Four Steps to Creating a Strategy Delivery Roadmap

In this post, let us consider the four steps to creating a strategy delivery roadmap. Tune in to find out.

What Is a Strategy Delivery Roadmap?

A delivery roadmap is a timeline that shows how you can achieve the strategy.

We’ve all seen it. A swish slide deck with a timeline of 6 months or a year, maybe 2 years, showing the strategy being delivered over time, often tying it back to key business initiatives. 

It looks great on the PowerPoint slide, but what’s the reality?

The business strategy is just one part of the puzzle. Without strategy delivery plans in place, there is no way to know when you will deliver the strategy. 

Without this information in place, you can’t forecast when you will get the outcomes you need. You can’t manage your business effectively. 

You won’t know what to do next and you won’t be able to adapt and react to new and changing conditions and opportunities.

It’s a simple concept, but surprisingly few organizations have a strategy delivery roadmap in place. The truth is, without one, it is very hard to deliver a strategy.

4 Steps to Creating a Strategy Delivery Roadmap

Lead with your vision and strategies.

From here, you can articulate your strategy delivery roadmap.

This is the beginning of the process. You need your vision and strategies written down so that you can lead with them. 

This gives you credibility because it shows that you have thought about the overall direction of the business, not just this year’s targets. 

Where do you start? With your vision statement for the business, your strategy maps/dials, and your key initiatives/projects for this year. From here, you can articulate your strategy delivery roadmap.

Work Backwards Through the Timeline

The next step is to work backward through the timeline. So, you can see how you will deliver your strategies. Then, you can achieve your vision for the business. 

You need to look at all three layers (strategies, initiatives/projects, and tactics). Then, determine what needs to happen in order to deliver on those strategies. 

You can then build these into a timeline that shows how you will deliver your strategy over time, tying it back to key business initiatives if required. T

This will give you something tangible to reference when making decisions on how to move forward. Both now and in future years. 

Focus on problems, not solutions.

Now that you have your roadmap in place, the next step is to focus on the problems that you need to solve in order to deliver on your strategy. This will help you to stay clear of the temptation to jump in and start implementing solutions straight away.

This will allow you to create a roadmap for implementing your solutions. It will also allow you to manage costs and timeframes so that you can still hit your targets.

Regularly Review Progress, Then Update Your Roadmap

The final step is to review progress against your roadmap regularly. If anything changes, then update it accordingly. 

Likewise, if anything falls off the roadmap, then remove it. Focus on what’s important now and make sure that other things are planned for later on.