A technology roadmap is an essential tool that your technology department can use to help with your business’s growth and success. It provides a visual summary of your IT department’s plans for future undertakings and can be incredibly helpful in planning and managing internal IT projects. With the New Year here, now is a great time to develop a technology roadmap and use it to guide your IT department and the rest of your business through your planned projects for the rest of 2021. Here are some tips on creating your technology roadmap.
Why Do You Need One?
No department in your business is completely isolated from another. They all connect and influence one another on a day-to-day business. This is especially true for your technology department, which is responsible for managing technology throughout your business. Implementing a technology change without thinking through the possible implications can create issues in your everyday operations, introduce security weaknesses, and disrupt regulatory standards.
Even if you manage to address these risks, the technology change itself can be disruptive to employee productivity if it’s not properly planned and implemented. A technology roadmap helps your company plan out the best way to introduce any technological change while also preparing for potential complications.
Steps for Creating Your Roadmap
Now that you understand the importance of creating a technology roadmap, it’s time to get started:
- Start by identifying your strategic objectives. You must clearly understand why you’re making this technology change and how it will benefit your business. Put this at the top of your roadmap.
- Establish your major themes. These are the “big picture” steps that must take place to lead you to your strategic objective. Start with the highest-level actions, then break it down into details for each step.
- Share your roadmap with executives. If other executives aren’t part of the roadmap’s creation, present your roadmap and expect them to ask you to explain your execution plan.
- Start assigning responsibilities. Translate those major themes into actionable tasks and give them to technology team members.
- Supplement your team where needed. Now that you have a plan in place, you’ll be able to see where your resources might fall short more easily. Supplement your team with outside help where needed to get things done.
Many companies choose to work with third-party managed services in Orlando to help fill their IT team gaps. By having a roadmap for upcoming IT projects, you can more easily distribute responsibilities in-house and outsourced companies to ensure that all tasks are handled. A managed service provider can also help to deal with any roadblocks that may arise so that you can stay on track.
