[Franklin] Design Roadmap 2.0
Re-imagining roadmaps to better support planning implementation
Faculty Lead:
Denis Weil
Class:
Planning Implementation - Design Operations
Project Team:
Dmytri Gouba
Hongpyo Kim
Prachi Saxena
Click on image to enlarge
Over seven weeks, the team took an old roadmap from an ID project and evolved it by exploring different theories of planning implementation. The team delivered a playbook covering the macro and micro goals necessary for organizations to consider as they planned implementation.
The big-picture playbook illustrates the barriers to be overcome in the pursuit of an organization’s macro goals. The adaptive challenges and assumptions (highlighted in the diagram at left) inform the roadmap. It is based on three core phases: incubate, connect, and embed (featured on the right). These three phases function to break down the micro goals.
We felt this framework to be most helpful for the facilitation of planning discussions rather than as a means to dictate plans to the client company. It affords designers an opportunity, firstly, to inform the implementation plan by highlighting barriers; and secondly, to facilitate the discussion informing high-level strategy. It proposes a structure that avails of further iteration by those doing the implementation.
“Applying theoretical principles to a roadmap absent an understanding of the real context of the organization was challenging. We had to make many assumptions, which left us uncomfortable at first.
As the class gained momentum, the different ways teams applied and visualized the same principles within their roadmaps was a learning experience. In our last collective debrief, we discussed how challenging it was to do quality visual communication in tandem with conceptually strategizing high quality roadmaps or playbooks. This kind of process required its own cadence that didn’t match the brisk clip of weekly iterations and the generation of completely new roadmaps. A couple more iterations on the final roadmap would have pushed us to align our story and visuals even more strongly. ”