a set of choices. In this case, you will need to make a set of choices on how you intend to realize your product vision. These will be choices on what markets you intent to focus on first, what customer problems you aim to address, what principles you want your product to display, what brand traits you want it to have, your positioning in the market , etc.

A product strategy isn’t set in stone, but these choices are key to informing your roadmap.

3. Set outcomes (optional)

The final question in your strategy process should be, “How do I know whether I’m succeeding?”

To answer this question, you will need to develop a set of goals . These should be in the form of outcomes with clear measures that you intend to use to know whether you are achieving that outcome or not.

Product metrics are also particularly important because they help to indicate whether we’re heading in the right direction. For example, you may want to see more monthly active users (MAU) , greater retention, or even more bespoke metrics, such as the percentage of new customers who transfer from a specific competitor.

4. Map out your roadmap

Once you have your vision, strategy, and goals/outcomes, it’s time to translate all those into the actual work. From here, you will need to break these down into epics, opportunities, user stories , etc.

Using your strategy and chosen goal, you should be able to immediately begin to prioriti z e and lay out the work along the Now-Next-Later timeline.

5. Share, review, and adapt

It goes without saying that once you have your roadmap, you need to communicate and validate it. Ensure that your team and stakeholders are across your roadmap.

This should be a continuous process. As you learn more and things change, ensure that you are regularly reviewing your roadmap, making necessary adjustments, and then communicating those changes out.

Agile product roadmap examples

Agile roadmaps are best suited for product development and agile teams that need to respond to change frequently.

Agile roadmaps are adopted by product teams all over the world. Some great example of public agile roadmaps include the following.

ProdPad is a been pioneer of the agile roadmap. Its public product roadmap uses the Now-Next-Later format.

Slack’s agile product roadmap is a variation on the Now-Next-Later format. It groups items into buckets labeled Near Term, Mid Term, Long Term, and Released.

Loom’s roadmpas also use a variation on the Now-Next-Later agile roadmap model, with three buckets labeled Coming Soon, Under Construction, and Launched.

Buffer also uses an agile roadmap . Its model groups items into categories labeled Exploring, In progress, Done and Leaving It For Now.

Unlike the roadmaps described above, Github’s agile roadmap is organized into quarters.

Although not in a kanban format , Atlassian uses both statuses similar to Now-Next-Later and quarters for their roadmap.

Features are marked as Future, Coming Soon, and Released. They also have a corresponding date, which gets more precise as they get closer to release.

For example, Future items are marked with an indicative year, whereas Coming Soon items are marked with an approximate quarter.

Key takeaways

You may be thinking, “This would never work in my organization.” But, as counterintuitive as it may seem, agile roadmapping can be a breath of fresh air.

When we have features meticulously plotted along a timeline, how often do we actually meet those dates? Agile roadmaps seek to embrace the reality that we seldom meet the timelines we set in the first place. The truth is, building products is inherently uncertain, and things change.

Moreover, we must adapt to market and user changes to remain competitive. When we have feature tied to dates, we often find ourselves spending hours each week making constant updates to the roadmap as things shift. We then spend countless hours updating stakeholders and customers.

All that time is taken away from more important things, such as understanding our customers , formulating a product strategy, and actually building the product.

Would you rather spend your time obsessing over dates on a roadmap or working hard to deliver value to your customers? I know which I would choose.

Featured image source: IconScout

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15 Free Strategic Roadmap Templates Every Leader Should Have

Creating a strategic roadmap from scratch can be time-consuming and draining, especially if the end result is a siloed PowerPoint presentation that no one uses. But there's a better approach.

In this article, you’ll get 15 strategic roadmap templates that come prefilled with examples to help you get started. We'll also show you how to create an impactful strategic roadmap that's useful for your teams and drives strategy execution. 

Whether you’re a team lead or an executive in a large organization, this article will provide you with valuable insights into how to create a strategic roadmap that sets your team up for success. 

Inside this article, you’ll discover: 

What Is A Strategic Roadmap?

• How Do I Create An Impactful Strategic Roadmap?

The 15 Best Strategy Roadmap Templates For Strategic Planning

Create your strategic roadmap with cascade 🚀.

A strategic roadmap is a high-level overview that outlines an organization's action plan to achieve its long-term goals. It provides a visual representation of an organization's objectives, priorities, initiatives, and resource allocation in a single view.

Think of it as a GPS for your business that helps you navigate through twists, turns, and obstacles, and keeps you on track toward your destination - success!

📌Here are the benefits you get with a clear and effective strategic roadmap:

• Strategic clarity: Clarity to a wider audience about your organization's objectives and priorities.
• A framework for prioritization: A strategic roadmap identifies the most important actions to take to achieve the organization's goals, allowing different departments to focus their efforts and resources on the most critical areas.
• Monitoring : A visual way of monitoring progress and milestones, and identifying improvement opportunities.

How Do I Create An Impactful Strategic Roadmap? 

Any strategic roadmap worth its salt should include a vision and mission, strategic objectives , projects, metrics, and timelines. But there's more to it than that.

And while some people think a strategic roadmap is just a nice visualization to wow c-level planners and investors—they would be wrong. 

It's not just a colorful chart to whip out at town halls or shareholder meetings.

If you want to leverage roadmaps effectively for your team, they must be actively monitored, updated, and accessible in real-time. Otherwise, they're just another document taking up disk (or cloud) space.

🥲 The old way:

• Isolated: Your strategic roadmap presentation sits in a folder on your company drive. It's isolated, disconnected, and never opened. ( Cues sad violins )
• Manually Updated: Changes, pivots, and updates require teams to update their project management tools manually.
• Multiple Apps and Tools: Communications and execution are scattered across different platforms and communication tools.
• Static Document: Someone thought sharing the roadmap as a PDF, PPT, or Excel file would be a smart idea. (Nice job, Greg).

😎 The better way:

• Top of mind: Your strategic roadmap is accessible to everyone as they work and linked to your organization's teams' projects, actions, and KPIs.
• Automatically updated: Your roadmap visualization is automatically updated whenever you make changes, pivots, or updates.
• A single collaboration platform for teamwork: Teams can collaborate, communicate, and comment on strategic plans and execution in one place while staying aligned with the big picture.
• Dynamic: An interactive visualization tool that allows people to drill down, drill up, and gain clarity on strategic plans in a way that's relevant to them.

Sound good to you? Then maybe it’s time to elevate your strategic planning with Cascade. 

Here’s an example of a strategic roadmap in Cascade:

Our Timeline View (Roadmap view) allows you to display your strategy in a Gantt chart-style format with the simple click of a button.

If you are looking for a template to create your strategic roadmap, Cascade has all the most important elements of a highly effective strategic roadmap, including: 

• Goals and objectives
• Action plan
• Milestones and due dates
• Risk management

Now for the good stuff. You came here to find a strategic roadmap template to start your planning on the right foot. We’ve put together a collection of 15 strategic roadmap templates for different teams and use cases. 

All of them are prefilled with examples so you can start customizing your strategic roadmap immediately. 

✨ Here’s a quick note on how these templates work: 

• Sign up and get instant access to your chosen template. (Yes, it’s 100% free.)
• Customize the template to fit your needs. 
• Switch to Timeline view and visualize your strategic plan in a beautiful roadmap. 
• Monitor progress and update your roadmap accordingly to keep it up-to-date. 
• Invite your team members to collaborate on your roadmap and ensure it gets executed. 

So without further ado, here are our top strategic roadmap templates:

1. Strategic Plan Roadmap Template

If you want to create a comprehensive and actionable strategic roadmap, our Strategic Plan Template is the perfect way to get started.

This template guides you through the process of developing a roadmap for achieving your organizational goals, including identifying key objectives, outlining action plans, and tracking progress.

💡 Best for: Any executive, manager, or team leader who wants to ensure that their team is working towards the same goals and achieving success.

👉 Click here to get your FREE strategic plan roadmap template.

“ Cascade is an eye-opener for managing strategy. It's easy to get started and to map strategic plans within the tool. But once getting into it, the number of options to customize and integrate other sources seems almost limitless. ” — Max W, Capterra

2. Business Roadmap Template

The Business Roadmap Template is a pre-designed tool that helps businesses to create a clear and concise roadmap for achieving their business plan.

With this template, you can create a roadmap for your business strategy that includes deliverables, timelines, and key activities to help you achieve key business objectives. 

You can also use it to identify and prioritize the resources required to execute your strategy effectively .

💡 Best for: Business owners, executive-level managers, entrepreneurs, and organizations of all sizes and industries looking for a customizable and comprehensive business roadmap .

👉 Click here to get your FREE business roadmap template.

3. Product Roadmap Template

With our Product Roadmap Strategy Template , you’ll get everything you need to set your product development team up for success. 

You can use this template to create a clear and detailed product strategy roadmap and plan your product development process from product vision to launch.

💡 Best for: R&D teams, product leaders, and product teams launching a new product or service.

👉 Click here to get your FREE product roadmap template.

“ This is a product that solves a key business problem which is stitching together company, product, or project vision to the execution of it. It turns strategy into something tangible and actionable. ” — Peter D, Capterra

4. Project Roadmap Template

Cascade's Project Planning Template is an easy-to-use guide for outlining project steps, setting targets, allocating resources, and monitoring progress—everything you need to execute your projects like a pro.

Use this flexible template to plan your various projects, coordinate complex strategic initiatives , and set timelines.

💡 Best for: Project managers and team leaders who need a robust, ready-to-use template for project planning.

👉 Click here to get your FREE project roadmap template.

5. IT Roadmap Template

If you're struggling to create an IT roadmap, use our IT Strategy Plan Template to get moving on yours today.

Start moving the needle on your IT initiatives with this comprehensive template to guide your IT roadmap's strategic priorities, objectives, projects, and KPIs. 

💡 Best for: Internal stakeholders such as IT leaders and teams.

👉 Click here to get your FREE IT roadmap template.

6. Marketing Strategy Roadmap Template

Maximize your marketing ROI and align your efforts with the overall business strategy with our Marketing Strategy Roadmap Template . 

Use it to create a clear marketing roadmap, communicate your marketing goals, and provide direction to your teams, decision-makers, and stakeholders.

💡 Best for: CMOs, marketing managers, content managers, and other marketing professionals.

👉 Click here to get your FREE marketing roadmap template.

7. Agile Roadmap Template

Looking to adopt agile methodology or improve your team’s current agile approach? Our Agile Roadmap Template can help.

Use it to identify opportunities for improving execution, alignment, and outcomes for agile practitioners. Plus, with Cascade’s robust performance and features, your project team members will be able to work faster, communicate better, and pivot quickly.

💡 Best for: CEOs, managers, and team leaders in any industry who use or want to start using agile methodology.

👉 Click here to get your FREE agile roadmap template.

“ Cascade provides our organization with a level of transparency we've never experienced before. Traditionally siloed teams have insight into what other groups are working on, facilitating a new level of engagement and cross-team collaboration .“ — Katie B, G2

8. Digital Transformation Roadmap Template 

Keep up the momentum and execute your digital transformation plan like a seasoned professional with our Digital Transformation Strategy Template . 

This template will guide your digital transformation strategic planning and execution. It can also be used to ensure various digital transformation initiatives are communicated effectively to key stakeholders. 

💡 Best for: Chief Information Officers (CIOs), CEOs, or teams leading their organization's digital transformation journey.

👉 Click here to get your FREE digital transformation roadmap template.

9. Portfolio Roadmap Template

Our Portfolio Roadmap Template ( Portfolio Strategy Template ) is designed to help strategize and optimize portfolio performance.

Use it to efficiently assess the risks and returns of your investments, diversify your portfolio to minimize risk, and allocate resources to align with broader business goals. 

💡 Best for: CIOs (Chief Investment Officers), Directors, Portfolio Managers, and corporate planners who manage SBUs and investment portfolios. 

👉 Click here to get your FREE portfolio roadmap template.

10. Product Launch Roadmap Template

Are you gearing up to launch a new product? Our Product Launch Plan Template is a structured guide to help you stay on track and achieve your goals. 

With this template, you can outline your product launch objectives, projects, and activities from start to finish.

💡 Best for: Product managers, marketing managers, and teams who want to develop an effective strategic plan to launch, promote, and market products.

👉 Click here to get your FREE product launch roadmap template.

11. Technology Roadmap Template

With the Technology Roadmap Template , you'll get a well-structured framework to execute and align technology initiatives.

Use this template to plan and create a timeline for your technology strategy and ensure your team stays on track to achieve strategic goals. Additionally, this template can help communicate the value of complex technology initiatives to the rest of your organization.

💡 Best for: Technology leaders, CTOs, and IT managers leading technology strategies.

👉 Click here to get your FREE technology roadmap template.

12. Financial Roadmap Template

If you want to quickly jump-start your financial planning strategy process, try out Cascade’s Finance Strategy Template .

With this template, you can easily set up a strategy to manage finances, proactively manage financial risks, and communicate important issues to other key stakeholders in your organization.

💡 Best for: Finance managers, CFOs, and other senior planning roles within financial teams.

👉 Click here to get your FREE financial roadmap template.

13. Data Strategy Template

Our Data Strategy Template is a proven roadmap framework to plan and execute any outcomes-focused data strategy. Use this template to build a strategic plan roadmap that will enhance how your organization leverages data and analytics in its daily operations.

💡 Best for: CTOs, CDOs, and data teams responsible for data strategies or digital transformation.

👉 Click here to get your FREE data strategy template.

“ For us, Cascade is solving the problem of how we manage, share, and visualize our corporate and business line strategies, and how we prioritize our work and projects with these strategies in mind. This is allowing us to ensure that the entirety of our company is aware of what we're trying to accomplish and how they plug into those goals. ” — Jon K., G2

14. Supply Chain Roadmap Template

Whether you are focused on improving internal processes or increasing profitability, Cascade’s Supply Chain Strategy Template can help you create a comprehensive strategy to get there. Use it to create a strategically aligned supply chain strategy roadmap that drives profitability for both the top and bottom lines of your organization. 

💡Best for: CSOs, department heads, and CEOs who want to have a clear roadmap to optimize their supply chain operations.

👉 Click here to get your FREE supply chain roadmap template.

15. Innovation Roadmap Template

Looking to make innovation central to your business? Our Innovation Strategy Template can help. This easy-to-use template includes pre-filled focus areas, objectives, and KPIs to kickstart your innovation and continuous improvement initiatives. Start using it to drive growth and value creation in your organization.

💡Best for: Leaders and teams from organizations that want to develop an innovation strategy that drives growth and maintains your competitive edge.

👉 Click here to get your FREE innovation roadmap template.

“ Certainly, anybody using Excel for strategy or strategy implementation needs to look at what this platform can offer. ” — User Review, G2

Strategic roadmaps can be powerful tools for planning and monitoring business outcomes.

Don't think of them as visual aids for PowerPoint presentations and planning reports—they're key to guiding teams and stakeholders toward success.

If you're looking for a platform that has all the tools, features, and functionality you need to make the most of your strategic roadmap planning, look no further than Cascade—the No.1 strategy execution platform in the world.

Sign up for a free forever account today or book a 1:1 product tour with one of our Cascade in-house strategy execution experts.

FAQs About Strategic Roadmap

What is the difference between a strategic plan and a roadmap .

A strategic plan is a high-level overview that outlines an organization's goals, vision, and strategies for achieving success, while a roadmap is a more detailed presentation that breaks down the strategies and tactics into actionable steps and timelines.

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Your toolkit for strategy success.

The more detailed we made our plans, the longer our cycle times became. —Don Reinertsen

Create the Implementation Plan

This is article seven in the SAFe ® Implementation Roadmap series. Click here to view the entire roadmap.

The previous six articles in this series described the first six steps of the SAFe Implementation Roadmap :

• Reaching the Tipping Point
• Train Lean-Agile Change Agents
• Create a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE)
• Train Executives, Managers, and Leaders
• Lead in the Digital Age
• Organize Around Value

This article addresses the next ‘critical move’: create the implementation plan.

Implementing an organizational change of this magnitude is a big deal, and some time will need to be devoted to strategizing and planning. But Reinertsen’s [1] quote reminds us not to overthink the problem. He notes, “The more detailed we made our plans, the longer our cycle times became.” It’s far better to plan a bit, execute a bit, and learn a bit. Then repeat. In other words, take an Agile, incremental approach to implementation, just as is recommended with solution development.

It generally starts when the enterprise picks one value stream and one ART to serve as the vehicle for the journey.

The last article, Organize Around Value , described a process typically executed in one or more workshops, where the key enterprise development stakeholders gather to identify the flow of value through the organization. These stakeholders include SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs) , members of the LACE , newly trained Lean-Agile Leaders , and other essential team members.

Applying their new knowledge from training, the Lean-Agile Mindset , and Principles , enterprise stakeholders start to identify strategies for implementing this new way of working. This leads to the next step, creating the implementation plan. This is where the rubber meets the road in a SAFe implementation.

Up until now, the focus has been on conceptualizing the change. The next move, however, requires real and tangible changes to individual and organizational behavior. Specifically, creating the plan involves three activities:

• Pick the first value stream
• Select the first ART
• Create a preliminary plan for additional ARTs and value streams

Pick the First Value Stream

Each development value stream identified in the prior step is a candidate for the new way of working. A large enterprise offers many opportunities for improvement, and while there’s no one right way to begin, for many companies, the next smart move is to pick one initial target. After all, this significant change is likely untested in this organization’s environment. Selecting one target allows the newly trained SPCs and leaders to focus their full attention and resources on a specific starting point for SAFe implementation.

Once a value stream is selected, some additional considerations are required to define further the development value stream boundaries, people, deliverables, potential ARTs, and other parameters. To assist, stakeholders can use the Value Stream Canvas in Figure 1 to capture their emerging understanding.

Filling in the fields typically requires additional conversation and alignment. It calls for an understanding of how things work now and how they’re intended to work in the future. Note—as highlighted in the bottom section of Figure 1 (also described in the previous article, Organize Around Value ), some additional analysis may be needed in large environments to define prospective ARTs and governance in a Solution Train .

Select the First ART

Once organizations identify their first development value stream, it’s time to generate the initial ‘short-term win’ by focusing on the first ART. That will yield institutional knowledge that can be applied to other ARTs. Sometimes, the first value stream is also the first ART, and no further decisions are needed. In larger development value streams, however, the next step will require the active support of many more leaders and other stakeholders in that value stream. Many enterprises look for a first, ‘opportunistic’ ART, which can be found at the intersection of the factors illustrated in Figure 2.

The target for the first ART is often one that best meets the following criteria:

• Leadership support – Some senior leaders are already trained in SAFe and will be anxious to put their training to work. Additionally, many leaders will have had previous experiences with Agile development, perhaps even in SAFe.
• Clear products or solutions – SAFe is most easily applied to a clear and tangible solution , something the company sells directly or values highly.
• Collaborating teams – Somewhere in the enterprise, teams are already collaborating on building a solution. Some may already be utilizing Agile methods, some not. Given the business’s current challenges, the teams may be ready to embrace scaled methods for collaboration and integration.
• Significant challenge or opportunity – Change is hard. The smart enterprise selects a subject that is truly worthy of its effort, ideally a sizeable existing challenge or a new opportunity. Creating a short-term win in these areas of the organization will produce immediate benefits and facilitate faster and broader adoption.

Once this ART is selected, the enterprise is nearly ready to move forward.

Create a Preliminary Plan for Additional ARTs and Value Streams

Before moving on to launching that first ART, note that it’s likely that a broader implementation plan may already be forming. Although it’s still early in the process, strategies for rolling out additional ARTs and for launching additional value streams may already be starting to take shape. In short, change is beginning to happen, and the signs are everywhere:

• The new vision is being communicated around the company
• Principal stakeholders are aligning
• Something big is in the air, and people are catching on

As described in Create a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence , the LACE, various SPCs, and senior leaders typically guide the transformation using Agile and SAFe as their operating framework. Leveraging SAFe’s ten critical success factors , the LACE holds the first PI Planning event. They invite the larger guiding coalition, stakeholders, Business Owners, and initial ART leaders to help further define the implementation strategy. One natural output would be a PI Roadmap for the implementation, as illustrated in Figure 3.

However, before committing to the roadmap, it’s probably a good time for stakeholders to reflect on the existing culture and the ‘how’ of the larger implementation strategy. Yes, it’s a committed change initiative, and the change is not optional, but how it is received depends on many factors. Mandated change can often be uninspiring to those on the receiving end of the decision. Through navigating what it means to Lead in the Digital Age ,  SPCs, alongside senior leaders, will guide the associated communication paths and cultural impacts.

Don’t be too concerned about perfecting the implementation strategy at the start. Any preliminary plan is just a hypothesis and will be incrementally improved as the implementation evolves. The larger planning cycle will be revisited later in Launch More ARTs and Value Streams .

Moving Forward

In any case, with one or more initial ARTs defined and an initial implementation plan in place, it is time to move on to the practical matter of implementing the first ART. That is the subject of the next article in this series, Prepare for ART Launch .

This article serves as a launching pad to explore these steps in detail and understand how to apply them to specific implementations.

[1] Reinertsen, Donald R. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development

Additional Resources

SPCs have access to a workshop toolkit explicitly designed to help identify value streams, initially define ARTs, and create the implementation plan. Download the toolkit .

Last update: 13 March 2023

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How to Build a Technology Roadmap

What is a technology roadmap.

A technology roadmap is a high-level visual summary that maps out the vision and plans for a complex technology undertaking. Businesses use technology roadmaps to plan and manage internal IT projects.

When and Why Would You Need a Technology Roadmap?

Making any change to a business’s technology environment can be a complicated task. It can also create a ripple effect across the organization.

If the company implements a change without thinking through the implications, it could create problems for the business’s operations. It could also introduce security and regulatory weaknesses. And even if the company addresses these risks, the change itself could be disruptive.

For these reasons, a business should use a technology roadmap to strategically plan any complex adjustment to its IT environment, including addressing technical debt . Using a technology roadmap can help a company plan out the best way to introduce a technological change in the business. This plan would include rolling out new software for employees, upgrading the organization’s digital network, or migrating to a new email program.

Here are a few other benefits of technology roadmaps.

What are the Benefits of a Technology Roadmap?

1. it helps you see and understand the implications of your plan..

Before introducing any IT changes to your organization, you need to think through how the change will affect the business.

For instance, are you thinking about upgrading to new servers? You’ll need to know how moving your data will affect your employees’ work. You’ll also need to figure out how to make the switch without leaving any holes in your cybersecurity process.

A technology roadmap helps you and your team think through how your plans will impact other areas of the business.

2. It helps you communicate your plan’s big-picture goals and benefits.

When you decide to change corporate email systems or some other aspect of your IT environment, you will need to earn the support of affected stakeholders across the company.

A technology roadmap can help you do this by allowing you to clearly and persuasively summarize your strategic thinking behind your plan, and the benefits you anticipate the change will deliver to the company.

3. It helps keep your team on track during the process.

All complex projects face obstacles. Your executive staff might freeze budgets across the company while your technology implementation is only halfway complete. Or an IT emergency in the company might force your team to pause on this project while you address that urgent problem.

How to Create a Technology Roadmap

Here’s a five-step plan for building a technology roadmap.

Step 1: Identify your strategic objectives.

Before you can plan the specific tactics of your technology project, you need to figure out why you’ve decided this initiative is essential. That means your first step is to identify and clearly articulate the “why” behind your proposed change.

Ask yourself, “How will this IT change benefit our business?” — and place your brief response at the top of your technology roadmap.

Step 2: Determine the roadmap’s audience(s).

You might be planning highly technical changes for your company. But if you’re going to present this roadmap to your executive staff, you don’t want it to read like a technical manual. Those executives might not understand any of the terms you use in conversation to discuss this project with your IT coworkers.

Figure out which audiences will be viewing your technology roadmap, so you can build the roadmap using language those people will understand. If you plan to share the roadmap with more than one audience, you will want to use web-based roadmap software . It allows you to quickly and easily build several versions of the same roadmap and switch effortlessly among the different views during your presentations.

Step 3: Establish your roadmap’s major themes.

Now that you’ve decided on your primary strategic goals, it’s time to turn those goals into a plan. You’ll want to start with the highest-level actions. You can then drill down into each to figure out the details.

Note: The high-level strategic elements on a roadmap are called themes , followed by epics . (Several related epics can fall under one high-level theme.)

Step 4: Share your roadmap with relevant stakeholders

When your technology roadmap is ready to share with key stakeholders, you should call a meeting with them. At this stage, you should have a compelling message about why this technology change will help the business and a clear vision of how you plan to execute it.

Expect your stakeholders — particularly your executive team — to ask you to explain both points.

Step 5: Meet with your team to assign responsibilities — and start making progress.

Once you have your themes and epics in place, you will need to translate those high-level plans into actionable tasks.

Bring your team together to review your technology roadmap. In this meeting, you will want to determine which projects to work on in which order, estimate how long each project will take, and decide which team members will be responsible for each action item.

One final suggestion: Review and reassess your roadmap often.

The projects covered in a technology roadmap typically take months to complete. And because your team’s priorities can change many times during that period, you’ll want to review your technology roadmap regularly throughout the process. That way, your team is continuing to make progress according to your original plan and goals.

Tips for Sharing Your Technology Roadmap

In Step 4 of our process above, we suggested you present your roadmap to relevant stakeholders, so they can understand — and, with any luck, support — your proposed technology implementation. How can you improve your chances of making that meeting a success? Here are a few tips for sharing your technology roadmap:

1. Talk benefits, not tactics.

Until they know how your technology plan will benefit the business, your coworkers and executives won’t care how you plan to accomplish it.

Start with your big-picture thinking. Tell your audience why you’re proposing this change. Then explain what you expect it to do for the company, and why you’re sure it’s a smart move.

Note: Even if you are not presenting the roadmap to an audience but simply sharing it digitally with coworkers, you still want to follow this approach of explaining the big “why” behind your plan. So, make sure you include a short description of the strategic benefits right at the top of your technology roadmap.

2. Leave the technical details out.

Your roadmap should be visually compelling, and it should tell a story your audience can digest within a few seconds after you’ve put the roadmap up on the conference room’s screen.

Be concise. For each epic or theme on the roadmap, explain in just a few words what you plan to do, what you anticipate it will achieve for the company, and why that’s a good thing.

3. Have evidence to support your claims.

There is one caveat to our suggestion — that you keep the details out of your roadmap. You should have some data supporting your plans and goals somewhere in the roadmap.

With the right roadmap app, of course, you can add relevant stats, charts, or links to data beneath each item; keeping that information hidden from view until you’re ready to present it. You’ll keep your roadmap presentation clean and free of clutter, but still be able to pull up evidence immediately if someone challenges you or asks for supporting data.

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How to Create a Project Roadmap (Example Included)

A project roadmap is the best way to summarize the what, why and how of your project into an easy-to-understand document that can be shared with anyone. A project management roadmap is a unique tool that has a different purpose than other similar project documents such as a project charter, milestone chart, project schedule or project plan.

What Is a Project Roadmap?

A project roadmap is a tool that maps out project tasks, milestones and deliverables on a timeline. Its main purpose is to provide a high-level visual representation of the larger project plan and explain its phases. It also includes important scope, risk and resource management information. Because it acts as a guide, the project roadmap is also a great communication tool that can be used to keep stakeholders informed throughout the project life cycle.

It’s the overall document that speaks to the strategy of the project and why that strategy is being engaged. Therefore, the project roadmap helps project managers ensure everyone working on the project understands the project plan.

Project roadmaps are created with Gantt charts, which let you map out tasks on visual project timelines. ProjectManager’s online Gantt charts let you organize tasks, add milestones, link all four dependencies and filter for the critical path. You can even set a baseline to track progress in real time. Share comments and files with unlimited storage. Get started for free.

When Should You Use a Project Roadmap?

Project roadmaps should be used any time there’s a project, program or project portfolio that needs to be managed. A project roadmap should be created during the project planning phase, but they’re used throughout projects as a tracking tool everyone can check, such as key stakeholders, project managers and team members.

Because of their simplicity, project roadmaps are commonly used by project managers, program managers and project management offices (PMOs) as portfolio management tools. With project roadmaps, they can keep track of their multiple projects with ease.

Project Roadmap vs. Product Roadmap

A project roadmap isn’t the same as a product roadmap . Even though they’re similar visual planning tools, product roadmaps have specific features that made them better suited for product development purposes. Project roadmaps are very similar to product roadmaps, but they have slight differences. If you’re leading a product development team, you should use a product roadmap instead.

Project Roadmap vs. Project Plan

As stated above, a project roadmap can be seen as a “light version” of your project plan, which further defines all of your project areas such as your scope, risk management plan and resource management plan among others.

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Roadmap Template

Use this free Roadmap Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

What Should Be Included In a Project Roadmap?

A project roadmap isn’t just a project timeline . There are other project management variables that need to be considered when creating one.

• Project goals and objectives: The main thrust of any project roadmap is the high-level goals and objectives of the project. There’s no need to go into great detail as your project goals and objectives are explained in your project charter .
• Project risks: State the main project risks that could make your project fail or compromise major elements of the project plan like the scope, schedule, goals, stakeholder expectations, quality assurance, etc.
• Project timeline: This project timeline overview only includes your key project milestones and deliverables. You can also use Gantt charts for a more detailed representation of your project schedule.
• Task dependencies: Identify task dependencies based on the tasks that you’ve mapped on your project timeline. Creating your project roadmap with a Gantt chart software tool that allows you to link task dependencies is the easiest way to represent dependencies.
• Project resources: Note the resources you’ll need to get the project done. These include human resources like your project team and physical resources such as equipment, materials, etc.
• Key individuals: List the key stakeholders and project roles  and how to reach them.
• Kickoff meeting: Meet about the project management roadmap and make sure expectations are clear to all stakeholders. (Be sure to have a kickoff meeting agenda prepared.)
• Roles & responsibilities: The roles and responsibilities of those involved in the project are outlined. The project roadmap defines who is doing what and then those tasks and deliverables can be tracked.

How to Create a Project Roadmap In 5 Steps

Simply put, a project roadmap extracts information from your project plan to provide an overview of your project. The project roadmap must be visual and manageable in length so it can be easily digestible by all the stakeholders and team members involved in the project . Most project managers use Gantt charts to create project roadmaps. Here’s how.

1. Break Down Your Project Scope

Your project scope is the sum of all your project tasks, or in other words, the work to be performed in a project. That’s why defining your project scope is the first step when creating a project roadmap, as you’ll need to know what project activities need to be done before drafting a project timeline. You can use a work breakdown structure to make sure you identify every task.

2. Map Out Your Project Tasks

Once you identify all your project tasks, it’s time to use ProjectManager’s Gantt chart to create a project schedule . Simply add your project tasks and their due dates. Our Gantt chart maker will automatically create a project timeline with that information.

3. Link Task Dependencies

Now that you have a basic project timeline with tasks and their due dates, you need to identify task dependencies . Task dependencies determine the order in which tasks need to be executed.

4. Identify Deliverables

Identify the project deliverables that are expected from each task. You can attach files and comments to every task in the Gantt chart, so you can keep track of them.

5. Set Project Milestones

You can map your project milestones as well in the Gantt chart. Simply select a date and create a project milestone . They’re shown on your Gantt chart as diamond symbols.

Project Roadmap Example

To better illustrate how to create a project roadmap, let’s take a closer look at the project roadmap example that we previously mentioned.

The image above shows a finalized project management roadmap. Now let’s look at each of its components.

• Project phases: The image above shows the “development” and “testing” stages of the “Tannen Tech project”. They’re represented on the project timeline with the blue and red lines respectively.
• Milestones: The diamond icons represent the project milestones that mark the end of each phase.
• Tasks: Each bar represents a task. Our roadmap tool allows you to track their completion with a percentage. You can also specify the project deliverables associated with each task.
• Dependencies: The arrows on the roadmap tool represent the dependencies among tasks.
• Key individuals: You can assign each task to the project team members who are responsible for them.
• Dates: Dates are a critical component of project roadmaps. Our roadmap tool allows you to set dates for your project’s tasks, milestones, and phases.

As you can see our project roadmap is very similar to a Gantt chart, but the main difference is that you can use our Gantt chart view to create a more detailed version of individual projects, while our project roadmap tool works best for project portfolio management .

Project Roadmap Template

This free project roadmap template is ideal for beginner project managers. Simply fill out the task list and let our Excel template automatically create a visual timeline for you. Once you’re ready, you can open the project roadmap in ProjectManager to build a dynamic roadmap and track details in real time, manage resources and much more.

What Free Project Management Templates Can Help You With Project Roadmaps?

Creating a project roadmap can be challenging. That’s why we’ve created dozens of project management templates to help you plan, schedule and track your projects. Here are some that can help you with the project road mapping process.

Project Plan Template

This project plan template helps you gather the information you need to start building your project management plan. You can easily customize it and attach any supporting project documents as needed.

Project Budget Template

Project budgets are critical to start, execute and complete projects successfully. This project budget template is ideal to gather all your project costs and set spending limits.

Work Breakdown Structure Template

Our work breakdown structure template helps you identify all your project tasks so you can create a project roadmap, timeline and budget.

What Project Management Tools Can Be Used to Create a Project Roadmap?

As we’ve discussed above, project roadmaps condense information from the project plan and project schedule into a high-level overview. To do so, they must include project objectives, milestones, resources and tasks. Some of the most commonly used project management tools to make project roadmaps are Gantt charts, kanban boards , project dashboards and project timelines.

There are many project management software products that address one or some of these features. The struggle is to find a one-stop solution that can act as a project planning, scheduling and tracking tool. In addition, project managers need a collaborative platform to not only share the project roadmap but also assign tasks, schedule resources and make it simple for teams to update their status.

ProjectManager Helps You Create Project Roadmaps in Minutes

Our project management software has the features for everyday project management, but also the broad strokes necessary to compose a project roadmap for individual projects or project portfolio management. Our online Gantt charts give both a high-level overview of the project as well as a place to collect and assign tasks that then can be updated by project managers and team members.

Track Your Project Roadmap with Online Dashboards

The real-time dashboard then reflects these changes as they happen, so everyone sees exactly where the project is and can address issues before they become problems. The real-time dashboard is a powerful project management tool that goes beyond roadmap planning, allowing project managers to keep track of their budget, progress, work and time.

Keep Project Resources Balanced

Keeping your resources properly allocated is how you stay on track. You don’t want to overallocated them. That leads to burnout. Retain your team members and keep them productive with our resource management features . Use the color-coded workload chart to see at a glance who has too many or too few tasks. You can reallocate your team right from that chart to balance their workload and keep them working at capacity.

Related Project Roadmap Content

• How to Write an Action Plan (Example Included)
• How to Make a Project Timeline
• Best Project Management Charts
• 15 Project Management Tools & Techniques for Project Managers

ProjectManager is online project management software, which means data is collected in real time, and teams can access the tools even if they’re working remotely. Our software offers a collaborative platform and the ability to communicate at the task level to make sure that the project roadmap always reflects the latest information. See how it can help you create a project roadmap and manage its execution by taking this free 30-day trial.

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IT Roadmap Strategies: Creating and Implementing a Winning Action Plan

Engineering Team

April 26, 2024

An Information Technology (IT) roadmap outlines your organization’s technology initiatives to achieve its business goals. 

Unlike a product roadmap, which involves launching new products and features for customers, an IT roadmap focuses on internal improvements.

IT roadmaps also differ from technology roadmaps, which cover a broader scope beyond just IT. A technology roadmap may include various initiatives like research and development, engineering projects, and infrastructure improvements. 

Let’s see how an IT map can guide the development and evolution of technology to support your business goals.

What Is Included in an IT Roadmap?

1. align with business objectives, 2. assess the current it architecture, 3. define it goals and initiatives, 4. prioritize and sequence initiatives, 5. develop realistic timelines and budgets, 6. use it strategy and roadmap services, 7. monitor and update the roadmap, enterprise it roadmap, it project roadmap, technological change management roadmap, infrastructure hardware roadmap, the role of different software in it roadmaps, strategy and implementation of it roadmaps, benefits of a strategic it roadmap, challenges in implementing an it roadmap, optimizing it roadmap strategies for effective implementation , frequently asked questions (faq).

A well-constructed IT roadmap includes several key elements that will make your organization’s technology strategy more effective:

1. Goal setting: Set clear, measurable objectives for your IT roadmap. Align them with your organization’s strategic vision to provide a clear direction for all IT initiatives. Make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) to ensure a successful execution

2. Milestones : Define clear milestones as they act as significant indicators for the success of your roadmap. Tie your milestones to specific projects such as healthcare project management , technology implementations, or other key events in the roadmap. Track the progress of your roadmap implementation and celebrate achievements as a milestone is achieved  

3. Roles and responsibilities: Define the roles and responsibilities of your team members involved in the roadmap’s execution. Ensure everyone knows what’s expected of them and how they’ll contribute to the roadmap’s objectives. Create accountability and effective collaboration among different teams and departments

4. Technology inventory: Take a comprehensive inventory of your current technologies, such as hardware, software, and systems. Identify gaps, redundancies, and areas for optimization or upgrades

5. Risk management: Identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies as they constitute important aspects of a successful IT roadmap. Assess the impact of technological changes, security threats, and other factors that could disrupt your roadmap’s implementation

6. Budget and resource allocation: Create a detailed budget and resource allocation plan to ensure your roadmap is feasible and sustainable. Estimate costs for technology acquisitions, upgrades, and maintenance, as well as allocating human resources for implementation and ongoing support

Now that we’ve seen the elements of an IT roadmap, let’s understand the process of creating one. 

The Process of Creating a Technology Roadmap

Creating a technology roadmap involves a systematic approach that aligns your business objectives with efficient technology implementation. 

The process typically includes the following steps:

Begin by holding workshops and discussions with key stakeholders across your business. Understand their strategic objectives and identify areas where technology can be a crucial catalyst or facilitator.

Conduct a thorough assessment of your existing applications, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), along with IT infrastructure, security posture, system capabilities, and team capabilities. 

Identify any gaps or limitations that may hinder the progress of your roadmap.

Based on your business goals and IT assessment, define clear and measurable technology goals. These could include cloud migration, security improvements, CRM implementation, or introducing a digital adoption platform (DAP).

Try ClickUp Goals to define clear goals with set targets and monitor real-time progress. You can maintain separate folders for different goals and visualize project progress in percentages. 

Prioritize initiatives based on urgency, impact, feasibility, and resource availability. Sequence the initiatives logically, considering dependencies between projects. Use roadmap project management templates and methodologies to stay organized.

Organizing and setting priorities using tools like ClickUp’s project management software will help give your teams a clear overview of all project specifics. Share updates, collaborate with your team, and set up automation to eliminate manual work.

IT Teams can further enhance the prioritization and sequencing of initiatives with ClickUp Brain . Think of it as your AI Project Manager, organizing project planning and execution by automatically generating subtasks from tasks, summarizing comment threads, and autonomously sharing project updates. 

This ensures your technology initiatives stay on track and aligned with your strategic goals.

Estimate the time and resources required for each initiative. Develop a realistic timeline with clear milestones and a corresponding budget. 

Consider potential risks and have contingency plans in place to avoid project slowdown.

Create an IT roadmap in-house or seek professional guidance.  

Use the strategy and architecture roadmap services offered by consulting firms as they offer valuable expertise, industry best practices, and access to specialized tools and frameworks.

Monitor progress, identify roadblocks, and adjust your technology roadmap regularly. Leverage data analytics and other key performance indicators and metrics to track progress toward your technology goals.

Schedule quarterly reviews to assess progress and update your roadmap as needed. Use ClickUp’s IT Roadmap Template to make monitoring progress easier. Plan and prioritize tasks, set deadlines, track progress, and communicate the effects of IT projects—such as JIRA reviews —to relevant stakeholders.

Understanding this process is key to choosing the best roadmap for your IT needs. Here are some examples of IT roadmaps to help you build your own. 

Examples of IT Roadmaps

An IT roadmap isn’t a one-size-fits-all document. Roadmaps serve different purposes and cater to specific audiences within your IT department. 

Let’s take a look at a few examples:

An enterprise IT roadmap is your master plan for aligning every IT initiative with your organization’s objectives. This framework typically outlines long-term initiatives, lasting three to five years, that support your company’s broader strategic goals. 

The roadmap may include digital transformation, cloud migration, enterprise resource planning (ERP) upgrades, and IT security improvements. It can help you anticipate industry trends, prioritize projects that deliver the maximum business value, and create a culture of innovation that keeps you ahead of competitors.

ClickUp’s IT Roadmap Template can help outline your strategic direction, goals, and milestones for your long-term IT projects. It can be used to drive alignment between IT plans and organizational objectives and improve coordination between IT and other departments. 

This template provides a structured approach for planning, budgeting, and evaluating projects. To manage your workflows, use pre-built custom statuses, custom fields, and custom views within the template. 

Your IT project roadmap guides all your tech projects and provides a clear vision from inception to completion. 

It helps you outline tasks, timelines, and dependencies between activities. It further aids resource allocation and key milestone setting. Your roadmap can also include risk assessments and mitigation plans.

A robust IT blueprint ensures every team member knows their role, every milestone is met with precision, and every deliverable exceeds expectations. This roadmap guarantees that your project stays within budget, on schedule, and on track to achieve all its objectives. It acts as an indispensable tool for project managers and teams alike. 

Organize your product development with ClickUp’s Project Roadmap Template , designed to align with your team’s goals. Whether launching a new feature or following a long-term vision, this template empowers you to track progress, strategize releases based on feedback, and collaborate effortlessly across teams, all in one place.

Manage your timelines and production stages in a single location with pre-built views, custom statuses, custom fields, and more.

This roadmap outlines and details the communication plan for introducing new technology, employee training programs, and user adoption strategies. It also addresses potential resistance to change and outlines mitigation tactics.

Navigating change management can feel intimidating, with its many components, such as stakeholder monitoring and action planning. This roadmap turns potential technological disturbances in your digital transformation strategy into more productive business outcomes by focusing on training, communication, and support. 

With Clickup’s Change Management Plan Template , you can drive successful transitions and speed up your organization’s IT processes. You can ensure your team stays prepared, supported, and engaged every step of the way while minimizing resistance to change and maximizing acceptance. 

This template enables you to manage all your plans of action and IT protocols in one place with pre-built views, custom statuses, and automation to maximize successful outcomes. 

The infrastructure hardware roadmap is your strategic blueprint for building and maintaining a robust IT infrastructure. It’s the foundation upon which your organization’s technology capabilities are built. 

This roadmap identifies upcoming hardware end-of-life cycles, outlines budget allocations for replacements, and considers migration plans to cloud-based infrastructure if applicable.

ClickUp’s Timeline Template for IT Infrastructure Upgrades offers a comprehensive solution for planning, tracking, and managing your IT projects. With features such as custom statuses, custom fields, various views, dependencies, and collaboration tools, this template ensures transparency, accountability, and efficiency. 

The template helps minimize downtime, ensuring your physical IT assets are always up to the task. You can visualize the upgrade project from start to finish and drive smoother coordination and collaboration among your IT team and stakeholders. 

Set clear deadlines and milestones to keep everyone on track, identify potential bottlenecks or dependencies early on, and mitigate risks, all with a single, convenient template.

With a well-structured IT infrastructure roadmap, you can enhance operational efficiency, improve system reliability, and ensure your organization is always ready to meet the demands of the digital-first age.

ClickUp’s templates will simplify creating an IT roadmap for you and your team. But templates alone aren’t enough. You need the right software solutions to increase the efficiency of your IT roadmaps. 

Software plays a crucial role in bringing together the needs of both technology and business strategy. 

Let’s explore the diverse roles that various software systems play in shaping IT roadmaps:

Application software

Application software drives digital transformation within organizations. Whether it’s productivity suites, communication tools, or specialized industry applications, these software solutions are integral to modernizing business operations and enhancing efficiency. 

In IT roadmaps, application software is often prioritized for upgrades or replacements to ensure employees can access the latest features and capabilities. This ultimately enhances both productivity and innovation.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software

CRM software is the heart of customer-centric strategies in IT roadmaps. By centralizing customer data and interactions, CRM systems can enable your organization to deliver personalized experiences, improve customer engagement, and boost sales growth. 

Integrating CRM solutions into IT templates or roadmaps ensures customer relationships are nurtured and leveraged effectively, increasing loyalty and revenue.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software

ERP software lays the foundation of operational excellence in IT roadmaps. It streamlines business processes and provides real-time visibility into operations. ERP systems enable organizations to make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and improve efficiency. 

You can achieve an edge over competitors by including ERP upgrades or implementations in your IT roadmap software . This ensures better coordination across various business functions as well. 

Digital Adoption Platforms (DAP)

Digital Adoption Platforms (DAP) are the catalysts for maximizing software utilization in IT roadmaps. DAPs provide on-screen guidance and support to users, facilitating the adoption of new software and technologies. 

By incorporating DAPs into IT roadmaps, your organization can accelerate user proficiency, reduce training costs, and ensure that software investments are fully leveraged to achieve business objectives.

With so many solutions available, it’s hard to know which one to prioritize in your IT roadmap and which one will most benefit your IT needs. To execute your IT roadmaps, you’ll need a solid strategy and planning. 

An IT strategy defines the long-term vision for your organization’s technology infrastructure. It outlines how technology will achieve your business goals,  support competitive advantage, and drive innovation.

The IT roadmap, on the other hand, translates that vision into actionable steps. It details the specific initiatives, timelines, resources, and budget required to implement the IT strategy. It’s a blueprint that ensures every technological investment directly leads to organizational success. 

Think of it this way: the IT strategy is your “why” and “where”, the overall purpose and desired future state. The IT roadmap is your “how”, the concrete steps to get there.

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) oversees the execution of this roadmap. The CIO’s role is to ensure alignment between technological initiatives and strategic objectives in an organization and that each software solution delivers its intended impact. 

The enterprise architecture (EA) also provides the structural foundation for this strategic alignment.  

It offers a comprehensive view of the organization’s technology ecosystem. This perspective ensures every software implementation—ranging from ERP systems for operational efficiency to Digital Adoption Platforms for user onboarding—is systematically integrated into the existing infrastructure.

You can design a clear strategy supported by effective leadership by leveraging your CIO and EA’s insights. With a cohesive architectural framework, your organization can use IT software to drive progress and achieve all strategic objectives.

But like any business endeavor, executing an IT roadmap has its rewards and challenges. 

The Benefits and Challenges of Implementing an IT Roadmap

Implementing an IT roadmap offers improved efficiency but may face resource limitations and technological complexities. 

• Aligned technology and business goals: A strategic IT roadmap ensures every initiative harmonizes with your organization’s key objectives. This leads to a more focused and effective use of resources
• Improved decision-making: With a clear roadmap, your company’s decision-makers better understand the technology landscape. This enables them to make informed choices about investments and priorities
• Enhanced agility: A well-defined roadmap allows your organization to respond more swiftly and adaptively to changing market conditions and technological advancements
• Increased efficiency: By prioritizing and streamlining technology projects, an IT roadmap can lead to more efficient operations and reduced costs
• Better stakeholder communication: There’s better transparency and improved communication among stakeholders, including employees, management, and external partners
• Rapid technological change: Due to rapid technological advancements, it can prove difficult to maintain a roadmap that remains relevant and effective over time
• Resource constraints: Limited budgets, time, and personnel may pose significant challenges in executing the initiatives outlined in your roadmap
• Stakeholder alignment: Ensuring all stakeholders are on board with the roadmap’s direction and priorities is a complex task, especially in large or diverse organizations
• Managing change: Implementing a roadmap often involves significant changes to processes and systems, which may be met with resistance from employees within your organization
• Measuring success: Defining and tracking the right metrics to evaluate the success of the roadmap’s implementation may also be challenging

To overcome these challenges, adopt a flexible approach to roadmap planning, allowing for adjustments as needed. Regularly reviewing and updating the roadmap ensures its relevance to current and emerging technology trends.

IT roadmaps are essential for meeting business goals. They improve efficiency, streamline processes, and encourage innovation. 

They also ensure resources are allocated wisely and all initiatives are aligned with your company’s objective to drive competitiveness and growth. 

Use ClickUp’s software tools and templates to create your next roadmap. This way, you’ll ensure your IT roadmap remains relevant and impactful. Connect these roadmaps to your IT projects to successfully execute your business strategy. 

Sign up to ClickUp today and achieve meaningful results with your IT roadmap. 

1. What is a strategy and roadmap?

A strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how an organization will achieve its goals, and a roadmap outlines its steps to get there. A strategic roadmap combines strategic planning with a timeline of initiatives and milestones.

3. What is an IT roadmap strategy?

An IT roadmap strategy is an organization’s approach to planning and executing its technology initiatives. It involves setting clear IT goals, prioritizing projects, and outlining the steps and timeline for implementing technology solutions.

4. What is an IT strategy roadmap?

An IT strategy roadmap is a document that combines the organization’s IT strategy with a detailed execution plan. It outlines the technology initiatives, timelines, and resources required to support the business strategy.

5. What is included in an IT roadmap?

An IT roadmap typically includes the organization’s technology goals, a list of key initiatives, timelines for implementation, milestones, resource allocation, and roles and responsibilities.

6. How do you create a technology roadmap?

To create a technology roadmap, assess the current IT landscape and business objectives. Identify key technology initiatives, prioritize them, and outline a timeline for implementation. Define milestones, allocate resources, and establish roles and responsibilities.

7. What is a new technology roadmap?

A new technology roadmap is a plan that outlines the introduction and integration of new technologies into an organization. It focuses on adopting innovative solutions to enhance business processes and stay competitive.

8. What are IT strategy and roadmap services?

IT strategy and roadmap services are consulting services that help organizations develop and implement a strategic plan for their IT initiatives. These services typically involve assessing the current IT landscape, aligning IT goals with business objectives, and creating a roadmap for technology implementation.

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Technology roadmap: What it is and how to create one

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In today's dynamic world, technology powers organizations at every level. But with an array of tools and never-ending lists of choices, navigating the tech landscape can seem overwhelming. The solution to simplifying this process is creating a technology roadmap. 

A technology roadmap is a strategic blueprint highlighting how an organization will use technology to achieve its goals. It can be the secret weapon for creating a vision for the future while navigating technological advancements and ensuring they align with a company’s goals. 

This article dives into the concept of a technology roadmap, explaining its purpose and providing the steps to create one that will ensure a smooth and successful tech journey.

What is a technology roadmap?

A technology roadmap is a company's blueprint for navigating the ever-evolving world of technology. It's a strategic project planning tool highlighting the vision, goals, and critical milestones for developing and adopting new technologies. 

The roadmap details initiatives planned over a specific project timeframe to ensure everyone is on the same page about advancements and how they will contribute to the company's goals.

Types of technology roadmaps

Various types of technology roadmap examples serve unique purposes. For example, a project plan roadmap shows a project from start to finish, while product roadmaps chart the development and release of software or hardware products. 

In addition, platform roadmaps concentrate on the underlying infrastructure that supports various applications. Technical roadmaps explore the broader adoption of specific organizational technologies, while application roadmaps focus on the development and evolution of software applications. 

Determining which roadmap best supports an organization’s goals is essential to providing an efficient plan that connects all the necessary details and functions, leading to positive outcomes.

Benefits of technology roadmaps

Technology roadmaps streamline decision-making and ensure tech investments align with business goals. A well-defined roadmap connects technology initiatives with a company's strategic objectives.

Roadmaps also provide a clear path for decision-making, resource allocation , and project prioritization. Consider it as an outline of the "what," "when," and "why" of tech initiatives that enable informed resource allocation decisions. This is essential to ensure critical projects are adequately supported and initiatives prioritized.

Translating a roadmap into reality requires effective project management tools. Platforms such as Jira can streamline processes and empower teams to plan projects, define individual tasks within the projects, and track progress in real-time. With clear visibility of deadlines and deliverables, Jira helps ensure the tech roadmap moves projects from conception to completion.

Elements of a technology roadmap

A well-crafted technology roadmap is a detailed plan for navigating a company's technological evolution. Key elements include:

• Goals and objectives : SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals ensure clarity and direction.
• Timelines : The timeline is the roadmap schedule, displayed visually through a Gantt chart. It outlines project management phases to guarantee a shared understanding of the project duration and dependencies.
• Key milestones : These moments mark significant progress toward achieving the goals and can include product launches, system upgrades, or completing specific development phases.
• Resource requirements : A technology roadmap identifies the resources needed for each project, facilitating informed decisions about allocation and potential gaps.
• Dependencies : The roadmap identifies dependencies between initiatives, ensuring the completion of upstream projects before downstream projects begin.
• Risks : The roadmap acknowledges each initiative's potential risks and lists proactive mitigation strategies.

Performance metrics : It defines key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and the overall impact of technology initiatives on business goals.

By incorporating these elements, the technology roadmap acts as a comprehensive guide. It confirms alignment with business objectives, facilitates informed decision-making, and paves the way for successful technology adoption.

How to create a technology roadmap

Once a technology roadmap's core purpose and applications are understood, the next step is creating it, which requires collaboration and strategic thinking. Following these best practices as a guide for the creation process will ensure the roadmap is clear and actionable and becomes a valuable tool for the organization.

Define strategic objectives

Strategic objectives are the high-level targets that define a company’s desired future state. They bridge the gap between the vision and the actions outlined in the technology roadmap.

It’s essential to articulate the objectives and ensure the roadmap supports:

• The company’s vision 
• Key SMART objectives
• Internal buy-in and alignment with the technology roadmap

Assess current state

It's essential to understand the company’s current state. A comprehensive assessment of its technology provides a clearer insight into existing systems, processes, and capabilities. This step includes:

• Gathering a cross-functional team with representatives from IT, operations, and other relevant business units.
• Creating an inventory of systems with a list of hardware, software, and cloud-based solutions used within the company.
• Mapping processes and existing workflows to identify technology integrations. 
• Completing a capability audit to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the current technology stack and identify where technology excels or is outdated.
• Conducting user interviews and surveys to get feedback from those who interact with the technology.
• Comparing a comprehensive view of the current state with the strategic objectives to create a gap analysis and identify gaps between existing capabilities and the technology required to achieve the long-term vision.

Gather stakeholder input

Stakeholder input offers a deeper understanding of a company's technology landscape and ensures the roadmap addresses its needs. This input provides diverse perspectives regarding needs and pain points, the power to prioritize technology requirements, and a sense of ownership when stakeholders feel heard.

To gather this input, consider targeted interviews, organizing departmental workshops, and distributing surveys and questionnaires.

Prioritize initiatives

A technology roadmap is full of initiatives, but resources are finite. Prioritization is paramount to ensure the roadmap focuses on projects with the most significant impact. Evaluate the initiatives by considering the following:

• The impact on objectives
• Ability to address gaps
• The effort vs. impact
• Required dependencies and timing
• Comprehensive risk assessment

Allocate resources and manage risks

While the technology roadmap is a blueprint for success, blueprints need builders, materials, and plans to manage the unexpected. This is where resource allocation and risk management come into play.

When allocating resources, consider financial, human, and technological resources. 

To mitigate and manage risk, identify possible risks that could impede progress. Develop mitigation strategies for each risk, including contingency planning, securing additional resources, and establishing performance monitoring measures.

Monitor progress

The best roadmaps aren't static documents but dynamic tools that require continuous monitoring and adaptation. Establishing mechanisms for project tracking and comparing progress against the technology roadmap is essential.

Consider implementing status updates to track the progress of each initiative. Define KPIs and regularly monitor progress against these metrics. Use a project tracking template or tracking tools like project management software such as Jira to track task completion, deadlines, and resource allocation.

Best practices for creating technology roadmaps

Technology roadmaps guide a company's technological journey, but creating one goes beyond listing the initiatives. 

Here are best practices to make sure the tech roadmap serves as a powerful tool to drive innovation and achieve goals:

• Cross-functional collaboration : Involve stakeholders from various teams in the creation process to gain diverse perspectives and ensure the roadmap addresses and aligns with the company's needs and broader business objectives. 
• Alignment with strategic goals : Ensure the roadmap directly supports the company's strategic objectives and that each initiative contributes to achieving the long-term vision.
• Focus on value : Prioritize initiatives that deliver tangible value by considering increased efficiency, cost savings, or potential revenue growth.
• Flexibility : A flexible and adaptable roadmap is essential. Revisit, refine, and rewrite portions of the roadmap as needed.

Monitoring and measurement : Establish mechanisms for monitoring progress, tracking KPIs, and identifying where adjustments might be necessary.

Streamline the process with Jira

Project management tools such as Jira offer features that streamline the roadmap creation process. These tools include visual roadmaps, goal alignment, agile planning, and real-time visibility. 

By following these best practices and leveraging tools like Jira, a technology roadmap will guide your team toward a successful future fueled by innovation and strategic technological advancements.

Create technology roadmaps with Jira

Use free Kanban template

A well-crafted technology roadmap is empowering and aligns advancements with strategic goals.

Consider using Jira, a project management tool designed to streamline workflows for organization and progress tracking. It offers a robust suite of features that complement the creation and management of technology roadmaps.

• Visualize the roadmap with boards : Break initiatives into manageable tasks using digital Kanban boards and move them across columns representing stages of development. Jira’s free Kanban board template can help you visualize your technology roadmap today!
• Break down silos with issues : Break down an enormous technology project scope into bite-sized, actionable “issues” and capture essential details, status updates, and discussions.
• Maintain alignment with timelines : Create interactive timelines that map work items, dependencies, and releases to foster transparency and keep stakeholders informed.
• Monitor progress with dashboards : Get a centralized view of all projects, assignments, and achievements with real-time insights.
• Gain insights with reports : Use pre-built reports to identify trends and forecast performance.

Hit the ground running with templates : Leverage Jira's preconfigured templates to save time and work more efficiently.

Ready to streamline the tech roadmap creation and management process?  Try Jira for Free today.

Technology roadmaps: Frequently asked questions

What’s the purpose of a technology roadmap.

A technology roadmap is a strategic plan that outlines the vision, goals, and key milestones for developing and adopting new technologies. It maps a course toward a more technologically advanced future and ensures technology investments directly contribute to achieving a company's broader strategic objectives.

What are the fundamentals of technology roadmapping?

• Define objectives : Outline the overall vision and strategic goals for technology adoption. 
• Assess current state : Create a comprehensive inventory of existing technology infrastructure, processes, and capabilities and identify strengths and challenges to prioritize initiatives and address critical gaps.
• Prioritize initiatives : Evaluate proposed initiatives based on their potential impact on achieving strategic objectives and addressing gaps. Prioritize initiatives that deliver the most impactful advancements.
• Allocate resources : Allocate financial resources, human capital, and new technologies to support the implementation of the prioritized initiatives.
• Monitor progress : Establish ways to track progress and monitor performance metrics, such as regular status updates and visual dashboards.

What tools can you use for technology roadmapping?

There is a toolbox of options to consider for technology roadmapping, including:

• Project management software : Tools like Jira are project planning and management powerhouses.
• Specialized roadmapping software : Software solutions specifically designed for technology roadmapping have targeted features such as strategic alignment capabilities, visualization tools, and scenario planning.
• Collaborative platforms : Collaboration platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams can gather stakeholder input and foster discussions.

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Your LLM Roadmap: Maximize Large Language Models’ Business Impact

By The Pecan Team

April 22, 2024

• In a nutshell: Large Language Models (LLMs) can revolutionize businesses by enhancing decision-making and driving innovation.
• Data leaders need to understand how to maximize LLM impact for a competitive advantage.
• Implementing LLMs involves careful integration, strategic utilization, and building a comprehensive roadmap.
• Tools like ChatGPT and Pecan's Predictive GenAI can be leveraged for various business applications.
• Addressing ethical concerns and exploring future trends in LLM adoption are crucial for long-term success.

Adopting Large Language Models (LLMs) has the potential to revolutionize businesses by enhancing decision-making processes and driving innovation. As a data leader, understanding how to maximize the impact of LLMs within your organization is crucial for gaining a competitive advantage in the market. In this post, we'll provide a comprehensive roadmap for data analytics managers, directors, and chief data officers to navigate the complexities of LLM adoption and effectively leverage tools like ChatGPT and image generation tools. By exploring key considerations, integration strategies, and potential tools like Pecan's Predictive GenAI , data leaders can build a roadmap that aligns with their business objectives and empowers predictive AI initiatives.

Understanding Large Language Models (LLMs)

Businesses today understand that intelligent decision-making is key to maintaining a competitive edge. In the era of AI and machine learning, large language models (LLMs) have become increasingly popular tools for streamlining decision-making processes using real-time data.

ChatGPT and Image Generation Tools

LLMs are designed to understand, generate, and improve human language. They can interpret text inputs and produce relevant outputs, aiding in automating tasks like answering client questions, creating content, and summarizing long documents, to name a few. OpenAI’s Chatbot GPT-3 ( ChatGPT ) is an example of a well-known and popular LLM. It uses machine learning algorithms to process and understand human language, making it an efficient tool for customer service applications, virtual assistance, and more. Image Generation tools, on the other hand, are AI models that can generate images from descriptions. These tools leverage LLMs to understand the text input and then generate a corresponding visual representation. This technology has significant applications in industries like real estate, fashion, and design, where visual images can greatly contribute to product development and customer service.

Applications of LLMs in Business

Large Language Models can serve many purposes across a wide range of industries. For example, content creators can use these models to generate ideas for their next article or blog post. In customer service, the models can help automate responses to frequently asked questions, saving valuable time and resources. In the healthcare sector, LLMs can be used for tasks including converting clinical notes into structured data, predicting patient risks, and creating personalized health plans. The applications are vast and diverse, spanning from simplifying administrative tasks to aiding in significant research and development. LLMs are capable of amazing things, and grasping these capabilities is the first step to using them to further the success of your unique business.

Implementing and Leveraging LLMs in Business

Once you understand the concept of Large Language Models and their potential applications, the next logical step is to implement them into your business. Successful LLM adoption isn't just about selecting the right tools; it also depends on a thoughtful integration strategy and effective utilization to maximize the business impact.

Integration Strategies for LLM Adoption

The success of implementing any new technology hinges on how well it is integrated into your existing system, and LLMs are no exception. Your strategy should be planned with careful consideration of your company’s current infrastructure, data availability, and privacy regulations. The first step involves understanding your data team's requirements and limitations while identifying the right LLM tools to meet your business’s needs. These could be LLMs like ChatGPT for customer service automation or image generation tools for visual applications. Once the appropriate LLMs are identified, your team must be trained on the model’s functionality and uses. Comprehensive training programs equip your team with the necessary skills so that they can leverage LLMs efficiently and effectively.

Maximizing Business Impact through LLM Utilization

Simply implementing LLMs is not enough if you want to experience all the benefits they have to offer. They must be utilized strategically to optimize their impact on your business. Begin by identifying key areas that can benefit from automation or improved decision-making and introduce LLMs accordingly. Once they’re in place, regularly evaluate the performance of your LLMs and make the necessary adjustments to get the best results. Experiment with different combinations of models and tools to identify what works best for your unique business needs and objectives.

‎ By wisely integrating and effectively leveraging LLMs, your business can enjoy improved efficiency, reduced operational costs, and better decision-making capacity. The true power of LLMs lies in their ability to customize an ever-evolving business landscape, making them invaluable assets for future-proofing your organization.

Building an LLM Roadmap

Once your business understands the impact of large language models and how they can be integrated and leveraged for success, the next step is to build an LLM roadmap. A roadmap serves as a strategic plan that outlines the steps needed to meet a particular goal. In this case, it will help data leaders plan and structure their LLM initiatives, from identifying objectives to evaluating potential tools for adoption.

Key Considerations for Planning LLM Initiatives

Successfully implementing LLMs in your company requires careful planning and consideration. You need to identify the business objectives, evaluate the resources available, and choose the right tools accordingly. Before diving into the detailed planning process, you must understand that each organization has unique needs and objectives, which means a one-size-fits-all approach might not work. Instead, tailor your strategy to your specific business context and needs. This involves considering the size and skill set of your data team, the nature of your business, the type and scope of data you handle, and the specific challenges you aim to address with LLMs. You should also remember that LLM adoption is not an overnight process. It requires time, patience, and continuous learning. Starting small with pilot projects and gradually scaling up as your team gets more comfortable with LLMs can often yield better results than a hasty, large-scale implementation. Additionally, solutions like Pecan that offer a fast-track to experimentation can provide an excellent starting point.

Identifying Business Objectives and Use Cases

The first step in planning your LLM initiatives is defining the business objectives you aim to achieve. This step helps to align the use of LLMs with your company’s strategic goals. A few examples of business objectives could be improving customer service, enhancing productivity, or driving product innovation. Once the objectives are clear, start identifying the use cases where LLMs can be integrated to achieve them. For example, if the objective is to enhance customer service , the use case could be integrating an LLM like ChatGPT to automate responses to customer inquiries.

Assessing Data and Infrastructure Requirements

After identifying the business objectives and use cases, evaluate the data and infrastructure you have available. LLMs require a significant amount of data for training; therefore, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of the type of data required, your data quality , and the technology infrastructure to support them. Consider your data volume, variety, and veracity. LLMs perform optimally when they have access to large, diverse datasets that are high in quality, free from bias, and relevant to the task at hand. It’s also wise to think about your organization's ability to collect, clean, format, and manage this data securely and ethically. What capabilities can your infrastructure handle? The computational requirements for training and deploying LLMs can be enormous, so assess your current technology stack's ability to handle this. This assessment should include your storage capabilities, processing power, and network speed. If your existing infrastructure is not up to the task, consider upgrading or using cloud-based solutions.

Evaluating Potential LLM Tools for Adoption

There are several LLM tools in the market, and each has its own unique capabilities. The tools you choose should suit your business objectives and use cases. When evaluating potential LLM tools, consider their strengths and weaknesses. Some tools might excel at tasks like generating text or answering questions, while others are geared toward image generation. The capacity of these tools to interpret complex instructions can also vary. Other important factors include the amount of training data required, the tool's processing speed, and its versatility across different applications. It’s wise to consult with your data team and conduct some pilot tests to gauge the performance of different tools. It’s also essential to consider the support provided by the tool's vendor, including the availability of technical support, any training required, and the regularity of updates. These factors can significantly affect the tool’s implementation and use. While assessing these tools and establishing KPIs for AI , keep in mind the ethical considerations related to using them. Some might be prone to generating biased results or have privacy issues. Engaging a team that includes ethics and compliance personnel early in the tool selection process can save potential headaches down the line. Choosing the right LLM tool is like choosing the right car. It's not just about the shiny new features it offers, but also how well it fits your needs, the costs associated with maintaining it, and how well it can adapt to future requirements.

Pecan's Predictive GenAI

Pecan's Predictive GenAI is a pioneering technology that uses an LLM-powered natural-language interface and auto-generated SQL code to help data and business analysts build machine learning models — without a lot of in-depth, hand-crafted code or data science expertise. This is an example of using an LLM to power business initiatives. Machine learning algorithms can predict future events based on past data. This is particularly useful for businesses looking to forecast sales, predict customer churn, or assess risk. Pecan's Predictive GenAI stands out among a sea of predictive AI tools because it fuses generative AI with predictive machine learning. Pecan also includes automated data pre-processing capabilities. This feature can dramatically decrease the time spent on data cleaning and preparation, which allows your data team to focus more on strategic tasks. Predictive GenAI also provides interpretable AI that offers clear insights into what factors are driving the predictions, which is key for garnering stakeholder buy-in and trust. In addition to quantitative results, users can simply ask an AI assistant to help them interpret and improve their predictive modeling results, just like an everyday conversation.

Empowering Predictive AI Initiatives with LLMs

Embracing LLMs can significantly boost your predictive AI initiatives. By leveraging LLMs like Pecan's Predictive GenAI, businesses can process enormous volumes of data, identify underlying patterns, and make more accurate predictions . This can lead to improved decision-making and, subsequently, better business outcomes. To sum it up, building an effective LLM roadmap involves a thorough understanding of the business’s objectives, identifying the appropriate use cases , assessing data and infrastructure requirements, and selecting the right tools. With a well-planned roadmap, businesses can maximize the impact of LLMs, driving success and innovation in their organizations.

Challenges and Opportunities in LLM Adoption

While LLMs present a wealth of opportunities for businesses, there can be some challenges along the way. These challenges, however, also present opportunities to innovate and improve LLM tools, which drives their continued evolution.

Addressing Ethical and Bias Concerns in LLM Usage

The widespread use of LLMs has stirred debate around ethical concerns and potential biases that are inherent in the data used to train these models. These biases can surface in the model's outputs, leading to discriminatory or unethical results. To combat this, businesses must prioritize transparency and fairness in their AI initiatives. Efforts should be made to ensure the data used in training LLMs is diverse and representative and that the outputs of these models are regularly audited for bias. A diverse team can also aid in this process, as they bring many different perspectives and can better identify potential issues. Respecting privacy regulations and consumer expectations when handling data is also critical. With GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws, businesses must ensure compliance to avoid costly fines and damage to their reputation. Ultimately, addressing these ethical and bias concerns in LLM usage fuels the development of more robust, transparent, and fair AI systems, which will only enhance their value in business settings.

Exploring Future Trends and Innovations in LLM Applications

As businesses continue to explore the potential of LLMs, we can expect to see significant innovations in this field. More specialized LLMs will be developed over time that are designed to excel in narrow but complex domains like law, medicine, or finance. Advancements in technology will also enable LLMs to process even larger datasets, leading to more accurate predictions and decision-making capabilities. Future LLMs may be capable of understanding and generating visual, audio, or even tactile content, which will dramatically expand the areas where they can be applied. As AI ethics continues to be a hot topic, we may also see more innovations focused on transparency, bias detection and mitigation, and privacy preservation in LLMs. This will ensure that LLMs can be trusted and used responsibly in businesses.

Integrating LLMs Into Business Operations is the Future of Success

The age of AI has brought about revolutionary tools like LLMs, which are reshaping the landscape of business decision-making and operations. With a well-crafted LLM roadmap, businesses can harness the power of these models to drive significant value and competitive advantage. As they adopt LLMs, companies should not only focus on their implementation but also address the ethical concerns associated with them. As we navigate the future and embrace the continued evolution of LLMs, we must strive to ensure their ethical and responsible use. The journey of LLM adoption may be complex, but the potential benefits for businesses are monumental. As a data leader, take the first step in exploring the LLM roadmap and prepare your business for an AI-driven future. Ready to learn more about how Pecan leverages an LLM approach to predictive machine learning to empower your data team? Get a tour to learn more.

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Charting Your Course: Crafting a Winning Real Estate Business Plan

11 Minute Read

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Real Estate Business Plan Template: How to Write a Real Estate Business Plan for Real Estate Agents with Examples

Kristal Sepulveda, CPA

April 30, 2024

Starting a real estate career opens up a world of opportunities for you to develop a successful and rewarding career. With over 1,162,364 Real Estate Sales & Brokerage businesses operating in the US as of 2023, the industry is vibrant and full of potential.

But the prospect of navigating a competitive market and managing financial uncertainties, such as a commission-based income structure, can be intimidating. What if there's a powerful tool that can transform your real estate journey from fear to fulfillment? You only need a real estate business plan as your guide.

Further Reading: 5 Benefits of Using a Business Plan Templates to Launch Your Dream in 2024

Market Analysis and Strategic Planning

Target market identification.

Define your target market within the real estate industry, whether you're focusing on first-time homebuyers, luxury real estate markets, or specific geographic locations. Identifying your target market will dictate your marketing strategies and the type of property listings you will focus on.

This step is essential in creating a solid business plan that helps align your business goals with the clients you want to attract, providing a roadmap to success for your real estate business.

Competition and SWOT Analysis

Conduct a thorough analysis of your competitors in the real estate market. Understand their strengths and weaknesses and position your real estate agent business to take advantage of the opportunities and minimize the threats.

This SWOT analysis is a vital component of a well-crafted business plan , helping you to identify opportunities and threats and craft a winning real estate business plan. It’s a strategic approach that supports your business objectives, including financial projections and SMART goals.

Marketing Strategies

Develop comprehensive marketing strategies to generate leads. This could include digital marketing campaigns, leveraging Zillow Premier Agent for increased exposure, or traditional methods such as networking events and real estate listings publications.

Your marketing plan should detail how you plan to attract and serve your clients effectively, which is a fundamental aspect of every real estate agent’s roadmap for success.

This strategic planning is integral to creating a business plan that helps build a successful real estate business, driving results over time and adapting to changes with progress and make adjustments as needed.

Further Reading: Learn How Real Estate Accounting Services Streamline Property Management

Mission and vision statement, defining your mission.

Clearly define your mission for aligning your business activities with your company’s goals. Your realtor business plan should articulate what you aim to achieve in the short term and how you serve your clients' needs.

A well-defined mission statement not only guides your marketing efforts but also ensures that every aspect of your operations helps you achieve your objectives.

This clarity is fundamental in both real estate business plan examples and a sample real estate business plan, providing a foundation for all strategic decisions.

Crafting a Vision Statement

Your vision statement should outline where you see your business in one to five years. It sets the tone for your business growth and provides a clear direction for future aspirations. This vision becomes a pivotal part of your real estate business plan, helping to direct both your current actions and your long-term strategies.

A real estate broker should have a clear vision as it helps in conducting a SWOT analysis, creating a plan, and ensuring that you update it regularly to reflect changes in the business and market. This forward-looking approach is key to not just plan to succeed but also to adapt and grow in the dynamic real estate market.

Financial Planning and Projections

Financial plan section.

Include a detailed financial plan section in your real estate agent business plan. This should cover projected cash flow , expected average sales price of real estate listings, and anticipated revenue. Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor business performance and make informed decisions.

Such measures are essential to achieving the real estate business goals outlined in your plan and ensuring that your real estate investment business plan aligns with your company's mission statement. This section provides a clear overview of the real estate market dynamics and your business' financial health aligned to your real estate business plan.

Budgeting and Forecasting

Develop a marketing budget and include projections for lead generation costs. Your financial plan should also detail how you'll manage the balance between personal and business finances, ensuring sustainability and growth.

Effective budgeting and forecasting are instrumental in maintaining the financial stability of your business and are key strategies that help you craft a path toward achieving your goals for future success.

Whether you are buying or selling properties, a well-organized budget supports your business operations and keeps your financial objectives on track, as detailed in your real estate business plan .

Implementation and Operations

Crm and lead generation strategies.

Implement customer relationship management (CRM) systems to enhance client relationships and streamline lead generation. Effective lead generation strategies are vital for maintaining a pipeline of potential clients.

Plan of Action

Your business plan should include a solid plan of action for both agents and brokers. This plan outlines specific steps to take when meeting your goals, from acquiring new clients to closing sales. It should also specify areas to focus on for business development and client satisfaction.

Monitoring and Adapting

Regular updates.

A successful real estate business plan is not static. Revisit your business plan regularly to update it as market conditions change and new opportunities arise. This ongoing revision helps keep you on track and responsive to the dynamic real estate market.

Adaptation Strategies

As the real estate market evolves, so should your strategies. Whether it's adopting new marketing techniques or expanding into real estate development, your business plan should provide a flexible framework that allows for growth and adaptation.

Roles of Accounting and Bookkeeping in Crafting a Real Estate Business Plan

Accurate financial reporting.

Proper accounting ensures that all financial transactions are accurately recorded, providing real-time insights into the business's financial status. This includes tracking income from property sales, rental revenues, commission amounts.

This also includes all associated expenses such as marketing costs, office overhead, and employee salaries. Accurate financial reporting allows real estate businesses to understand their cash flow, profitability, and financial stability for long-term planning.

Effective bookkeeping helps real estate agents and companies prepare for future expenses and revenues by creating detailed budgets and financial forecasts. By analyzing past financial data, businesses can predict future trends, plan out their financial year, and set realistic goals for growth.

Budgeting helps in allocating resources efficiently, ensuring that funds are available for important investments like marketing campaigns, new property listings, and technology upgrades. Forecasting, on the other hand, assists in anticipating market fluctuations, helping businesses to prepare in advance for economic downturns or booms.

Investment Analysis

For real estate investors and developers, accounting and bookkeeping provide the tools needed to analyze the viability of potential property investments. Detailed financial records help in calculating key investment metrics such as the return on investment (ROI), net present value (NPV), and internal rate of return (IRR).

These figures are essential for making informed decisions about where to allocate resources and which properties offer the best potential returns on investment.

Compliance and Regulatory Reporting

Real estate businesses must comply with various regulatory requirements, including tax obligations and financial reporting standards. Good bookkeeping practices ensure that all financial activities are transparent and comply with laws and regulations to avoid legal issues. It also simplifies the process of preparing and submitting necessary documents to government agencies, such as tax returns and annual financial statements, which are often required by law.

Risk Management

Effective accounting and bookkeeping help identify financial risks before they become significant problems. Regular reviews of financial statements allow businesses to spot trends such as decreasing cash flow, increasing debt levels, or overdue receivables that could impact the business' financial health. Addressing these issues promptly can prevent larger financial difficulties in the future.

Supporting Loan Applications

As real estate businesses seek external financing, lenders require detailed business plans and financial reports to assess their creditworthiness. Well-organized financial records that demonstrate profitability and stable financial management can increase the likelihood of obtaining financing. Lenders often look for a clear financial plan with solid projections and evidence of good financial health before they approve loan applications.

A well-structured real estate business plan keeps your strategic objectives on track and outlines clear steps for growth. Also, accessing a free real estate business plan can provide a foundational template to customize and adapt.

This ensures you cover all necessary aspects without incurring initial costs. This approach not only helps in organizing your business model but also in securing potential investments and partners.

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Roadmap to close the carbon cycle

A holistic approach to reach net-zero carbon emissions across the economy.

A major approach to achieving net-zero carbon emissions relies on converting various parts of the economy, such as personal vehicles and heating, to run via electricity generated from renewable sources. But carbon cannot be removed from all parts of society. Plastics, ubiquitous in the modern world, cannot be decarbonized because they are made of carbon-based molecules.

Led by chemist Wendy Shaw of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a multi-institutional effort has produced a new roadmap to reducing emissions in hard-to-electrify segments of the economy. The multifaceted approach includes developing non-carbon fuels, finding non-fossil sources of carbon, and keeping carbon in play once it enters the cycle, ideally resulting in multiple uses of each carbon atom.

Single-use carbon can no longer be widespread, the roadmap authors assert. The carbon must be kept in play through a circular economy where each carbon atom is used numerous times. The carbon can be reused within the same industrial sector or act as a feedstock for a new industrial sector. For instance, developing polymer upcycling processes and efficiently reusing carbon-based materials will be central to a net-zero carbon emissions future.

"We need novel and creative solutions to realize our decarbonization goals," said PNNL Director Steven Ashby. "And collaboration is key to accelerating the use-inspired scientific research in catalysis and separations science that will underpin these solutions. I eagerly await these results and their deployment in aviation, heavy duty trucking, and marine transportation."

The ideas emerged from a workshop on "Closing the Carbon Cycle," jointly hosted by PNNL, Ames National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Leads from each laboratory included Shaw, James Morris, Max Delferro, Sanjaya Senanayake, Francesca Toma, Michelle Kidder, and Simon Bare, respectively.

"Advancing carbon recycling and conversion technologies is key to a clean energy future, and Argonne is committed to supporting its development," said Argonne Director Paul Kearns. "I commend the researchers who are collaborating across the Department of Energy national lab complex to drive these transformative innovations to achieve net-zero by 2050."

A roadmap to decarbonization

Hydrogen and ammonia both have potential as carbon-free fuels. However, both have clear challenges for implementation. In particular, the cost to store and transport hydrogen makes it impractical with current technologies. Work to develop carrier molecules and materials to enable safe and affordable hydrogen transportation will complement the Department of Energy's Hydrogen Earthshot goal of renewably produced hydrogen for 1 $/kilogram or less. This cost reduction could help create viable hydrogen-based systems.

Using carbon from diverse sources is central to the proposed approach. Carbon will continue to be essential for many critical economic sectors. These sectors are candidates for circular carbon cycling through recycling and incorporating multiple carbon sources. Possible sources for valuable carbon include biomass, food waste, and plastic waste. Making this process a reality requires effective and efficient separations and conversions because complex mixtures make up most non-fossil carbon streams.

"Carbon should be seen as a valuable commodity that must be conserved and reused," said Shaw, Chief Science and Technology Officer of PNNL's Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate. "Our vision is to transform the role of carbon in our economy by reusing each carbon atom multiple times in a circular economy."

Effectively transforming "traditional" waste materials into reusable materials remains critical. Combining the separation and conversion steps through reactive separations may provide a practical approach. Reactive separations combine chemical reactions with purifying separations and can provide process intensification, converting the non-fossil carbon more efficiently.

"We need new fundamental science developments to produce integrated industrial approaches," said Morris. "The resulting technologies will create new economic opportunities, educational development, and additional job growth."

The roadmap presents a future without waste, where carbon is treated as a precious commodity rather than a disposable resource. Bringing sustainable sources of carbon into the carbon-circle economy is essential to this future.

This roadmap is the outcome of a workshop entitled "Closing the Carbon Cycle: Opportunities in Energy Science," organized by seven Department of Energy national laboratories on July 18 and 19, 2022. The full article is available in Nature Reviews Chemistry .

• Air Quality
• Global Warming
• Geochemistry
• Energy Issues
• STEM Education
• Environmental Policies
• Ocean Policy
• Carbon dioxide sink
• Climate change mitigation
• Carbon cycle
• Fossil fuel
• Carbon dioxide
• Carbon monoxide
• Automobile emissions control

Story Source:

Materials provided by DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Wendy J. Shaw, Michelle K. Kidder, Simon R. Bare, Massimiliano Delferro, James R. Morris, Francesca M. Toma, Sanjaya D. Senanayake, Tom Autrey, Elizabeth J. Biddinger, Shannon Boettcher, Mark E. Bowden, Phillip F. Britt, Robert C. Brown, R. Morris Bullock, Jingguang G. Chen, Claus Daniel, Peter K. Dorhout, Rebecca A. Efroymson, Kelly J. Gaffney, Laura Gagliardi, Aaron S. Harper, David J. Heldebrant, Oana R. Luca, Maxim Lyubovsky, Jonathan L. Male, Daniel J. Miller, Tanya Prozorov, Robert Rallo, Rachita Rana, Robert M. Rioux, Aaron D. Sadow, Joshua A. Schaidle, Lisa A. Schulte, William A. Tarpeh, Dionisios G. Vlachos, Bryan D. Vogt, Robert S. Weber, Jenny Y. Yang, Elke Arenholz, Brett A. Helms, Wenyu Huang, James L. Jordahl, Canan Karakaya, Kourosh Kian, Jotheeswari Kothandaraman, Johannes Lercher, Ping Liu, Deepika Malhotra, Karl T. Mueller, Casey P. O’Brien, Robert M. Palomino, Long Qi, José A. Rodriguez, Roger Rousseau, Jake C. Russell, Michele L. Sarazen, David S. Sholl, Emily A. Smith, Michaela Burke Stevens, Yogesh Surendranath, Christopher J. Tassone, Ba Tran, William Tumas, Krista S. Walton. A US perspective on closing the carbon cycle to defossilize difficult-to-electrify segments of our economy . Nature Reviews Chemistry , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41570-024-00587-1

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How Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is redefining insurance, one role at a time

• By Naveen Dhar, Director, Insurance Digital Strategy, Worldwide Financial Services
• Financial services
• Generative AI
• Microsoft Industry Clouds

Insurers are facing greater challenges today than at any time in recent memory. Between economic and geo-political factors, climate change impacts, and the new social and competitive realities of a post-COVID-19 world, the insurance landscape is perilous—but also rich with opportunities. In response, innovative companies are exploring new business models and rethinking employee engagement, with technology at the core of new approaches. 

It is no wonder then that AI is so appealing to leading insurers. Its amazing ability to glean insights from data, create documents, and enable people to build powerful solutions using natural language promises to help insurers meet the unprecedented demands of the moment. This is central to our vision for intelligent insurance and our work with Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services .  

Most of the insurance companies we talk to are seriously exploring generative AI. For many, however, the scope of the opportunity is so wide-ranging that it can be difficult to identify productive early steps. Fortunately, there is an option available today that can deliver clear near-term productivity benefits and also help lay the groundwork for a successful long-term AI journey. 

How Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 can impact insurance 

Imagine two years ago if a vendor promised a solution that resulted in employees spending 64% less time on email or that resulted in 70% of employees self-reporting as more productive. What seemed unbelievable until very recently is the impact of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 just months after its introduction last year.  

Introducing Copilot for Microsoft 365—A whole new way to work

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a unique offering that integrates generative AI features into the Microsoft 365 applications that many employees use on a regular basis. In effect, it is a real-time, intelligent assistant built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and more, applying the power of large language models (LLMs) to an organization’s data to significantly reduce the time and energy required to perform an endless number of rote tasks.  

In November 2023, Microsoft surveyed 297 early adopters, across industries, to quantify the impact of Copilot for Microsoft 365. As detailed in the Work Trend Index Special Report , it delivered significant productivity gains among employees, with the promise of fostering broader organizational improvements over time. This is especially exciting for insurance companies, which have a wide range of roles that could benefit from this assistance. 

Copilot for Microsoft 365

Provide real-time intelligent assistance

How Copilot for Microsoft 365 empowers six key roles in insurance 

On the one hand, insurers operate in a world of exacting processes, strict compliance, and regulatory considerations. On the other hand, competitiveness demands greater efficiencies, faster speed to market, and improved customer service. Copilot for Microsoft 365 addresses both dimensions. Among its many benefits, it helps employees easily find and navigate business data, analyze trends, and rapidly create insightful reports and documents, without requiring the company to build customized solutions for specific use cases.  

In our work with insurers, we have identified multiple ways that Copilot can assist in key roles across the business.  

1. The agent and broker , who markets, advises, sells, and services insurance coverage for policyholders, can use Copilot to: 

• Help customers understand their insurance options, with customer-specific reports and summaries of products written in plain language. 
• Provide prompt customer service, with a fast and accurate summary of a Teams meeting with a customer, including recommendations and actions.  
• Be more responsive to customers by generating customized emails in response to specific queries and needs. 

2. The claims employee , who handles claims from first point of contact to resolution, can: 

• Accelerate settlement discussions by drafting summarizations of claims content and meeting recaps.  
• Enable contact center employees to be more efficient when assisting policyholders when they first report a loss. 
• Summarize and annotate company policy, processes, and guidelines to expedite processing of claims. 

3. The underwriter , who assesses risk factors in providing insurance to customers, and helps to establish policy pricing, can: 

• Research multiple sources of data and insights in evaluating risk and pricing options.  
• Get instant access to guidelines and regulations relative to an application. 
• Summarize complex documents used throughout the underwriting process. 

4. The financial advisor , who provides insurance policies and annuities to clients based on their financial situation, can: 

• Combine insights such as changes in the market and client life events to inform and personalize financial planning discussions.  
• Manage accounts more efficiently by summarizing emails, chats, and meeting notes, and drafting presentations specific to the client based on existing documents and data. 
• Improve customer follow-up with emails that recap conversations and include draft proposals based on discussions. 

5. The leader or manager , who manages multifunctional teams in complex organizations, can: 

• Quickly create new business plans and update objectives and key results (OKRs) or key performance indicators (KPIs) based on existing documents and organizational inputs. 
• Gain new insights on product sales and industry trends based on myriad sources. 
• Quickly build presentations with discussion notes for specific leadership events.  

6. The contact center representative , who listens to customer needs and provides solutions through inbound and outbound calls, can:  

• Recap customer meetings and conversations. 
• Proactively identify issues, and draft recommendations or resolution messages, to distribute to targeted recipients or channels. 
• Measure sentiment and conversational trends associated with conversations or posts. 

Key considerations for successful adoption of Copilot for Microsoft 365

As with any promising new technology, realizing the full value of Copilot for Microsoft 365 adoption requires careful planning and implementation across the organization.  

Copilot Lab

There is no single roadmap for success. The key is to clearly define how Copilot will support business strategy. Some insurers choose to invest in a significant upgrade of their technical infrastructure. For example, global property and causality insurer Canopius migrated from dual datacenters to Microsoft Azure , determining that it would help meet their goals across international markets and set the stage for AI solutions, including Copilot for Microsoft 365. Other companies choose a more incremental approach based on their current cloud investments.  

From a technology perspective, AI innovation in insurance can only happen on a modern cloud platform that delivers hyperscale computing power with the requisite security and regulatory compliance attributes. Concurrently, you need a clear data strategy to ensure that all data made accessible to AI is properly protected by permissions and access controls, so that only the right people in the right roles can access sensitive information. Data governance and accountability structures are also essential. 

Then, it is important to recognize that readiness is as much a cultural challenge as a technical one. Employee training and support are essential costs that should not be shortchanged.  

Getting started with Copilot for Microsoft 365

Microsoft copilot: your everyday ai companion

For insurers considering adopting Copilot for Microsoft 365 , our advice is to start with your Microsoft solutions partner and Microsoft representative and discuss developing a plan. We often advise companies to start small, and begin experimenting on a role-specific basis, in cases of specific friction or bottlenecks that copilots can immediately address. This helps you identify important issues and sets you up to experiment with broader scenarios and role types.  

But as previously noted, every AI journey is unique. The important thing is simply to begin. For a framework and supporting resources to help foster successful adoption of Copilot, see our Copilot Success Kit . For more on the impact of Copilot on business productivity and creativity, see the Work Trend Index Special Report . For a roadmap to create business value with AI, see The AI Strategy Roadmap .  

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