How to get roadmapping right
It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. The short answer to roadmapping is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
The reason this keeps coming up
A roadmap is a statement of intent, not a promise. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Sequence by value and dependency, not by loudest request
- Review it quarterly or it becomes fiction
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Review it quarterly or it becomes fiction. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.
Making it stick
What this looks like day to day
Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about roadmapping before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- A roadmap is a statement of intent, not a promise — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.