Posts from — April 2008

Website Project Roadmap Technique

Creating a project roadmap for a set of projects or a program is a pretty common thing as a quick google search points out but there is almost no information about to make one. I find this interesting because ongoing set of projects, often called a program, almost always has a need for a roadmap as a lightweight planning and communication tool.

The closest project management technique like the one documented here this is Technology Roadmapping. Technology Roadmapping is a product management technique, which starts by identifying a set of business need then defines a set of projects to deliver the solution at a high level. Similar to the technique I have described but adds a large strategic planning element and a lot more rigor.

Website Project Roadmap Resources – Books

Good luck finding any books on this topic. I can’t find any books that cover it specifically or generally. Let me know if you can find any.

Website Project Roadmap Resources – Websites

There are very few resources on how to make a project roadmap. But technology roadmapping has some good ideas on how to mix in more strategy and rigor to the process that I have described.

Sopheon makes a software product which help with the process of technology roadmapping. And have a great article on the process.

Yeah, I know that wikipedia isn’t the most reliable source of information, but the ideas in this article are pretty good. I reviewed it on March 30, 2008.

After you get your website project roadmap done your next step is getting it out there in your organization. These activities will help make that happen successfully:

Preview your first roadmap – Folks all over your organization might be shocked when they see the first roadmap. Maybe their project isn’t on there. Maybe their project is different than what they want. Maybe They don’t quite understand what the roadmap is. Whatever the case, it’s worth your time to preview the first version as a “work in progress” to your team, your boss, and project sponsors. This is best done in person.

Update it or it dies – Your project roadmap will change frequently: after releasing a project, substantial change of project dates or as projects are added and deleted. And if you don’t update the roadmap when the plan changes, it will be constantly out of date and folks will start to ignore it. Use the roadmap as a good excuse to communicate your bright shiny future whenever you get the chance.

Soften the blow personally – When a project sponsor or other significant person is adversely affected by a project roadmap change, it’s a good idea to talk to the person before you send out an updated project roadmap. Blindsiding someone with bad news using a public document like your roadmap is never a good thing.

Widely distribute the website project roadmap – Get the roadmap out some place so that folks can see it. I’d recommend your intranet site as a good place to store the most recent version of the roadmap.

Now after working through the why, how and org roll out of website project roadmap, don’t you think it’s time to put one together? It’s not hard to pull together, I’d say an afternoon or two, and the benefits are simply huge. Create a website project roadmap for your organization, roll it out and let me know how it goes.

Want to learn more about website project roadmaps? Check out the website project roadmap resources.

Building a website project roadmap is pretty straightforward. Here we go:

Create a project list – To get started on making a roadmap you are going to need a list of projects that are coming up in the future. A project roadmap will be most useful for larger content, design and functional projects one month in length or longer so you don’t overwhelm folks with minutiae. For your first revision, I’d recommend making the roadmap for a year or less.

Order the project list – Ideally, you would order your projects from highest impact to lowest but that’s not going to work all the time… Check out this article on rationalizing your project selection process for more on figuring out the potential impact of projects. Following impact, I’d recommend ordering projects by:
1. Hard dates (like product launch or holidays),
2. Project dependencies - one project must be done before another or a project depends on something outside the project organization to happen
3. Politics – Yes, politics this will come into play, but I recommend trying to reduce it’s impact if possible.

Pick a tool – There are tons of different tools you could use to make your roadmap: presentation software, charting software, a Gantt charting, or HTML editor. It does not matter too much what you use although HTML is very easy to store on your Intranet and that’s a good place for the roadmap to live.

Create the Gantt chart – The most important part of the roadmap is the high level Gantt chart. It’s key that the roadmap fit on one page, contains a start and release date, and the all-important “this plan will change” phrase. It’s also helpful to show dependencies between projects if they exist.

Make project overview pages – Once the Gantt chart is starting to take shape you will want to create one-page overviews for each project on the roadmap. Think of this project description as a condensed project charter. Each project description should include the project sponsor, business goals, features by user interface, features not included, dependencies and assumptions.

• Business Goal – This one is pretty simple to figure out but often not spelled out for projects. You want to list the answers to the simple questions: What problems will this project solve? Or, what opportunity is this project going to exploit?
• Features – Now we want to list the very high level features that are going to deliver the business goals. There should be a maximum of 15 features listed. I like to list high level features by website user interface, something like “internal interface - product catalog administration” or “public interface – updated secondary navigation”
• Features not included – Perhaps more important than which features are in the project is which features are NOT in the project. Be sure to include the features that have been discussed but have been ruled out for delivery in this project specifically.
• Assumptions and dependencies – Spend time making sure that the document and validate any assumptions you have made about the project. For instances, assumption might say something like “assuming we have proper funding.” And make sure the dependencies spell out issues that must be resolved before the project can start with a statement something like “dependent on resolution to [the big honking problem that is keeping this project from starting]“ Skipping these documentation steps is the quickest way to turn your project roadmap from a simple communication exercise into ticking time bomb.

So now you have the outlined of how to make a website project roadmap. But it’s just a tool. And how you get the tool out there and use it will make it successful. Or not. Let’s talk rollout.