I got a great question from an entrepreneur in Michigan yesterday. He asked what my thoughts were on technology roadmaps and how could they be used effectively. In replying, I did a little research to make sure my response was accurate, but there really isn’t much information on the subject. Well, information that was decent to read through at least. Everything I came across was too muddled, and the value of roadmapping was lost.
So, in following up his question, I wanted to post a plain english entry of what technology roadmaps are and how they can be used.
Technology roadmaps are what you would think, maps of technology. Roadmapping is vital to business owners, entrepreneurs, strategists, basically anyone who wants to be either ahead of the curve as far as development, or ahead of the curve as far as investment (business or peronal).
The Keys Of Technology Roadmapping
- Understand where you and your business are and where you are going
- Think of the problem areas of your business
- Look at technology to solve some of those problems
- Investigate the life cycle of said technology
- Combine the two to make solid investment decisions
For practicality, I am going to run through a scenario I just had the other day. We have a client who is doing a great deal with a video website (news oriented) . I can’t say much due to non disclosures, but he has a need to download video clips to a laptop and burn them on DVD. That in itself is not a problem, but he wanted a failsafe wireless internet service, namely Verizon’s (which is spotty in this area). So before he went to sign the 2 year subscription at $70.00 a month, he called me to see what I thought.
It turns out, Clearwire is going to be offering a WiMax network this spring for significantly less per month and a much greater coverage than Verizon’s. So I told him to wait a couple months and he could get into that WiMax network. Now, $70 a month for 24 months might not seem like a big deal to some, but it could truly make or break a startup company. So, the better alternative is to wait a couple months and get into ClearWire’s network.
Going back through the roadmapping steps, my client understood what he needed to do for his business, recognized the problem areas, and then looked at the technology to solve that problem. What he didn’t see was that WiFi is growing up into WiMax and might be a better alternative for his needs. So now that we have him on the right track, he is going to make good use of the new technology and make a sound investment decision. The tech roadmap did its job!
So how would you apply a technology roadmap? You don’t have to be in business to do it. Just look at where you think the web is heading and see if you can be ahead of the curve. Where is video going? What will be the replacement for RSS feeds? If you can answer that with a roadmap, you will be a very rich person indeed!
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