How to create a Real (Strategic) Roadmap — Part 2

If you want to create a real (strategic) roadmap, then you need to understand what roadmapping really is.

TL;DR

This is part 2 of a 2 part article. You can find Part 1 here. In Part one, I covered a lot of background and process. In summary, I wrote about the purpose of a roadmap, what should NOT be in a roadmap, the Vision Stack, strategy, objectives, and the strategy process that creates a roadmap. All of this is important to understand, so please review Part 1 if you haven’t read it.

In Part 2, I will provide a detailed example based on what I wrote in Part 1, and dig into some of topics related to roadmaps and roadmapping.

And to repeat what I said in the intro to Part 1: Creating strategic roadmaps is neither complex nor time-consuming, but it does require a different way of working than what most companies follow. The change to make is to start with clear objectives (which many companies don’t have), then make strategy choices (also missing in many companies) on how to achieve those objectives. Those choices will define the key actions or activities that will be visible on the roadmap. As I said, not hard, just different. 😃

The Strategy Process For Creating a Roadmap

For easy reference, I’ve included the image from Part 1 outlining the strategy process I described there. For more details see Part 1. 😃

Diagram of 9-step strategy process described above

Contents

• Some Additional Information
• A Working Example
• Business Roadmaps vs. Product Roadmaps
• Defining the Roadmap
• How Roadmaps contribute to Plans
• A Little Feedback Please

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A Working Example

The example below is based on a similar example described in this article on Objectives. I’ve modified it slightly and elaborated on it, but it’s basically a very similar objective and set of strategy choices. I’ll put labels — e.g. (step 1) — in the text below so you can map that back to the 9 step process shown in the above diagram (and described in detail in Part 1)

Start with a clear SMT* Objective

The specific Business Objective (step 1) is:

Increase our revenue in Mexico by 35% in CY 2025

This is clearly a Business Objective. It is Specific (Increase revenue in Mexico), Measurable (by 35%) and Time-bound (in 2025).

*️Specific, Measurable, Timebound

Context for the Objective

The following is the context to work with (step 2). Context is critical when thinking about objectives. The objective alone encapsulates a lot of assumptions and data, so spelling it out — documenting and discussing it internally — brings better alignment with whomever you are working with.

AutoDataTest is a scaleup that sells a software product to test enterprise data. It has an existing reseller and implementation partner in Mexico. The partner has indicated strong competition in the Mexican market from other vendors. They’ve also cited the product’s complex onboarding process as a barrier to accelerating revenue. There’s also always a need for new integrations into other systems to expand the reach of the data that can be tested. The partner has been active, but it’s clear to AutoDataTest that the partner cannot increase their results by 35% on their own.

How Might We: Increase Revenue

So the question is, what are the options to — i.e. How Might We — increase revenue by 35% in one year in Mexico? (steps 3 & 4). There is no single way to do it. So what are the various ways we can drive additional revenue?

Some of the options are:

1. Increase product prices
2. Add more products to sell
3. Find additional reseller partners (to better penetrate the market)
4. Drive more marketing (either wider or more targeted)
5. Help the existing partner increase deal size or sales volume
6. Incent the partner to hire more sales people (to increase sales volume)
7. Provide additional sales training for the partner (to increase impact)
8. Add new integrations (to increase addressable market of product)
9. Open an office in Mexico and sell/support directly (along with the partner)

There might be other options, but AutoDataTest used this list as the set of choices available.

Can you think of other options they should have considered?

Assumptions and Risks

Step 5 of the strategy process means evaluating these choices to see what might prevent them from being successful, or what inherent risks there are, and deciding whether to proceed or whether some experiments/tests are needed to elaborate further. For the purpose of this article, I’ll shortcut to the results of that work.

The company evaluated each of the 9 options (Step 6) and decided NOT to do 1, 2 and 3 from that list.

• A significant price increase was not possible, given competitive pressures
• Adding more products couldn’t be done fast enough to impact 2025. The company would consider this for the following year.
• Finding more resellers requires too much lead time. i.e. to find, evaluate, negotiate a deal, train and get them up and productive. Also it would likely cause channel conflict with the current partner. This also might be something to investigate in the future.

The remaining partner related items — 4. Drive more marketing, 5. Help the partner increase deal size, 6. Incent them to hire more sales people, 7. Provide more training — all make sense, and will be part of the strategy in some form (Step 7).

NOTE: As mentioned earlier, this is a simplified process for the sake of the article. In a real world situation, each of the choices should be individually evaluated and chosen based on some understanding of their potential impact and contribution to the desired objective.

Adding more integrations — 8. Add new integrations to increase addressable market — is something the company will investigate. It requires discovery work to understand the market needs, and of course product work to create the integrations.

The last item — 9. Open a direct sales office in Mexico — involves a lot of work, costs and risk, but the company felt it was warranted, not just to help achieve the 35% revenue growth target, but primarily as a way to show commitment to customers, challenge competitors, and bring more focus in the company on the Mexican market.

The following describes the decisions of the company.

In order to achieve the objective (35% increase in revenue in 2025), the company, which sees Mexico as an important market, is going to set up a direct sales office in Mexico and collaborate with the partner to better train their staff, increase deal size, and extend reach and penetration into accounts.

To address pressure from competitors also selling in Mexico, the company is going to launch an extended marketing effort to raise awareness of their product in key Mexican market segments.

Given analysis done by the partner, onboarding customers to the software is very time consuming. Thus the company is going to add better onboarding capabilities and content to the product.

And finally, the company will investigate additional system integrations to increase the addressable market for the product.

I’ve highlighted a few things in statement above:

1. Set up a direct sales office in Mexico
2. Additional sales collaboration with the partner
3. Launch an extended marketing effort
4. Improve onboarding capabilities and content in the product
5. Additional integrations to increase addressable market

These 5 items define the strategy (choices) the AutoDataTest has made (from all their other choices) to achieve the objective.

NOTE: This strategy (like all strategies) is a bet. These choices don’t guarantee the 35% revenue increase, but the company believes that, based on their analysis and current information, they are the best choices (strategy) to achieve that objective, AND to set the company up for future success.

If the situation with the company, partner, competitors or Mexican market changes significantly while executing on this, the company can adjust the strategy (i.e. make new or modified choices) to address those changes.

Also, note that there’s still a lot of work to be done to turn these choices into a plan or plans. i.e. What training is actually required? What are the marketing campaigns to be run? What kind of training does the partner need?’ Where will that sales office be located? How many people will be there? What goals will it have? Who will run it? What investment is needed? What is the specific collaboration with the partner? What time/effort will that take? What expenses will be required, etc. etc.

Each of the 5 items above need to be worked out in more detail (define a plan) so they can be executed on, tracked and measured.

But, for the purposes of a roadmap, we can decompose these items a bit further and put them into convenient time (target) buckets, and then appropriate teams can break them down into specific execution plans.

Business Roadmaps vs. Product Roadmaps

I want to introduce the concept of a business roadmap. When people say the word “roadmap” they usually mean a product roadmap. i.e. the word product is implied. But there is no rule that states that a roadmap can only be applied to products. e.g. people often talk about technology roadmaps.

Recall the 4 quotes from Part 1 of the article.

• A roadmap is a statement of direction and strategy.
• A roadmap is a prototype of your strategy.
• Roadmaps are evidence of strategy. Not a list of features.
• A map depicts, implying that it is a graphical representation of something. In the case of a roadmap, it graphically displays a firm’s strategy.

None of them are exclusive to products. They are evidence or representations of strategy. Period.

So a business roadmap is a representation of your business strategy, laid out visually with time-frames for easy understanding. Let’s assume time-frames of 3 months, 3 months, 6 months. i.e. 12 months in total. The items in the nearer timeframes should be higher confidence, and those further out lower confidence, possibly speculative, depending on how much evidence and confidence you have currently.

NOTE: A roadmap should align with the timeframe(s) of your objectives, and strategy choices. In this case, given the timeframe of the objective is 1 year, I’m aligning the roadmap timeframes to 12 months.

Defining the Roadmap

We can lay out the roadmap with one section for each objective, and one row for each major strategy choice (we have 5 of them). In this case, we’ve only got one objective (35% growth in Mexico), but in reality you’d probably have more than one. I’ll show the items tied to each strategy choice and explain them.

1. Set up a direct sales office in Mexico

The first choice — setting up the sales office, could be broken out as follows:

Strategy choice 1:Set up a direct sales office in Mexico

In Months 1–3, we have 3 major items — understanding the market, setting up the business and starting the recruitment process, with the first hire being a country manager.

Months 4–6 includes securing the office space, continuing with recruitment and coordinate GTM work with the existing partner.

And lastly, in the last 6 months of the year, we need to formally launch the operations, hire/train local support teams and start measuring our progress.

Note that these are still fairly high-level — they aren’t detailed plans — but they paint a clear picture of what we need to achieve each in each time period to set up that office and have it running to contribute to the revenue growth.

2. Additional sales collaboration with the partner

The strategy choice consists of several activities to support their sales team. It might look like this:

Strategy Choice 2 — Additional Sales collaboration with partner

The first 3 months are assessing the situation and initial work with the partner. The next 3 months increase the level amount of partner training as well as start a Win/Loss program. And the final 6 months, add additional actions and continue the Win/Loss.

3. Launch extended marketing effort

The Marketing team has two major tasks in this effort. The first is to work with the partner and either support and extend their marketing, or lead the marketing efforts and have the partner in a supporting role. This would need to be discussed and decided witht he partner. The second major task is to launch the new office and raise awareness of AutoDataTest’s presence in Mexico. Both of these require some investigation as well as coordination with the partner. It might look like this:

Strategy choice 3 — Launch extended marketing efforts

4. Improve onboarding capabilities and content in the product

This is the first strategy choice that is product specific. The partner has indicated that onboarding is problematic. Let’s assume this is a specfic issue in the Mexican market, and not a general issue with the product overall. If that is the case, the partner should be able to provide AutoDataTest with specific issues that need addressing. Additional AutoDataTest should investigate this, understand the impact of this and if warranted, address the problem quickly.

NOTE: Just like any “feature request”, Product Management needs to investigate and understand the scope and scale of this issue before deciding whether it is worth investing in.

In this case, IF the onboarding issues are significant, then it would be imperative to address this quickly. But if the issues are not as significant as the partner believes, then Product Management may decide not to add support in the product, or possibly address them using other measures. e.g. perhaps the partner needs better training in onboarding new customers.

Given the above, the roadmap might look like this.

Strategy choice 4: Better onboarding capabilities and content in product.

5. Additional integrations to increase addressable market

This is the second product specific strategy choice. Integrations are a general product feature and something that the Product team actively tracks and addresses when needed.

While the partner can certainly state what integrations they would like, the Product team have decided that they will investigate the Mexican market a bit more and see if there are specific integrations that would benefit the Mexican market more than others and the address them with higher priority. They will also conduct some Loss analysis to see if any deals were lost due to lack of integration. As such, the roadmap might look like this:

Strategy choice 5: Additional Integrations

In months 1–3, the Product team will investigate the needs of the Mexican market and conduct some loss analysis to see what is required to support winning more deals. In Months 4–6, those integrations will be implemented, and in the months beyond that, they will monitor Mexican market needs and ensure that Mexican priorities are incorporated into overall plans.

NOTE: In both of the Product related strategy choices, notice that it’s not simply a list of deliverables. It’s the key actions or goals that are needed to address that choice. It’s important to show this work so that other stakeholders or people who are part of the strategy process understand the work that needs to be done and why. It also helps break the

And here is the (strategic) roadmap for this objective.

Strategic Roadmap for the Objective

Here we can see everything that AutoDataTest has decided to do to grow revenue 35% in Mexico in 2025. It is a combination of actions by teams across the company. From Product to Sales, Marketing, Finance and Operations.

This is NOT a plan

Let me be explicit here. This is NOT a plan — as this has to be scoped out in more detail — and it is NOT a list of commitments. It is a hypothesis, based on current understanding of the best way to achieve the objective.

It can be updated as needed

As time moves forward, as work is done, as more facts become apparent, the company may learn things that require changes or adjustments to the roadmap. That’s fine. For example, maybe it takes longer to open the new office and staff it up than expected. That’s fine. We’re not putting a date on it, and currently it is expected to happen in months 7–12.

IF the objective changes OR the assumptions about the market and strategy choices change, the roadmap can and will be updated as needed.

More than product delivery

Note the last two rows in the roadmap above; the ones that are Product specific. Notice that it’s not just a list of deliverables, but includes discovery and follow up activities. This is really important. It explains to people that there is work to be done before and after delivery, and it reminds them that Product is not just about delivery.

Business and product are connected

Another thing to note in that there is a CLEAR and EXPLICIT connection between actions and objectives, business and product. It’s all inter-related. You can’t just piecemeal it, adding and removing things at whim.

A small number of objectives (please)

This is the strategic roadmap for ONE objective. As a company you may have a few (and I mean FEW) other big objectives that you want to focus on. AutoDataTest is a scaleup, so they will have limited resources and given they have one product, they can focus on making it successful. One problem that many companies make is that they have far too many objectives, and they don’t map out what is required to achieve each, and so they either fall short or push people and burn them out.

Once you map out and see how much it takes to properly achieve a strategic objective, it becomes clear that more than a few (2 or 3) big objectives are not manageable.

The Product Roadmap

If you go through this process you will likely end up with Product specific choices for each objective. Those product specific choices (product rows in the roadmap) can be combined together to create the Product Roadmap.

It will still have a connection to the objectives and you (or your leaders) should still track and review the Business roadmap in entirety. But the Product fraction of the Business roadmap is what the Product teams can focus on.

Product portions of each roadmap become the product roadmap

NOTE: The 3rd (blue) roadmap on the left only contains Product specific actions. This is because it was created based on a product specific objective. e.g. a large customer commitment or some significant architecture or other internal work that needs visibility to the organization.

For more information on this see the section Independent Product Objectives in the following article.

Driving Clarity and Alignment via Business and Product Objectives

How Roadmaps Contribute to Plans

As mentioned above, the roadmap is NOT a plan. A plan is scoped out in detail with target dates and allocated resources. Working with Roadmaps and Plans is detailed in the article below, but I’ll summarize it here.

Product Roadmaps vs. Product Plans

NOTE: that the following applies to both Business Roadmaps and Product Roadmaps.

The items in the first column (e.g. Months 1–3) can be scoped out by each responsible team with action items assigned to people or teams to complete. In addition to the roadmap work, there will be other work that teams and people do. i.e. the more “tactical” things that are part of their jobs — the “keep the lights on” work etc.

For a Product team, the Product Roadmap items, along with bug fixes, customer or sales requests, maintenance or other Engineering needs etc. are what gets done. It’s important to balance all this, and ensure that over time the (strategic) roadmap items are not ignored or pushed aside for tactical or short-term issues. The diagram below tries to represent that.

How roadmaps feed into plans (e.g. releases) balancing strategic and tactical items.

As time moves forward, let’s say we’re in month 3, we can scope out months 4–6 and do the same. As we get closer to the next column (e.g Months 7–12) we have a lot of clarity on what needs to be done, and we can break out those items, scope and resource them etc., perhaps for the next 3 months and so on. It’s up to each organization to decide how they want to work, but this ongoing cycle of decomposing larger roadmap items into committed plans is key.

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