Old Roadmaps are a Dangerous Thing
I think I have seen about a thousand roadmaps over the
course of my career, some great, some needed to be burned. Having a time phased
plan for improvements is critical to the success of any business but what is
just as important is how often that roadmap is reviewed and how flexible an
organization is with that plan. Roadmaps like many EA artifacts can quickly
become dated so EA teams must be ready to make a new plan as market conditions
and technologies change.
Once upon a time I knew a Senior VP of a company and he was incredibly
inflexible even in the face of strong evidence that market conditions were
shifting. He still lived in the word where technology was something that helped
the business run but did not have the role of connecting the organization to
the customer. He had a talented and experienced IT Corporate IT team that could
have transformed the organization into an industry leader but lacked the
vision. His roadmap looked like the ones that had been presented for the
previous 10 years, so results suffered.
So where did he go wrong? What should he have paid attention to? Did he miss a roadsign?
1) Company and EA Leaders must be visionaries. No
vision = your company is roadkill in today’s Hyperconnected economy.
2 2) One needs to be able to translate that vision
into incremental activities that are appropriately stratified.
3) Roadmaps are necessary, but like Rand McNally they
have to be released a minimum of once year.
4) The new roads, while less traveled are the ones
EA and company leaders need to be aware of. If you are that proverbial gas
station on the corner or Main and Park and there’s a new interstate allowing
traffic to bypass that intersection, time to rethink your roadmap.
5) If there’s construction (market turbulence) make
sure your roadmap reflects this. Will it last for one year, or five?
6) If there’s no good roadway option, maybe it’s
time for a new road.
Have a safe and happy Independence Day
Nice analogy Ben. I completely agree that company and EA leaders alike must be visionaries. As they say, if you don't know where you're going, any direction will take you there. Without vision, how are we to know if a roadmap will take us (or has taken us) to where we want to go?
ReplyDeleteNice roadmap Ben! I agree with you if the upper management is not willing use EA framework in company. if management is not visionaries than it could would hard company to change it vision.
ReplyDeleteHappy happy Independence Day to you too!
I like your analogies. You say that roadmaps should be published once a year at a minimum. If you had it your way how many times a year would you publish a roadmap and would that number change depending on the target audience?
ReplyDeleteIt absolutely can change based on the audience. I have worked in settings where our R&D product release roadmap was updated monthy. I think that how often a roadmap is updated should be proportional to how "zoomed in" it is. Updating a roadmap monthly at a 30K foot view probably won't have much value. However, at 1K feet there may be tactical or short term strategic implications.
ReplyDeleteGreat thought!