Consulting Project Phases – Roadmap

Roadmap    

Before a project can begin, it must be envisioned. This may sound like hippie mumbo jumbo, but the phase 0.1 of a project is called the roadmap phase. This usually ranges from two to six weeks where the strategy and business analyst team spends their time on as many fact-finding interviews from the top of the organization to the bottom in order to help unearth as many issues, problems and inefficiencies they can discover. They will also discover and document what the current and future goals of the organization are. With these two pieces of information, the deliverable of the roadmap phase will be prepared. It will outline all initiatives and projects that must take place (and in what order) so that the organization can track toward the goals it is setting for itself and eliminate as many of the hurdles that may stand in their way. A good roadmap will be very detailed, include high-level time-frames, a high-level budget, and demonstrate how the projects will be structured. In a small sense, this is the sales cycle 2.0. Many projects never make it past the roadmap phase due to reasons such as sticker shock on the price, lack of buy-in on the long-term vision from the leadership or just a misalignment of what the company goals are or what the real problems are. If successful, the roadmap will foray very nicely into the requirement gathering phase.

Before a project can begin, it must be envisioned. This may sound like hippie mumbo jumbo, but the phase 0.1 of a project is called the roadmap phase. This usually ranges from two to six weeks where the strategy and business analyst team spends their time on as many fact-finding interviews from the top of the organization to the bottom in order to help unearth as many issues, problems and inefficiencies they can discover. They will also discover and document what the current and future goals of the organization are. With these two pieces of information, the deliverable of the roadmap phase will be prepared. It will outline all initiatives and projects that must take place (and in what order) so that the organization can track toward the goals it is setting for itself and eliminate as many of the hurdles that may stand in their way. A good roadmap will be very detailed, include high-level time-frames, a high-level budget, and demonstrate how the projects will be structured. In a small sense, this is the sales cycle 2.0. Many projects never make it past the roadmap phase due to reasons such as sticker shock on the price, lack of buy-in on the long-term vision from the leadership or just a misalignment of what the company goals are or what the real problems are. If successful, the roadmap will foray very nicely into the requirement gathering phase.

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