Let’s Talk About Technology Roadmaps
An enterprise architecture roadmap is a strategic blueprint that communicates how a company’s IT plan aligns with its business goals. A roadmap is a versatile tool that enables to you to share the right details with your intended audience. You may have stakeholders who require a granular breakdown.
Organizations that seek assistance with an architecture roadmap do so because it provides a framework to help guide them towards success. It serves as a “north star” to work towards as an organization from quarter to quarter without losing sight. And because major changes require real planning, a roadmap serves to highlight which skills and resources will be needed to reach the set goals.
Functions of a technology roadmap:
Communicating a change in management plans
Implementing the digital transformation of a legacy process
Addressing all IT processes needed to support company-wide compliance with new or changing data protection regulations.
Assesses the skills and capabilities of your IT staff
An organization needs a customized, prioritized list of initiatives and projects while still ensuring the IT infrastructure can support business goals
An organization needs to audit its IT infrastructure to meet best practices and industry standards
One of the biggest benefits of a well-developed and designed roadmap is it serves as a tool to aid in gaining stakeholder buy-in. Roadmaps come in many versions and can be edited and tweaked to address any audience, from super granular to high level. Executives, investors, or department leaders often require well-documented plans to back up why a change is being made. Roadmaps can help highlight the big picture and the overall benefits.
Additionally, your roadmap can highlight:
How this implementation will create efficiency
How this implementation will boost employee productivity
How this implementation will give the enterprise a competitive edge
How the implementation will increase the bottom line
The estimated costs and duration of each of the projects underway
A few other benefits of a technology roadmap:
Provides a clear picture of the enterprise’s IT infrastructure capabilities and how those align with the business’s overall goals
Helps address current IT issues
Allows an enterprise to reduce cost by removing unnecessary and inefficient applications and technology investments
An increase in productivity with the implementation of the right technology that meets the organization’s needs
Improve IT security
Avoid significant system failures by exposing weaknesses within the IT infrastructure
Resolves conflicts around priorities
A technology roadmap allows IT leadership to be more strategic when choosing to invest or manage technology projects. They are better equipped to handle discussions with other leadership throughout the enterprise when requesting new projects or initiatives.
