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Definition Elements
What is a roadmap? 🤔
A sheet is a practical document that helps you organize your work and get a long-term view of the objectives you set and the various tasks they involve so you can get from point A to point B of the project. It provides direction to follow.
Throughout the project, the roadmap can and should be used as a reference. It can be updated regularly based on whether objectives are achieved, unforeseen obstacles encountered, and possible shifts in project direction.
The roadmap should be used alongside other tracking and organization tools such as backwards planning (work schedule) or key performance indicators (KPI). These are structuring tools for daily management and work management.
What for?
The roadmap makes it possible to both break down, prioritize and plan your objectives while also anticipating from the outset the concrete needs that each will require on a human, material, and economic level.
Navigate time and prioritize your goals 📆
The roadmap serves to stagger the objectives you set and plan the various elements they require you to mobilize and achieve. This tool helps address challenges of rationalization, decomposition, hierarchization and prioritization of objectives while evaluating them against a timeline. The roadmap thus combines the principle of a priority list and a schedule. It is a realistic calendar of objectives.
The idea is not to create objectives for the sake of creating objectives, but rather to think about the different milestones to reach before achieving your final goal. Additionally, the roadmap makes it possible to break down and plan these different milestones and to better articulate the needs encountered in order to develop your project under the right conditions.
To facilitate the structuring of the roadmap, we propose establishing six objectives from the project's outset, staggered over a period spanning from the project's beginning to six months. This allows for progress with very gradual milestones, one objective per month.
The roadmap can also be conceived over a longer timeframe and allow you to set your goals over a period of one year. We don't necessarily recommend planning your goals further ahead than one year maximum, as the risk is losing focus and aiming too high, too low, or off target. The roadmap would then risk indicating a false course and would become outdated.
Identify the concrete implications of each objective 🔎
A roadmap asks the project lead to think realistically and pragmatically about the various parameters that need to be considered in order to achieve each set objective and thus reach the final objective.
You must take into account:
- The time that an objective will likely require to be achieved. This is a difficult but essential exercise. It allows you to pragmatically envision the associated costs;
- People involved in carrying out the project. This includes the point person who will be in charge, as well as people called upon one or more times, whether from within or outside the team, to complete the various tasks of the mission;
- All possible constraints involved in achieving each objective. These may include recruiting staff, securing a partnership with X or Y, moving to new premises, developing a mobile app, purchasing equipment, and so on;
- The financial costs incurred specifically in achieving the objective. This may include hiring a service provider and paying them, or purchasing specific equipment for example. You must also account for valued costs (i.e. implicit expenses). This may include, for example, the salary you will not receive for the hours of work devoted to tasks required by the objective;
- Overhead costs are related to fixed and structural costs. These are all expenses incurred regardless of the objective (such as wifi subscription, premises rental, allocated salaries, number of working days and their salary costs, etc.).
All these elements must be carefully considered beforehand for each objective and recorded on the roadmap. The goal is to be comprehensive and realistic in order to avoid setbacks and to know where you're going and what each objective will entail. In this sense, the roadmap makes it possible to anticipate and distribute human, material, and financial costs. It also acts as a feasibility measurement tool that allows you to set targets to follow and to choose, based on your timeline and objectives, the right tracking tools (KPI).
How to build your roadmap?
Define your roadmap, step by step 🔦
- Set your end goal (where you want to be in six months);
- Think about the different milestone objectives you'll go through to get there ;
- Prioritize and schedule over time your objectives so you can rank and stagger them;
- For each of its objectives, one at a time, consider:
- How long it takes you to complete it ;
- Who will be responsible for achieving the objective ;
- Who will be mobilized to achieve the objective;
- What constraints and needs will you encounter to achieve the objective;
- What are the specific costs incurred by achieving the objective ;
- What are the fixed and overhead costs that are added to it.
5. Assess the feasibility and realism of your project once you have the big picture;
6. If the plan seems coherent to you, and you have a clear direction and the corresponding milestone objectives, create a detailed reverse schedule for each objective that includes all the associated tasks.
7. Complete your roadmap by creating an overall reverse schedule.
I'm creating my roadmap
✏️ The Médianes team has put together a handy guide to help you apply what you’ve learned from this sheet to your own project. To access it, please click the button below and follow the instructions.
To go further
📖 Recommended Reading
- Our book, “Creating a Media Outlet,” is a practical guide for anyone who wants to launch an independent and socially conscious media outlet.
- All our how-to guides are here.
Before leaving
🛠 Have you finished reading and filling out this form? We’d love to hear your feedback! Do you have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]. Thank you for your help, the Médianes team.
