Brian de Haaff * outlines some of the difficulties IT sections have in aligning with the main organisation and suggests ways to address this.
Be more agile; create better user experiences; plan for today’s technical needs and an unknown future.
Most IT teams are struggling with this juxtaposition.
Addressing day-to-day tactical requests that need to be prioritised alongside adopting new technologies and improving infrastructure can seem an impossible ask.
Phew — that is a lot.
It is not so easy to focus on the present while guaranteeing future success.
Yet success does rely on strong technical systems and efficient processes — both today and tomorrow.
Many leaders are putting road-mapping at the centre of their strategic planning process.
More and more groups are coming to Aha! for help with setting strategy, prioritising investments, and managing complex rollouts.
I believe this is happening because these groups have increasingly complex projects and infrastructure, and they need a strong strategy and roadmap to manage it all.
Unlike external-facing product and marketing teams, most IT groups are inwardly focused.
There initiatives are related to systems and employees.
Yet those internal tools ultimately have a major impact on client experience and business growth.
So IT folks benefit when they think about how their work contributes to the overall goals of the organisation.
The exercise of building a roadmap forces you to consider what is most important — your big vision constrained by time and resources.
The roadmap itself is simply a visualisation of your strategic plan.
It shows how upcoming work will support goals and aligns everyone around a single timeline view.
If you work in IT, thinking about how your own team currently operates (and identifying areas of improvement) can make it easier to recognise what is missing.
Here are some of the signs that your team really needs an IT roadmap.
Strategy is out of sight
How do technology goals align with the overall vision?
How do the big areas of investment and individual features that you are working on support those objectives?
If you struggle for an answer, then your team is likely not putting strategy first.
There is no yardstick for measuring what is needed and why, so it is difficult to determine which work items to pursue.
The focus is on technology
In the past IT departments operated on components, capabilities, and technical requirements rather than people.
When you are so busy tackling day-to-day requests, you do not have time to analyse every pain point or ask other teams to share their insights.
This makes your user stories not as grounded in the problems users are trying to solve.
Deadlines? What deadlines?
Due dates function more like constantly changing goalposts than defined targets.
You are not directly interacting with clients so who cares if you miss a deadline.
As dates to deliver new functionality get ignored, features get pushed out later and later.
Because there is no real plan in place, the team has difficulty making trade-off decisions and making time to address technical debt.
Everyone is surprised
There is limited visibility into what your Department is working on and how it serves the broader community.
Even the business groups that IT supports have trouble tracking what is coming next.
When you release new updates and tools, it seems like people are confused about what you released and why.
Without broad cross-functional support for your work, you are not able to make a lasting impact on the organisation.
Feedback fades away
There is no formal way to collect internal ideas and requests.
Feedback comes in from too many places and ends up getting lost.
So it is difficult to identify themes that would make a meaningful impact for users.
The same complaints start piling up and people seem to lose trust.
Your frustration only grows as your users hesitate to adopt the new features your team introduces.
If you found yourself nodding along to all of those trouble signs above, you can start small.
Work with your colleagues and support each other — bring that goal-first mindset to everything you do.
Before you start anything new, clarify the objectives and timelines.
Bring curiosity to team meetings. Ask why one task is being prioritised above another. This is how you develop a culture of strategic thinking.
There is real joy that comes from knowing the work you are doing today has a positive impact.
There is deep meaning that comes from thinking through all the different angles about what you will do next.
The juxtaposition of now and future will always be there, but road-mapping gives you the ability to plan for both at the same time.
*Brian de Haaff is the Chief Executive of cloud-based software company Aha! He can be contacted on Twitter @bdehaaff.
This article first appeared on the Aha! company website.
