Product and Technology Roadmaps and Roadmapping Processes - Dave Litwiller - Sept 19 2022.pptx
1. Dave Litwiller
September 19, 2022
PRODUCT & TECHNOLOGY
ROADMAPS, AND,
ROADMAPPING PROCESSES
SEPTEMBER 19, 2022
DAVE LITWILLER
2. GOAL OF
ROADMAPPING
• To capture, visualize, manipulate, and manage information
to decrease complexity in foresight
• To translate vision and strategy into:
• A focused, scope-bounded outlook
• Exploration of the innovation landscape capabilities and
opportunities
• Identification of innovation pathway options
• Overcoming innovation barriers, closing gaps, leveraging
enabling factors, and identifying intermediate milestones
• Tangible outputs and measurable impact
• A baseline plan to revisit for future validation and iterations
3. SUCCESS FACTORS
• For information and perspectives, internal and external:
• Gathering
• Integration
• Synthesis
• Building sufficient consensus among participants, and
being able to make decisions and commit to action even
when there is split opinion
• Systems-, enterprise-, and even industry-engineering are
typically all in play
• Ability to trade-off within and across domains
5. ROADMAPPING PROCESS -
MAIN DRIVERS AND INPUTS
Philips Process
• Emphasis on market, product, and technology considerations
Credit: Robert Phaal,
Cambridge Roadmapping
9. COMMON PROCESS FOR
ROADMAP GENERATION
Emphases in this
example:
1) Market/business
2) Product, service
3) Technology
Note:
The process can also
use other
drivers such as IP,
regulatory
standards/certification,
operations, supply
chain etc.
12. SCHEDULE UNCERTAINTY OF FAR
RANGE AND TECHNOLOGICALLY
RISKIER ROADMAP ELEMENTS
Credit: Lee & Thomas, Bakke & Haskins
• Using NASA’s Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), base rate data:
13. SET-BASED CONCURRENT
ENGINEERING ROADMAPS
Credit: The 2Gemba Blog
• Used in complex systems engineering with multiple high risk subsystems
• Keeps open multiple sub-system possibilities until late in the design cycle
• Avoids premature lock-in of architecture, interfaces, and subsystems
16. EXAMPLE OF A HIGH
STAKES INDUSTRY-WIDE
TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP
International Roadmap for (Semiconductor) Devices and Systems, 2022
Source: IRDS
17. EXPECTATIONS AND
MINDSET FOR SUCCESS
• Expect multiple roadmap iterations to take place for a
leadership group to evolve toward a shared view and mutual
understanding
• Don’t try to do too much in a single session
• It is a journey for everyone involved
• This is especially so toward the fuzzier front end
• The roadmap is the catalyst, but really the output of a
roadmapping process for management is the dialog, mutual
understanding among different points of view, and resolving
competition among ideas through innovation in products and
business processes
• It usually takes some tension and even some conflict for the
best ideas to emerge
18. EXPECTATIONS AND
MINDSET FOR SUCCESS
• Being as explicit as possible about hypotheses,
assumptions and dependencies usually helps bring
different perspectives into focus
• For entrenched points of view, asking what it would take to
change the person’s or group’s mind can further help
reveal why people feel the way they do
• Often, one of the underlying issues for a leadership group
through the roadmapping process is to develop a more
integrated, shared view about risk:
• What risk is
• What risks are appropriate to take
• What rewards and opportunities are worth the price
19. EXPECTATIONS AND
MINDSET FOR SUCCESS
• No-feature-left-behind roadmaps are typically a strong sign
of insufficient choice, deliberation and conflict resolution in
the process
• To fix:
• Product and technology roadmaps have roots in strategy
formulation and design of strategic actions
• Overly broad roadmaps usually mean that strategic choices
haven’t been sufficiently narrowed or distilled to the essential
issues
• This challenge of roadmap sprawl can be particularly
pronounced in cultures which expect or demand that most or
all issues be resolved collaboratively
• Coherent choice requires some ultimate, binding decision
authority
20. FURTHER
DISCUSSION
For additional dialog about product and technology
roadmaps and roadmapping processes in start-ups and
scale-ups:
dave.litwiller@communitech.ca