How to Make a Solution Delivery Roadmap

What is a solution delivery roadmap, and how can you make one? Tune in to find out.

A solution delivery roadmap is an agile tool that helps you plan the steps you’ll take. So, you can deliver your solution. 

If you’re building a business application, each phase of your roadmap will focus on a different aspect of the application. It will include steps such as onboarding new users, securing customer payments, or creating automated alerts for product updates. 

By breaking these components down into phases, you can estimate project timelines and develop work plans.

What Do Solution Delivery Roadmaps Look Like?

Solution delivery roadmaps vary across businesses. We like to think of them as an outline. 

On the left side of the page are the phases that make up your solution. On the right side are the tasks that you’ll need to complete for each phase. 

The roadmap gives you a bird’s-eye view of all of these tasks. So, you can estimate project timeframes and execute milestones.

Your solution delivery roadmap doesn’t have to take this form at all—it can be visual or even written by hand if that works best for you. 

This can also help with your budgeting process since it enables collaboration between stakeholders who are far-flung from one another geographically. 

You can then distribute it via email or post it on an internal company network. So, users know what to expect from development teams during each stage of the project lifecycle.

How Do You Make a Solution Roadmap?

To build your roadmap, you’ll need to follow these steps:

1. Determine the phases of your solution. Keep in mind that each phase can include one or more features. 
2. Break each phase into smaller tasks and estimate how much time it will take to complete them. 
3. Write these tasks and their estimated durations on the right side of a document like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. 
4. Print this document and place it on a wall where relevant stakeholders can see it.

You can then use this roadmap to help define your budget and set deadlines for project milestones. 

So, you can share it with other teams that need to know what’s coming down the pipeline. 

How Do You Use a Solution Delivery Roadmap?

Once you’ve created your roadmap, there are a few ways you can use it. You can use your solution delivery roadmap to help you estimate project timelines. 

One of your tasks might be to create a new user onboarding process. You break this into several phases, each with its own timeline. 

Then, you write down the estimated time it will take to complete each phase in your roadmap.

For example, you might estimate that it will take two weeks to create the initial user onboarding flow in your application. 

So, you can use this information in your budgeting process to create a timeline for the project. And then, work with other teams to achieve it. 

You can also use your roadmap to help get buy-in from stakeholders and other teams who need to know what’s coming down the pipeline.

Wrapping Up

A solution delivery roadmap is a simple project management tool, but it’s one of the best ways to manage a project. 

When a project is complex, it can be hard to know where to begin. A roadmap helps you see all of the moving pieces and figure out what you can do to make your project a success.