Drowning in Tech? 6 Steps to a Roadmap That Clears the Fog and Drives Growth

In my last post, I explained why technology roadmaps are important for aligning your technology investments with your business goals. In this article, I will move from “why” to “how” and share a step-by-step guide to the roadmap development process, offering a deeper understanding of how to create an enterprise strategy that truly drives change.

Step 1: Know Your Goals

Before you can build a roadmap, you need to know your goals. Larger organizations typically have a formal strategic plan, while smaller ones may have a less formal process. Regardless, before you can build a roadmap, you need an organization-wide strategy. This strategy should:

• Align with your organization’s mission.
• Help you stay competitive and current with industry trends.
• Effectively manage organizational risk.

Without this piece in place, it’s incredibly difficult to create an effective roadmap and to measure impact. You need to know where you want to go strategically before you create a roadmap.

Step 2: Understand Your Current State

Understand the Details

The next step in the process is to understand your current state by thinking holistically about your data ecosystem.

To truly understand your data ecosystem in detail, focus on the business, data, and application layers to start. Then, assess each component and identify areas for improvement.

Understand the Sum of All Parts

In addition to the details, you must understand the sum of all parts. Just like natural ecosystems, data ecosystems are dynamic and constantly evolving. They are also sensitive—a change in one area can cause unexpected problems in others. You must understand how each component is connected as a system.

Step 3: Design Your Future State

Envision your ideal state

Once you understand where you are today, you can start dreaming about your future. We recommend holding design workshops to work on this step collaboratively.

Start by envisioning your ideal state—what would your data ecosystem look like in a perfect world? This will likely be an iterative process as you discuss and refine your vision.

Your future state design should address your key areas for improvement and align with your strategic vision.

Explore new opportunities

This is also where you can start thinking about new opportunities. For example, to address reporting inefficiencies, explore data-driven strategies like integrating your systems with your CRM for unified reporting, or enhancing your capabilities with dedicated data storage and BI tools.

Step 4: Prioritize Projects

The next step is prioritization. Through this process, you may learn that some of your proposed future state initiatives aren’t as valuable as you initially thought.

Prioritization should always be framed within the context of your organizational goals. Ask yourself: “What business value will this deliver, and how does it support our strategic goals?”

This process, like the others, should be collaborative. Your collective understanding of the business and diverse perspectives will lead to better decisions. It will also reduce conflict and unite everyone around a shared vision.

Measuring Potential Impact

We recommend using a clear, ideally quantitative method to measure potential impact. This can be tricky!

Accurately predicting and attributing net profit to a specific change is challenging. Constituent behavior is complex and multi-faceted. Using traditional methods like ROI and payback periods can be very time-consuming and require specialized forecasting expertise. Ironically, organizations needing a new CRM often struggle with poor data, making it even harder to build accurate models.

When developing an impact evaluation framework, consider assigning a weighted score based on these key factors:

• Potential revenue increase
• Improved constituent experience
• New functionality
• Operational efficiency
• Risk management
• Strategic alignment

The resulting score provides a valuable data and discussion point for prioritizing items on your roadmap from an organization-wide perspective.

Step 5: Develop Your Roadmap

Now that you have a future state vision and a prioritized list of projects, it’s time to put it all together as a roadmap. A roadmap is essentially a 2–3-year timeline with milestones.

Ideally, high-impact projects are implemented first. However, project dependencies, resource constraints, and budgets may necessitate a more strategic approach to getting to your destination.

You are not expected to have all the answers today. Your roadmap can include decision points, such as choosing whether you need system optimization or replacement.

A roadmap can be tailored to meet your unique needs. It’s also not just for large organizations. The beauty of the roadmap is that it can be easily scaled, making it accessible to all organizations.

Step 6: Plan for Implementation

While you may be excited to hit the ground running, our final step—implementation planning—ensures long-term efficiency and effectiveness as you move towards your vision. Through the planning process:

• Assign Roles and Responsibilities: This is a key step in driving forward digital transformation. Since this is an organization-wide initiative, you need to be especially clear on who is responsible for what to ensure effective collaboration and coordination.
• Identify Risks: Proactively identify and manage risks to help control the roadmap implementation and keep things on track.
• Develop Budget: Use ballpark estimates to start, and update as you make more decisions so that your budget becomes more accurate with time. Budgeting is often done iteratively with step 5 as it helps dictate the speed of change for your organization.
• Create Change Management Plan: Your roadmap should be transformative. Transformation equals many changes to the daily lives of staff.  Careful consideration of the people aspect of the roadmap is essential. How will you continue to involve stakeholders? What are your communication plans? What sort of training will staff need along the way? Ensuring that people have what they need to succeed is an essential principle to data ecosystem management.
• Assign Metrics: Define metrics to track progress. The roadmap extends across multiple years and is a huge investment for your organization. Leadership and the board will expect to see results.
• Plan for Ongoing Roadmap Maintenance: Establish a schedule for regular reviews. Your roadmap should be a living tool that helps to align your organization and keep everyone on the same page.

Navigating Your Roadmap

Building a successful technology roadmap is more than just plotting points on a timeline; it’s about fostering a culture of collaboration, embracing change, and maintaining a steadfast commitment to the process. Key success factors like strong leadership, effective change management, and a deep understanding of technological possibilities are crucial.

The ability to measure actual impact is paramount. This continuous feedback loop allows you to not only evaluate your roadmap’s effectiveness but also to learn, evolve, and ensure it remains aligned with your organization’s evolving needs. Your roadmap is a living document, requiring ongoing attention and adjustment.

By embracing these strategies, you’re not just building a roadmap, you’re empowering your organization for sustained growth and future success.

---

JCA’s Technology Roadmap Services

To advance their missions, nonprofits must leverage multiple systems—from CRMs and financial solutions to ticketing and POS systems—and embrace new ways of working to effectively utilize resources and to digitally transform their operations.

But how do you break down silos to ensure these systems work together optimally, and align with your long-term goals?

Our Roadmap Services provide a clear path forward. Ready to see what’s possible?

Let’s Talk!