A strategy roadmap is a model that tries to predict what should happen in the future. Developing one can take months, and things continually change in the meantime. As soon as your roadmap is published, it is probably already outdated. So why spend so much time perfecting it?
Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile methods offer a solution for quickly developing and adapting a minimum viable strategy roadmap that has just enough information to help the organization move forward. A minimum viable strategy roadmap can be developed in a few days or weeks — not months.
There are many methods for developing a strategy roadmap. A capability-based planning approach is one such method, supported by the Open Group TOGAF® and Business Architecture Guild BIZBOK® Guide.
The Jibility six-step method is a simplified capability-based planning approach and is the basis of our strategic roadmapping tool. Give it a try by signing up to Jibility for free.
Like many other methods, the six Jibility Steps® are laid out sequentially to simplify communication and practical understanding of the method.
Following these steps waterfall-style, where each step is perfected before moving onto the next, means it can take months to complete a strategy roadmap. So instead, consider applying Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile methods to deliver a series of minimum viable strategy roadmaps in short 1-2 week cycles.
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To this:
Note that, while Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile approaches are preferred when creating your minimum viable strategy roadmaps, these methods are not always the most optimal approaches when executing the initiatives on your roadmap.
Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to understanding and solving problems by challenging assumptions and redefining the problem in order to help find alternative answers. Design Thinking is best described by the Interaction Design Foundation’s five-stage design thinking process.
Blog writer and author Eric Ries wrote about and popularized Lean Startup as a method for rapidly developing products that customers want by following a scientific approach through cycles of building minimum viable products, testing, learning and pivoting or persevering.
Agile is an approach practised in software development, which has been around for over twenty years. The manifesto for Agile software development, which dates back to 2001, was a significant event in the history of Agile.
Agile principles and techniques (such as iterative and incremental delivery) have gained in popularity and are now applied in many areas of the business other than software development, such as in enterprise architecture. A commonly practiced Agile approach is Scrum (illustrated below).
Today, Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile are widely accepted methods, and these are often combined to understand customer problems and needs, develop products and scale businesses. Gartner has put together a clear illustration of how these three methods can be combined:
Design Thinking is an excellent method for understanding your customers’ (and stakeholders’) challenges; defining clear objectives; and ideating solutions for your strategy roadmap.
Lean Startup provides a sound approach to rapidly build a minimum viable strategy roadmap to test with your customers, gather feedback, learn, and decide whether to pivot or persevere.
Finally, to build a minimum viable strategy roadmap, Agile principles can guide the development process and ensure that your strategy roadmap is developed iteratively and incrementally rather than sequentially.
Developing a strategy roadmap is very much like developing a product. To succeed, apply Design Thinking and Lean Startup approaches as follows:
An Agile approach can be applied when developing your MVP strategy roadmap. Building an MVP is similar to building the features of any product (which is the Build step in Lean Startup). Adopt Agile principles such as:
Things will inevitably change once you have your minimum viable strategy roadmap. When they do, simply take all the feedback and new parameters and go through another Lean Startup and Agile cycle to produce the next minimum viable strategy roadmap.
Our method for building strategy roadmaps is dubbed the Jibility Steps®. These six steps are a simplification of the industry-recognized capability-based planning approach.
Jibility is a free tool that guides the user through the six steps, and so build a substantiated strategy roadmap efficiently.
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