For: Enterprise Connecting Strategy To Execution:

The Living BT Investment Road Map

Architecture
Professionals

by Gordon Barnett and Margo Visitacion, February 5, 2014

Key Takeaways

Connect Strategy Planning And Strategy Execution With A Well-Defined

Road Map
In a business technology (BT) world, connecting planning methods to operational plans
ensures that stakeholders manage the realization of their strategic goals.

Practice Agile Planning When Managing Your Road Map

When market, business, and technology dynamics demand rapid change, annual or
episodic planning and communication are not sufficient. Agile planning approaches can
be implemented to match the demands of an organization’s environment.

Adopt Investment-Based Planning Methods To Develop Your Road Map

Budget-based planning often leads to a road map composed of redundant and siloed
initiatives. Investment-based planning requires more structure and provides a more
holistic view of how strategic objectives can be realized.

Build BT Strategy Road Maps With Six Elements For A Comprehensive

View
Interrelate six elements in your road map in order to incorporate everything relevant
into your BT strategy. Show the expected time frame, business goals, strategic themes,
specific stakeholder content, key dependencies, and investment needs to tell a
compelling story.

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For Enterprise Architecture Professionals February 5, 2014

Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment

Road Map
Road Map: The Strategic Planning And Portfolio Playbook
by Gordon Barnett and Margo Visitacion
with Alex Cullen and Abigail Komlenic

Why Read This Report

Demand for faster delivery means firms must efficiently communicate their prioritized strategic intent
and develop a set of investments that gives executives confidence that they will achieve strategic objectives.
The most common tool for communicating strategic intent and associated plans is a road map, but the
traditional life-cycle and project-based road maps of the technology management organization fall short
of providing this confidence. While speed and agility are essential, companies must apply discipline when
translating business strategies into technology-investment road maps. This report shows how to design
a road map for your technology-management strategy that will clearly show the impact on business
outcomes while also laying out the dependencies and investments needed to make it all happen.

Table Of Contents Notes & Resources

2 Traditional Planning Techniques Hinder This report is based on ongoing research into
Business Agility the key success factors of high-performance
BT investment strategies and portfolio
3 Six Key Elements Of High-Quality Connected
management. Specific inputs to this report
Road Maps
came from extensive discussions with the
Domain-Specific Road Map Content Provides members of Forrester’s CIO, Application
Clarity To Stakeholders Development & Delivery, and Enterprise
Architecture councils.
7 Evolve From Static, Timeline Road Maps To
Living, Agile Road Maps
Related Research Documents
Collaboration Is Key When Building Agility Into
The Building Blocks Of Agile Commerce
Road Map Development And Execution
May 16, 2013
Iterative Road Mapping Processes Are Essential
Break Down Silos With An Emerging
For Agility
Technology Road Map
May 14, 2013
recommendations
10 Preparation Leads To Road Map Success Create A Living BT Road Map
May 23, 2012

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For Enterprise Architecture Professionals
Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 2

Traditional Planning Techniques Hinder Business Agility

An agile business responds rapidly to changes in its business environment. Today, many companies
are beginning to recognize that their systems-of-record and engagement are usually the last things
to adapt to change.1 An agile business can change these systems more quickly, allowing the business
to get new products and services to market faster. A strategy-execution road map is the part of
the strategic planning framework that provides direction and guidance to internal and external
stakeholders on business-technology changes.2 It provides a visual plan for realizing a firm’s vision
and reflecting strategic priorities. While all firms prepare road maps, the reality is that traditional
road maps are not effective in practice. In many cases, the road maps are little more than Gantt-like
charts that prevent continual execution or change when market conditions evolve. The problems
generally fall into one of the following categories:

■ Traditional road maps leave out critical business context and the reason for change.
Traditional road maps, whether technology-, architecture-, business-, or product-related, focus
more on what to do than on the reason for how to do it. For example, a business-product owner
is more concerned about the business product and service rollout and his or her contribution
to corporate goals than about the specific business project or application rollout. Without the
broader context provided by a best-practice road map, misaligned change may not be evident.

■ Poor collaboration results in reduced confidence in road map content. A road map is the
deliverable created through the planning process. By focusing only on the output, without
paying attention to the importance of the collaboration needed to strengthen this process,
stakeholders often miss the relevant input required to create and update a road map. For
example, lack of focus on data, analysis, and context results in road map owners producing
something that simply matches the organization’s defined presentation format. What many
firms don’t realize is that the collaboration and process of putting together a road map is more
beneficial than the final deliverable.

■ Poor integration with strategic execution creates a lack of agility. Focusing on value in order
to cut wasteful practices and enabling teams to move quickly lies at the heart of agility. This
capability allows organizations to rapidly execute decision-making and operational cycles.
Without tightly integrated strategic execution processes and information about strategic
priorities, performance, and execution, decision-makers are less agile and unable to make timely
decisions. For many firms, differentiation is their ability to execute on strategy, and, therefore,
success comes largely down to execution. Traditional road maps are commonly static event-
driven artifacts, whereas best-practice road maps are live event-driven artifacts.3

■ Lack of understanding of capacity constraints limits the achievements of the strategic

objectives. Traditional road maps often ignore the firm’s capacity to deliver operational and
strategic change, and capacity is an often-overlooked strategic issue. Executives, being rightfully

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Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 3

demanding, are generally poor judges of their firm’s true capacity to operate effectively while
taking on major organizational change. Most either do not pay attention to capacity issues, or
do not understand the dynamics and impacts that capacity challenges have on the firm.

Six Key Elements Of High-Quality Connected Road Maps

Typically, organizations will have various forms of road maps, ranging from product, capability,
architecture, and technology road maps to investment, project, and market road maps. These road
maps are often produced independently with little collaboration between the authors, often leading
executives to lack confidence in their content. However, best-practice road mapping identifies six
key elements that provide authors with a structure to demonstrate a strong connection within and
between the various road maps (see Figure 1).4 The key elements of a road map are:

1. Prioritized and identifiable outcomes. The road map’s foundation is based on outcomes, and
these provide the business context for the remaining road map content. Outcomes derived from
goals, performance targets, lessons learned, achieved organizational alignment, or mitigated risk
address specific scenarios or real-time events.

2. Strategic themes that provide clarity on how the outcomes will be delivered. Strategic
themes are the high-level business strategies that form the basis for the organization’s business
model. Broad in scope, they identify the “what” an organization must excel in to achieve its
outcomes. For example, an organization may need to excel in customer experience to achieve
customer satisfaction.

3. A time frame that reflects the organization’s expectation of outcome delivery. The time
frame for a road map depends on the nature and needs of the organization and its immediate
external environment. The time frame may be for one year for public sector organizations,
where funding is agreed to annually. However, for-profit organizations may have time frames as
short as quarterly, where the external environment changes rapidly, or as long as five years, if the
strategic focus is on the long term.

4. Domain-specific road map content that reflects the sequence of portfolio execution. Road
maps provide benefits by acting as the foundation for communicating the right level of detail
in a way that the stakeholders will understand. Information that is relevant to a technology
stakeholder is unlikely to be relevant to a business stakeholder, who is more likely to be
interested in business products, services, and capabilities than in application and infrastructure
content (see Figure 2).

5. Clarity on dependencies that may affect the delivery of the outcomes. Almost any change to a
business or technology asset is felt elsewhere in the organization. For example, introducing new
processes or business applications may require an infrastructure upgrade or training employees
and customers. These dependencies need to be highlighted.

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Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 4

6. Investment outlay transparency during the time frame. Stakeholders gain confidence by
creating and executing on strategic plans when there is full transparency and they are able
to monitor progress. A road map is an ideal tool for presenting an integrated view of activity,
investment, and schedule.

Figure 1 The Six Elements Of A Best-Practice Road Map

Time frame Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4

5% cost reduction
Outcomes 10% revenue increase
20% customer satisfaction

Operational excellence
Strategic Customer experience
themes Market development

Business
services

Domain-
specific

Business
capabilities

People
Dependencies Process
Technology

30% spend
Investment 60% spend $n.nMillion
90% spend

110141 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Figure 2 Best-Practice Road Maps Cover Numerous Stakeholder-Specific Road Map Content

Strategy
Goals and
objectives Strategies Markets Products Services Function

Architecture
Road map layers

Collaboration
Capabilities Applications Infrastructure Information People Process

Influence
Portfolio
Program
Investment Portfolio objectives

Execution
Project Releases Maintenance Services

110141 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Domain-Specific Road Map Content Provides Clarity To Stakeholders

All stakeholders gain clarity from portfolio investment road maps when information is relevant
and timely. Multiple views of domain-specific content provide the appropriate information to the
stakeholder. Examples of domain-specific content are (see Figure 3):

■ Business products. Product managers are responsible for the launch, maintenance, and
decommissioning of the firm’s products. It is, therefore, essential that they have a holistic view of
product deliveries, enhancements, and removals so they can identify the effect on the business
environment and the firm’s goals.

■ Business services and capabilities. Business executives need to understand their strategies
within a business context. Executives will want to know which business services and business
capabilities will deliver strategic outcomes. They will also want a high-level view of the key
dependencies that may affect the delivery of these services and capabilities. For example, a firm
may sign a contract with a partner before the capability is available to the organization.

■ Business application. In many firms, business applications dictate technology strategy.

Infrastructure standards are defined to support, rather than dictate, the business applications.
Technical and business executives need to understand how their decisions affect the application
portfolio. For example, executives need to think holistically when making decisions to
outsource business capabilities or use cloud-based business services. Dependencies related to
applications may involve user and support training, infrastructure upgrades, or contracts.

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■ Supporting and enabling infrastructure. Technology executives have often been provided with
vendor road maps, but they have rarely presented these maps in a business context. Domain-
specific content provides the framework to link infrastructure activities to business outcomes.
Similarly to applications dependencies, dependencies for infrastructure may also involve user
and support training, application upgrades, or contracts.

■ Business process and information. Operational stakeholders are particularly interested in the
process and information transformations resulting from strategic decisions. They will require
clarity on what processes need to be changed to enable delivery of strategic outcomes. For
example, the introduction of Lean processing in product management could enable operational
efficiencies and effectiveness.

■ Organization operating model and staffing. Assessing the current state of the organization
often identifies weaknesses in organizational design, job descriptions, and employee
competencies. Workforce development executives need clarity on what changes are needed to
the operating model to enable the delivery of the strategic outcomes.

■ Projects and release plans. Strategic changes will cause a number of adjustments that will
be delivered through a set of prioritized and sequenced programs and projects. Delivery
and sponsoring executives will require a clear and complete set of projects that deliver the
strategic outcomes.

Figure 3 An Example Of Domain-Specific Content And Its Dependencies

Domain Context Stakeholders Content Dependencies

Business Business model Business and technology Business services People, process,
management executives and capabilities technology, and
contracts
Application Business application Technology management Business People, process,
portfolio executives, users, applications infrastructure, and
architects, and IT contracts
operations
Infrastructure IT infrastructure Technology management Infrastructure People, process,
portfolio executives, architects, security applications, and
and IT operations contracts
Operational Process and Business and technology Process People, applications,
information portfolio mangement executives information and contract
and users
Organization Organization Business and technology Employee People, process,
structure, job management executives department technology, and
descriptions, training, division contracts
and operating model
Project Program and project Project managers and Programs and People, technology,
portfolio sponsors, as well as projects and contracts
project teams

110141 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 7

Evolve From Static, Timeline Road Maps To Living, Agile Road Maps
The development of living road maps is an integral part of strategic planning. It leverages the output
following strategic planning activities, such as assessment, choice, and prioritization, and precedes
execution and measurement (see Figure 4). The inputs are a point-in-time list of strategic priorities
with approved business cases. A structured, but iterative and collaborative, practice turns these
priorities into a sequenced set of deliverables in the form of interrelated road maps.

Figure 4 The Strategic Planning-To-Execution Framework

Strategic Strategic
assessment road maps Execution Optimize
Strategy

Define Measure Realign

Business Business
strategic business and
model road map
vision benefits adjust
architecture
Enterprise

Assess Establish Measure Realign

architecture/ Architecture
architectural architectural and
capabilities road map
direction fit adjust
PMO/portfolio
management

Market
Measure
and Build Realign
Combined health/
technology business Plan and
portfolio value/
management portfolio adjust
progress
demand

Identify Product/ Measure

execution

Identify Realign
Work

requirements/ service/ Build/ benefit/

planned and
features/CRs/ application deploy outcome to
work adjust
issues road map customer

110141 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 8

Collaboration Is Key When Building Agility Into Road Map Development And Execution
Live road maps, rather than static strategic investment road maps, are comprised of multiple
interrelated elements — from strategic priorities through architectural impact to portfolio and
product, and finally to service plans. To maximize agility, the development of these road map
elements requires continuous input from many stakeholders. While each element may require input
from only a select group of stakeholders, leaders must leverage strong collaboration to bring in all
relevant viewpoints:

■ Business leaders and technology executives codefine strategic business priorities. Strategic
business priorities are based on the firm’s vision of market success. Naturally, business
executives will primarily focus on goals, objectives, markets, products, services, and business
functions. However, as firms seek greater agility, they must collaborate with BT strategists and
architects to formalize and align their road maps. Portfolio executives, by having visibility of
resource availability, have significant influence on the feasibility of realizing these priorities
and thus providing input. A business strategy committee, or authority, has the ultimate
accountability and responsibility for this information.

■ Architectural change combines input from multiple stakeholders. All business change affects
the conceptual, logical, and physical architecture of the firm. Transparency of these architectural
impacts drives prioritization — hence the need to collaborate with business executives, BT
strategists, architects, and portfolio managers. BT strategists and architects present architectural
impacts to influence the business priorities and portfolio investments.

■ Both strategic and operational changes are addressed in a single portfolio. Business demand
occurs at both operational and strategic levels.5 Portfolio managers need to balance this demand
and advise business executives and BT strategists about the impacts of new or revised demands
by providing accurate information about risks and benefits, alignment strategies, capacity, and
time-to-market constraints.

Iterative Road Mapping Processes Are Essential For Agility

The most frequently cited benefit of a road mapping approach is communication, enabled primarily
by the visual road map format. Road mapping is an iterative process that ensures alignment of all
road map elements. This process consists of the following iterative steps (see Figure 5):

■ Understanding the prioritized strategies and the underlying strategic goals and objectives. A
set of defined and prioritized strategies is the best input executives can give to the road mapping
activity. An understanding of these strategies lays the foundation for the strategic road map.
This foundation outlines the intended strategy or strategic theme per period. For example, a
strategic theme to improve customer experience may lead to the delivery of a strategic goal,
such as a 10% increase in revenues.

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Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 9

■ Understanding, defining, and delivering the products and services for each strategic theme.
Each strategic theme will undoubtedly require the introduction, enhancement, or retirement
of products or services. Identification of these products and services provides the underlying
business context required by business-focused stakeholders. Aligning these products and
services to strategic themes enables stakeholders to assess the firm’s capacity to realize the
stated strategic goals. For example, a customer-loyalty product may be required to improve
customer experience; however, the lack of an existing customer-loyalty product may highlight
unachievable strategic goals within the intended period. This example emphasizes the iterative
nature of the road map development process. Decision-makers with timely information can
make decision more quickly.

■ Understanding and defining the architectural impact of strategic decisions. The addition,
enhancement, or retirement of products and services is likely to change the business and
technical architecture of the firm significantly in such areas as business capabilities, business
services, processes, technical capabilities, organizational design, and people. Aligning
architectural changes to their respective products and services further enables stakeholders to
assess the feasibility of the intended strategic goals. For example, the customer-loyalty product
may affect the customer acquisition, support, and retention of business capabilities. These,
in turn, may need modifications to the customer management applications, the training of
customer support personnel, and so on, to work strategically.

■ Translating the architectural impacts for a balanced portfolio of investments. Analysis

of the architectural impacts is likely to highlight that a number of architectural components
need enhancements, such as business capabilities, specific business roles, processes, business
applications, and infrastructure. Best practice portfolio management techniques reorchestrate
these modifications to balance the required investments and optimize resource utilization. For
example, customer acquisition, support, and retention capabilities may require modifications
to customer-related corporate data. However, other business capability enhancements may
also need to modify customer data. Portfolio management should identify this and efficiently
address customer information changes within a portfolio. These restructurings may affect the
delivery of specific strategic goals.

■ Communicating the road map to build confidence in the strategic plan. Stakeholders
throughout the firm have specific information needs. Communicating the appropriate domain-
specific content to stakeholders builds trust, understanding (of why change is happening), and
confidence in the road map’s feasibility. Communicating the living road map ensures decision-
makers have timely information.

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Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 10

Figure 5 Five Crucial Steps To Building Best-Practice Road Maps

Understand the prioritized strategies and underlying strategic goals and

1 objectives. For example, a strategic theme to improve customer experience may
lead to the delivery of a strategic goal, such as a 10% increase in revenues.

Understand and define the products and services that are delivered by each
strategic theme. For example, a customer-loyalty product may be required to
2 improve customer experience; however, the lack of an existing customer-loyalty
product may highlight that the strategic goal cannot be achieved within the
intended period.

Understand and define the architectural impact due to the strategic decisions.
Iterations

For example, the customer-loyalty product may impact the customer acquisition,
3 support, and retention of business capabilities. These, in turn, may
need modifications to the customer management applications, the training of
customer support personnel, and so on, to work strategically.

Translate the architectural impacts for a balanced portfolio of investments.

For example, the customer acquisition, support, and retention of capabilities may
4 require modifications to customer-related corporate data. However, other
business capability enhancements may also need to modify customer data.

Communicate the road map. Thorough communication of the road map,

combined with more frequent, agile development and release models, will minimize
5 business disruption and risk while increasing the odds that the desired business
outcomes are achieved.

110141 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

R e c o m m e n d at i o n s
Preparation Leads To Road Map Success
The process of creating road maps for portfolio investments will surface and communicate key
priorities and dependencies to all stakeholders in your organization. In particular, as portfolio-
investment road maps are created, stakeholders should remember to:

■ Collaborate and break down silos in road map development. No matter who is setting the
strategy, technology management and the business should align to deliver business and
technology management solutions. Use the road map creation process to encourage this unity.

■ Be aware of technology and demand evolution. Your road map needs to recognize that
technology and demand evolution are increasing.6 With the evolution of tools, technologies,
techniques, and customer demands as well as the proliferation of channels, business

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Connecting Strategy To Execution: The Living BT Investment Road Map 11

solutions are often in a state of flux, and you will have gaps in your technology portfolio.
Reprioritizing frequently is valuable to the business in the context of strategy execution.

■ Think incremental adoption. Don’t expect a road map with a long-term focus to be static.
Be prepared to iterate and adjust it as the needs of the business change and new technology
becomes available.

Endnotes
1
In the “age of the customer” firms must respond in a more agile manner not only to stay competitive but
to meet the needs of the ever-demanding customer. See the July 19, 2013, “Welcome To The Era Of Agile
Commerce” report.
2
Road mapping is often perceived as a simple exercise of listing projects in line with business priorities.
However, the process requires a significant amount of collaboration and effort from many stakeholders. See
the May 23, 2012, “Create A Living BT Road Map” report.
3
Event-driven artifacts are updated because of an event trigger, e.g., execution is completed, performance
and strategy adjustments are defined, or portfolio investments are rebalanced. For static road maps, updates
are rare and only major event triggers are monitored. For live road maps, there are significant event triggers
being monitored. Thus, information is fed back to decision-makers more quickly, and decision-making
becomes more agile.
4
Appropriate context for the appropriate audience: Successful road map planning decomposes complex
systems into subsystems and ultimately into elements on a road map. When an individual element changes,
the impact of that change is visible on the potential outcome and/or timing of the more complex system.
Graphic road maps provide clarity, supporting strategic alignment and dialogue between business and
technology functions in the organization. A road map identifies the key steps needed to realize that shared
vision, presented in a way that is instantly intelligible to all stakeholders. However, communicate road maps
with an audience in mind. Road maps that contain too much information, or provide insufficient business
context, often provide little value to investing stakeholders.
5
The major challenge for portfolio executives is balancing the operational and strategic demands against the
time, cost, and capacity constraints of the firm. See the July 15, 2013, “Map Your Journey To The Future
With Next-Generation Portfolio Management” report.
6
Demand evolution refers to the study of trends in business and technology demand under different business
scenarios — the projection business as usual, which holds account of the natural trends of demand under
various operational states, along with the more dynamic analysis that predicts likely changes to the business
environment in which the firm operates.

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