Customising and deploying roadmapping in an organisational setting: The LEGO Group experience

When roadmapping is being introduced into an organisation, there are a number of ‘reference’ processes which can be consulted to help ease the barriers to implementation. However, it is critical to recognise that such reference processes offer a baseline design and careful consideration should be given to how they could be adopted for use within a specific organisational setting. Through a research engagement with the LEGO Group, this paper captures and reports on the process journey (including the problems faced by the users and lessons learned) in customising a reference process and the deployment of the adapted approach

Depicting the future strategic plans of the Royal Australian Navy using a roadmapping framework as a visual composite canvas

Strategic planning can be an arduous and complex task; and, once a plan has been devised, it is often quite a challenge to effectively communicate the principal missions and key priorities to the array of different stakeholders. The communication challenge can be addressed through the application of a clearly and concisely designed visualisation of the strategic plan - to that end, this paper proposes the use of a roadmapping framework to structure a visual canvas. The canvas provides a template in the form of a single composite visual output that essentially allows a 'plan-on-a-page' to be generated. Such a visual representation provides a high-level depiction of the future context, end-state capabilities and the system-wide transitions needed to realise the strategic vision. To demonstrate this approach, an illustrative case study based on the Australian Government's Defence White Paper and the Royal Australian Navy's fleet plan will be presented. The visual plan plots the in-service upgrades for addressing the capability shortfalls and gaps in the Navy's fleet as it transitions from its current configuration to its future end-state vision. It also provides a visualisation of project timings in terms of the decision gates (approval, service release) and specific phases (proposal, contract, delivery) together with how these projects are rated against the key performance indicators relating to the technology acquisition process and associated management activities. © 2013 Taylor & Francis

Addressing the Cognitive and Social Influence Inhibitors during the Ideation Stages of Technology Roadmapping Workshops

Technology roadmapping workshops are essentially a social mechanism for exploring, creating, shaping and implementing ideas. The front-end of a roadmapping session is based on brainstorming in order to tap into the group's diverse knowledge. The aim of this idea stimulation activity is to capture and share as many perspectives as possible across the full scope of the area of interest. The premise to such group brainstorming is that the sharing and exchange of ideas leads to cognitive stimulation resulting in a greater overall group idea generation performance in terms of the number, variety and originality of ideas. However, it must be recognized that the ideation stage in a roadmapping workshop is a complex psychosocial phenomenon with underlying cognitive and social processes. Thus, there are downsides to group interactions and these must be addressed in order to fully benefit from the power of a roadmapping workshop. This paper will highlight and discuss the key cognitive and social inhibitors involved. These include: production blocking, evaluation apprehension, free riding/social loafing, low norm setting/matching. Facilitation actions and process adjustments to counter such negative factors will be identified so as to provide a psychosocial basis for improving the running of roadmapping workshops. © 2009 PICMET

Customising and deploying roadmapping in an organisational setting: The LEGO Group experience

When roadmapping is being introduced into an organisation, there are a number of ‘reference’ processes which can be consulted to help ease the barriers to implementation. However, it is critical to recognise that such reference processes offer a baseline design and careful consideration should be given to how they could be adopted for use within a specific organisational setting. Through a research engagement with the LEGO Group, this paper captures and reports on the process journey (including the problems faced by the users and lessons learned) in customising a reference process and the deployment of the adapted approach