4 Steps to Complete Your Visual Roadmap
Having to communicate your message to global audiences whether it is your business plan, strategic vision, services, products or simply your ideas can be very challenging. To communicate it on to one page, in a language that everyone can undertand is even more challenging. Here are 4 steps to help you overcome these challenges and be able to communicate complex plans and messages simply and visually.
How a visual roadmap can help you
Visual roadmaps are an excellent way of taking your business plan or strategy and representing it all on one page. Before you start your roadmapping you need to ask some questions and be clear as to the purpose of your roadmap, such as:
Roadmaps are to inform, not impress. This is not about snazzy graphics and how cool it looks It's about conveying a message How do we summarise into one page How do we distill the information
Advantages of Visual Roadmaps
To take advantage of using a visual roadmap to create your business strategy roadmap or business IT strategy for example , you need to consider the following. There are four key aspects to focus on when creating your roadmap.
Frame - what goes inside the roadmap, what does the audience want
Structure - this is laying out a grid into which you can be asking the Why, What, How and Where are we, How can we get there and Where do we want to go - the vision
Relationships - understanding the dependencies and their impact
Direction - this provides the key message in a natural flow of discovery and understanding
There are several types of roadmaps and methods for creating your roadmap but in all cases the four points above need to be addressed.
Overall, roadmaps help you to structure the conversation that you want with your audience in a visual and simple way. That is not to say your roadmap is not complex but it needs to be framed in such a way that it can be viewed and consumed in what ever format your audience uses (paper, online, poster etc). Developing your roadmap as a poster is a typical and conventional way to communicate with your audience. However, visual roamapping using collaboration software delivers a very important and crucial benefit - feedback. Through online collaboration you are able to socialise your roadmap so that you can gain insight and feedback from your audience either directly or as part of a social activityy feed. Utilising the real time collaboration functionality with your road map means you are able to facilitate team collaboration within your audience. This helps your team to get a better understanding, alignment and focus of your roadmap.
The applications of roadmaps are varied and can include:
business strategy; marketing plan; business to business marketing; science and technology; business performance roadmapping; innovation; small business sales; products and services, the end user applications are endless. They can also be forward looking or backward looking.
One last important point, roadmaps do not always tell you the future. Being able to visualise that there is a gap or uncertainty at least tells everyone we have opportunities to shape the future, as you continue your journey along your roadmap. By using the 4 steps listed above your roadmap will be able to communicate complex plans in a simple and visual way.
About the Author
If you would like to have a free 1/2 day workshop to create your roadmap go to the following page http://roelto.com/freeconsultation.php and complete the form.
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