Technology roadmap

A technology roadmap is a flexible planning schedule to support strategic and long-range planning, by matching short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions. It is a plan that applies to a new product or process and may include using technology forecasting or technology scouting to identify suitable emerging technologies. It is a known technique to help manage the fuzzy front-end of innovation. It is also expected that roadmapping techniques may help companies to survive in turbulent environments and help them to plan in a more holistic way to include non-financial goals and drive towards a more sustainable development. Here roadmaps can be combined with other corporate foresight methods to facilitate systemic change. Developing a roadmap serves three primary purposes. Firstly, it aids in reaching a consensus on a set of needs and the technologies necessary to address them. Secondly, it offers a mechanism for forecasting technological advancements. Thirdly, it supplies a framework for planning and coordinating technology developments. Additionally, it can function as an analytical tool for charting the evolution and rise of new industries.

A technology roadmap is a flexible planning schedule to support strategic and long-range planning, by matching short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions. It is a plan that applies to a new product or process and may include using technology forecasting or technology scouting to identify suitable emerging technologies. It is a known technique to help manage the fuzzy front-end of innovation. It is also expected that roadmapping techniques may help companies to survive in turbulent environments and help them to plan in a more holistic way to include non-financial goals and drive towards a more sustainable development. Here roadmaps can be combined with other corporate foresight methods to facilitate systemic change. Developing a roadmap serves three primary purposes. Firstly, it aids in reaching a consensus on a set of needs and the technologies necessary to address them. Secondly, it offers a mechanism for forecasting technological advancements. Thirdly, it supplies a framework for planning and coordinating technology developments. Additionally, it can function as an analytical tool for charting the evolution and rise of new industries. ===Phase 1: Preliminary phase=== The first phase, the preliminary phase (see figure 2), consists of three steps: satisfy essential conditions, provide leadership / sponsorship, and define the scope and boundaries for the technology roadmap. In this phase the key decision makers must identify that they have a problem and that technology roadmapping can help them in solving the problem. ====Satisfy essential conditions==== In this step it must become clear what the conditions are (they must be identified) and if they are not met, who takes actions to meet them. These conditions include, for example: A need for the technology roadmap Input and participation from different parts of the organization (e.g., marketing, R&D, the strategic business units) with different planning horizons and perspectives. All conditions should be satisfied (or an agreed-on party takes necessary actions) to continue to the next step. The participants can have zero or more conditions of their own. It applies to all conditions that have the attribute to be met or not. ====Provide leadership / sponsorship==== Committed leadership is needed because of the time and effort involved in creating a technology roadmap. Additionally the leadership should come from one of the participants, one of them provides leadership and sponsorship. This means that the line organization must drive the process and use the roadmap to make resource allocation decisions. ====Define the scope and boundaries==== In this step the context for the roadmap is specified. In the company a vision should exist and it must be clear that the roadmap can support that vision. If the vision does not exist one should be developed and clearly stated. When that is done the boundaries and the scope of the roadmap should be specified. Furthermore, the planning horizon and the level of details should be set. The scope can be further divided into the technology scope and the participation scope. In table 1 all the different sub-activities of the preliminary activity phase can be seen. All the sub-activities have concepts as end products (marked in bold). These concepts are the actual meta-data model, which is an adjusted class diagram. ===Phase 2: Development phase=== The second phase, the development of the technology roadmap phase (see figure 3.), consists of 7 steps: ===Phase 3: Follow-up activity phase=== This is the moment when the roadmap must be critiqued, validated and hopefully accepted by the group involved in any implementation. This requires a plan developed using the technology roadmap. Next, there must be a periodical review and update point, because needs from the participants and the technologies evolve. ==Planning and business development context== The process of technology roadmapping fits into corporate strategy, corporate strategic planning, technology planning and the business development context. Three critical elements should be connected: needs, products, and technology. ===Knowledge and skills required=== ===Purpose=== ==See also== Work breakdown structure Requirement prioritization Software product management Product strategy Enterprise systems engineering Information technology planning Strategic management Strategic technology plan Technology life cycle Product lifecycle management Business plan Project network ==References==

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