Results Over Roadmaps - A Case Study on Time-to-Value
We’ve all been there. A shiny, new solution roadmap that intends to paint a vision for the future, illustrates all of the steps, processes, and capabilities needed to get us there, and defines the series of future projects that will advance us to the promised land. And then in what state do we often find these roadmaps months later? Sitting on a shelf collecting dust because as Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose.”
What if I told you that there’s a better way? This article isn’t about bashing roadmaps, they have great value when applied to complex strategic planning. Rather, let’s talk about a more practical path to solution roadmapping that speeds time-to-value through proof-of-concepting and rapid iteration.
First, A Quick Case Study on Time-to-Value
A healthcare client desired to deploy a Customer Data Platform to deliver personalized content and offers to healthcare professionals, current users, and pseudonymous website visitors. They licensed Adobe Real-Time CDP to support this goal, however the platform had sat idle for over 6 months while they negotiated with a large consulting services group over a project to get it installed in their ecosystem.
The client was eager to start collecting data and learn what the tool can do, but the consulting group believed that they would first need to purchase an expensive solution roadmap engagement to plot out their business goals and anticipated activation use cases. By the time the company reached out to DiveTeam they had wasted months of time on their license while negotiating and planning how the tool might be used in the future. This client was so frustrated that they were re-evaluating whether to continue with Adobe RT-CDP or explore alternatives.
DiveTeam proposed a different approach: we would configure the CDP solution and implement an initial website visitor identification use case as a proof-of-concept for a fraction of the budget proposed for the solution roadmap–and complete it in only 6 weeks. Through this proof-of-concept, our client was able to experience first-hand the capabilities (and quirks) of the platform, quickly get value from the investment they had made, and showcase its potential impact to their broader set of internal business partners. The work completed during this proof-of-concept was also foundational to subsequent features that can now be developed iteratively going forward. As a result, we’re now actively planning out more advanced use cases across data collection and customer channel activations for the remainder of the year.
Key Learning
We believe that large initiatives are most successful when they start small, focus on driving results, and expand incrementally as they show value. We call this iterative decision making, and it is one of our core principles of modern marketing.
We frequently find perfectly good (and often expensive) martech solutions either sitting idle or very limited in their application within the enterprise. The reason is rarely a lack of ambition or vision for how to apply the solution or a lack of a roadmap of how to enable it. It’s due to a lack of building initial momentum early in the timeline and quickly demonstrating return on value as early as possible.
Prioritizing Results Over Roadmaps
We see the solution roadmap as a living document that must evolve along a journey rather than as a premeditated plan. Business priorities change. Dependencies–both internal and external–are rarely what we are able to forecast. Through the process of iteration, we will organically discover new ideas and activations that we may not have otherwise identified upfront. To this, we prefer to manage a backlog of use case hypotheses that we continually review, augment, reprioritize, deploy, and measure and this is what we believe to be a more effective roadmapping approach.
Traditional Time-to-Value:
Accelerated Time-to-Value:
Elements of an Iterative Roadmap Inventory:
Use Case Concept - What is the customer or business outcome we wish to achieve?
Data Requirements - What source data are required to enable this feature and which integrations will we require?
Activation - Which customer or business channel does this activate for us?
Measurement - How will we update our measurement plan to measure the value this feature is expected to provide?
Experimentation - Are there alternative hypotheses we now should test as part of this feature to see if we can optimize its performance?
Process & Governance - Does this feature require changes to our business processes and governance model to enable?
Dependencies - Does this feature have prerequisite use cases or integrations needed before it can be implemented?
Effort - What is the estimated effort for the local team to implement, test, and validate the feature for planning purposes?
Through this iterative roadmapping approach, we still have the critical discussions around governance, people, process, and technology along the way but we deliver value much earlier in the timeline and greatly reduce our risk of obsoleting a well thought out roadmap designed before we perform a single configuration task.
Final Thoughts
Time-to-Value is a critical success factor for any capabilities enablement initiative. It is key to building momentum, maintaining stakeholder support (and proper funding), and delivering measurable business benefits. Our approach indexes on rapid iteration through an inventory of use case hypotheses in place of the traditional, monolithic roadmap designed upfront. This requires an agile mindset on both parts by the client and enablement partner teams as well as close collaboration and earned trust along the shared journey. Through this combined effort, we can move faster, more cost effectively, and with earlier value creation.
