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Table of Contents

Introduction

A technology road map communicates a service’s value proposition and a multi-year strategy to manage the service and technologies that underpin it. The road map is a planning and communications tool. Service teams use road maps to engage IT and University stakeholders in the planning process. They use road maps to communicate multi-year plans to align services to University priorities and to evolve service delivery to support those priorities. Road maps, organized in a shared repository, are a planning resource to use broadly across the organization.

Getting Started

This guide provides slide-by-slide instructions to develop a road map. Creating an initial road map takes 5-20 hours of individual and group effort. Subsequent revisions take less effort. Use this guide in conjunction with the Technology Road Map template. Find the template under the Files tab in the Technology Road Map team channel of the IT LRP (IT Long Range Planning) team.

Determine the Scope

The first step in completing a road map is to determine the scope of the road map itself. The scope will be a service or related offerings advanced through a common strategy. If there are too many offerings to bundle into a common strategy, develop multiple road maps.

Determine the University Alignment

Once the scope is clear, consider how the service supports the University’s mission. It is necessary to tie the investment in the service to the value it delivers. Connect services that directly support departments to the University capabilities those departments provide. Connect services that directly support constituents to their role in supporting the mission. In either case, identify their top goals for the term of the road map.

Determine the Voice

Road maps are memorable if they read like a story. Consider your audience. Tell a compact, easy-to-read, and unique story.

Title

Use the name of a service or an alternate name for the topic that best describes the offerings. Use the ITS department for the department. Use ITS for the division. Include the names and email addresses of the key drafters of the road map. Finally, add the date of completion.

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Service Alignment

It is best to have a solid understanding of what constituents and departments accomplish using the service. Connect departmental services directly to the University capabilities those departments provide. Connect constituent services directly to their role in supporting the mission. In this way, you will align the service with University priorities. Later, you will draw a direct line from those priorities to planned investments in the service. This information empowers you to build successful strategies to support University priorities.

You will likely need to directly engage with constituents or stakeholders, University leaders, and IT leaders to learn and validate this information. You may need to analyze relevant data for insights into departmental and constituent activities impacting service delivery. You may need to gather additional data through surveys, focus groups, communities of practice, and other methods.

University Scope

Use action statements to describe the core activities the departments or constituents use the service to perform. Keep it brief and to the point.

University Goals

Use future state descriptions to describe the most critical outcomes departments or constituents hope to achieve over the next few years. Remember, this section describes what the University does, not what the service provides.

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Capability Map

Introduction to Business Capability Maps

A business capability is a specific combination of people, processes, information, and technology necessary to deliver a discrete outcome required to achieve a particular business objective (for example, student enrollment or accounts payable). A business capability map organizes these capabilities to depict what the organization can do.

The business capability map is helpful for business planning. It helps leaders respond to the demands of the business environment by better understanding which capabilities may need to be adjusted. The business continuously adjusts what it can do through new initiatives, modernization, process improvement, regulatory compliance, and more.

ITS connects services to University capabilities to strengthen IT alignment with the business. These connections help us understand which services may need to adjust to support the changing configuration of University capabilities.

Insights drawn from capability maps provide additional data points for developing a solid service strategy.

The Business Capability Model (BCM)

Use the Higher Education Business Capability Model and the BCM Catalog to ensure organizational consistency in capability names and definitions. The model was developed and refined through a multi-year effort by the College and University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) in Australasia. Educause makes it available to North American higher education institutions. Over three hundred institutions have adopted it worldwide.

Building the Capability Map

Identify Relevant Capabilities

To complete this section, use the Business Capability Model, the Capability Map Template, and the Example Capability Map diagrams in this section.

1. Identify the Level 1 and Level 2 Capabilities on the BCM supported by the service or topic.

2. Delete the help text from the template and use that column as well.

3. Transfer your identified capabilities to the corresponding top rows in the capabilities table.

4. Insert or delete columns in the table as needed. Merge cells for the Level 1 capabilities with multiple Level 2 capabilities under them, as in the Example Capability Map.

Add Level 3 Capabilities to the Table (Optional)

1. Work with departments to define Level 3 capabilities falling under each of the Level 2 capabilities. Define Level 3 capabilities to refine your understanding of how the University gets work done. Enter Level 3 capabilities in the rows under each Level 2 capability, as in the example. Do not connect services directly to Level 3 capabilities because that is overly complex. It is possible that some departments already have this well-defined.

2. Rows may be inserted or deleted from the table to accommodate the number of Level 3 capabilities needed.

3. That completes the capability table on this slide.

4. NOTE: Complete the TIME Portfolio Assessment and the Road Map Diagram before returning to this slide to connect the “components” to the capabilities.

Connect Components to Capabilities

Topic/Service Components

1. In the Topic/Service Components column, list each component appearing on the TIME Portfolio Analysis slide.

2. Resize the table as needed to enter additional components as required.

3. Number and color-code the components to reflect the numbering and color-coding on the TIME Portfolio Assessment slide.

4. Map the components to each of the Level 2 capabilities in the Topic/Service Component row. Enter the color-coded number for each component that supports the Level 2 capability listed in each column.

5. The capability map now provides visualization of the lifecycle status of the components supporting each Level 2 capability.

ITS Supporting Components (Optional)

Services that provide value-added services to ITS services managed by other service teams list those additional offerings in the ITS Supporting Components table. Include only those services that are user-facing. For example, your service team may be responsible for further customizing constituent dashboards or departmental reports using another service team’s data analytics and reporting capabilities.

1. List the supporting components in the ITS Supporting Components column.

2. Resize the table as needed to enter additional components as required.

3. Use letters to order the components. Color-code the components to reflect the TIME rating that the service owner established. Use purple if you cannot ascertain the TIME rating.

4. Map the components to each of the Level 2 capabilities in the ITS Supporting Components row. Enter the color-coded number or letter representing each component that supports the Level 2 capability in each column.

5. The capability map now visualizes the components supporting each Level 2 capability.

The TIME Portfolio Assessment

Use the TIME portfolio assessment methodology to assess and visualize the service’s portfolio health. Rate all of the technologies in scope. Then, use these data to inform the service and technology strategy. Please see Use TIME to Engage the Business for Application and Product Portfolio Triage and How to Assess Your Application and Product Portfolio for Business and Technical Fitness in the Gartner library for more information. Note: The EA Team will provide a copy of these articles, per our licensing agreement, upon request.

Understanding the Model

The Y Axis: Technical Fitness
Represents how well the component fits the technical organization and environment based on the following attributes.

1. Skills Fit: How well the organization can apply the necessary skills.

2. Maintenance: How easily the component is maintained.

3. Vendor: How well will the vendor support the component now and into the future?

4. Architecture: How well the component fits into the existing architecture and standards.

5. Reliability: How well the component will run reliably.

6. Security: How well the component will meet and maintain security requirements.

The X-Axis: Business Fitness
Represents how well the component supports the business based on the following attributes.

1. Functional Fit: How well the component supports business capabilities or processes from a user perspective. 

2. Information: How well the component will maintain data quality, privacy, and timeliness.

3. Future Potential: How well the component will support future known business requirements.

4. Cost: How manageable the expenses are to acquire, operate, maintain, and improve functionality.

The Scale:
Use this scale to rate the technical and business fitness of each component.

5 = Excellent
4 = Good
3 = Fair
2 = Poor
1 = Very Poor

The Quadrants: TIME Categories
Represent the TIME model rating based on the value of x-business fitness and y-technical fitness.
Evaluate - Under review. Not implemented and not TIME rated.
Tolerate - An acceptable level of technical debt and risk relative to business value. Tolerate until cost-effective to re-engineer.
Invest - Strong business value and technical fit. Invest in innovation.
Migrate - Significant remediation needed. Migrate to alternate technologies to provide equivalent business value.
Eliminate - No longer needed. Archive data and remove technology.

TIME Category Ratings (TFV=Technical Fitness Value, BFV-Business Fitness Value)
Tolerate - Business Fitness=1-2.99 | Technical Fitness=3-5
Invest - Business Fitness=3-5 | Technical Fitness=3-5
Migrate - Business Fitness=3-59 | Technical Fitness=1-2.99
Eliminate - Business Fitness=1-2.99 | Technical Fitness=1-2.99

Graphed Markers: Technology Components
Markers represent the TIME model classification of a specific component based on that component’s business fitness and technical fitness rating. The circle’s size depicts the components’ relative annual operational cost.

Building the TIME Portfolio Assessment

Perform the TIME Rating Assessment

1. Use the TIME Business and Technical Fitness Assessment spreadsheet to calculate the Technical Fitness and Business Fitness values.

2. List and number all in-scope components.

3. Fill in the component’s annual Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

4. Work with the team to apply values to each of the fitness attributes.

Plot the TIME Ratings

1. List and number each component under the Components section of the TIME Portfolio Assessment slide. Include the correlating number of dollar signs representing the relative cost as tiered below.

   1. Small Marker=Less than $100,000=$

   2. Medium Marker=$100,000-$500,000=$$

   3. Large Marker=Over $500,000+=$$$

2. Use a small, medium, or larger marker to represent the relative TCO of the component.

3. Position the marker onto the model using the Business Fit Value from the spreadsheet for the x-axis value and the Technical Fit Value from the spreadsheet for the y-axis value.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all components are on the graph.

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Think Strategically

1. List the outcomes that are driving the change in the organization. The good news, the University Goals developed above will work!

2. Work with the team to envision a future state of the service that will support those University Goals.

3. Graph the current state of the service components as described in the Technology Lifecycle Diagram below.

4. Brainstorm different ways to change the current state, adding, subtracting, and modifying components to support the University Goals.

5. Graph the desired future state of the service components as instructed in the Technology Lifecycle Diagram below.

6. Consider how the service will mature (think ITIL service maturity) to best support the community through these changes.

7. Organize the change effort into initiatives (rafts of focused work effort done together). Add the year they will be completed and the relative cost of the action.

Service Strategy

1. Building on the strategic thinking done earlier, develop the service strategy needed to support the approach.

2. Consider all aspects of the service, changes in the constituency, operational process, ITIL maturity, support, staffing, skills, etc. In a sentence or two, describe the strategy highlighting the most important actions the service will take and why.

3. Briefly describe the top priority future state outcomes that the strategy will deliver. These are your goals.

Technology Strategy

Building on the strategic thinking done earlier, develop the technology strategy that underpins the approach.

1. Select the best approach for the technology strategy. Consider how you are managing the lifecycles of all of the technical components.

2. Briefly describe the top 3-5 future state outcomes the strategy will deliver. These are your goals.

Technology Lifecycle Graph

Diagram Key

The Y Axis: Adoption
The measure of adoption is the percentage of the maximum anticipated user base using the component.
Example: If 15,000 users have adopted a component out of an anticipated full adoption of 20,000, the component will be graphed 75% three-quarters up on the Y-axis.

The X-Axis: Technology Lifecycle
The technology lifecycle’s value is the component’s lifecycle phase – introduction, growth, maturity, decline, and retirement.
Example: A component has been in operation for several years. Users have opted out of the service, and the user base is declining. Graph the component in the Decline range of the X-axis.

Component Shape: State
Circles are current state. Triangles are the future state.

Component Color: TIME Model Rating
The component marker color represents the TIME model lifecycle rating.

Evaluate - Under review. Not implemented and not TIME rated.
Tolerate - An acceptable level of technical debt and risk relative to business value. Tolerate until cost-effective to re-engineer.
Invest - Strong business value and technical fit. Invest in innovation.
Migrate - Significant remediation needed. Migrate to alternate technologies to provide equivalent business value.
Eliminate - No longer needed. Archive data and remove technology.

Dotted Line Connectors with Arrowheads: Strategic Shifts
Represent strategic shifts in components.

Building the Diagram

Title

1. Use the title of the road map as the title of this slide.

2. Use the year and month for the date.

Current State

1. Use the TIME Model to determine the TIME rating for each component and color code each marker accordingly.

2. Graph the current state of each component included in the scope by placing a circle marker on the grey lifecycle line using appropriate X and Y axis values. Add a callout using the component name and connect the callout to the marker with a line.
   Note: Graph components with the same current and future state as a single circle with multiple components named in the callout.
   Note: Add components that you intend to evaluate. Use gray markers for these components. They will not be assigned a TIME rating until implemented.

Future State

1. Graph the future state (the final year of the road map term) of each component included in the scope.

   1. If the current future is identical to the current state, no future state marker is needed. In this case, the current state marker is also the future state.

   2. If the future state is in a different lifecycle position, place a triangle marker on the gray lifecycle graph using appropriate X and Y axis values.

2. Use the TIME Model to determine the TIME rating for each component and color code each circle accordingly.

3. Use the dotted line connectors with arrowheads to show these shifts.

Component Callouts

1. Use the Component slide template to create a slide for each component in the diagram. Title each slide by the name of the component.

2. Hyperlink the component name on the current state of the Technology Lifecycle Diagram to the corresponding slide.

3. In the text of the callout, describe what happens to the component over the term of the roadmap using just a few words. You will provide additional information on the component slide.

Initiatives

Now that the strategy and goals are clearly defined, it is time to develop somewhat more detailed plans. Consider all the changes to be made over the term of the road map. Group related work into work packages or initiatives and plan when those initiatives need to be scheduled to realize the strategy and achieve the goals. Give each initiative a title, a brief description, the completion year, and the cost. If dollar costs are not yet available, express the relative cost with one-to-three dollar signs as follows.

1. $=Less than $100,000

2. $$=100,000-$500,000

3. $$$=Over $500,000+

Technical Debt Reduction

Eliminating technical debt is one of the objectives of the TRM.

1. List the planned components to decommission over the term of the road map. Indicate the year and anticipated reduction in TCO.

2. List the decommissioned components over the term of the road map. Indicate the year and realized savings in TCO.

3. List technical debt eliminated by remediation to conform to ITS standards (see IT Architecture Standards Repository). Include a description and the year.

If dollar costs are unavailable, express the cost with one-to-three dollar signs as follows.

1. $=Less than $100,000

2. $$=100,000-$500,000

3. $$$=Over $500,000+

Components

Each component in the road map has a corresponding slide. The slide describes the component and provides a more in-depth explanation of the strategic considerations for that component. Except for the tactics section, these slides tend to change infrequently. It is worthwhile treating them like a one-page fact sheet.

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