What does a roadmap look like?

One example of a business roadmap that has been made using online software – you may find this useful but you can use simpler methods to build your roadmap.

Your business roadmap should include the most important strategic plans across the company. What are the targets, initiatives, and major projects you want completed across your business? Remember that your roadmap is always set in relation to time, therefore, you may need to adjust it over time. Each time you revise and review your progress against the set targets, you may need to take time to make some adjustments. That’s why it’s essential to ensure that everything you add deserves to be on there!

A company roadmap can take many different forms. There are thousands of companies that exist simply to make software for businesses to create their own roadmaps and strategy documentation. More often than not, a roadmap should contain the following information that is organized in vertical and horizontal swim lanes as shown below:

• Targets

Targets that you set to achieve. This could be increasing revenue or profits. We will cover more on how to set targets properly for creating a roadmap in the next lesson.

• Initiatives

What are the major themes of work or areas of investment that would support your vision? These may not be specific targets, but they are broader aims that you set the intention to be involved in. A business initiative is a drive that a business consciously focuses on to change and improve the way that it operates. For example, do you have a passion to get involved with a local charity or community that algins with your mission and values? Perhaps you’d like to work on improving your company’s culture?

• Milestones

Milestones are significant points of progress on your timeline. You need to think about the journey to achieving the targets you set yourself and ask what important points must you reach along the way?

For example, you may want to set the target to increase revenue by 20% but in order to do that you need to hire a sales consultant to take on some of the workload and see to more clients. One of the milestones to get to that 20% increase in revenue might be:

M1 Hire sales consultant.

• Dependencies

Your targets will likely all have dependencies, which are things that must be completed before something else can start.

For example, you may want to allocate investment in one area of your business to see revenue increase by 20% in a year’s time. You’d like to use some of the money that you have tied up in old marketing projects that never took off. Your dependencies will be to close the account that you have with an external marketing agency that you are paying $2,000 a month to. Now you are able to put that $2,000 toward an alternative like hiring your own in-house part-time marketing associate. Doing that though, is dependent on you closing that account and cutting the expense you were paying to the marketing agency.