Strategic Roadmap Template

Organizations plan ahead. Some even look months and years into the future to stay competitive in the marketplace. Whatever their strategic goals, they visualize the steps that’ll get them there with a strategic roadmap. Download our free strategic roadmap for Excel to create a clear guide to align everyone in the organization with its long-term objectives.

If you want to get more control than a static template can give you, there’s ProjectManager, an award-winning project and portfolio management software with powerful project roadmaps where you can view all the projects working towards your strategic goals in one place. Our roadmaps have resource management, time tracking and task management features to help you achieve your goals. Users can filter, view which projects are open, highlight key metrics for stakeholders, link all four task dependencies, filter for the critical path and set a baseline. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

ProjectManager’s robust strategic roadmaps track resource utilization and costs in real time. Learn more

What Is a Strategic Roadmap?

A strategic roadmap is a tool to visually communicate an organization’s strategy and the steps that will be taken to achieve its long-term goals and objectives. It’s a powerful means to deliver the strategy and the vision of an organization and its plan to execute its goals and objectives by visualizing the key outcomes.

However, a strategy roadmap is different from a strategic plan. The strategy roadmap is a way to communicate the what and the why, while the plan is the how. The strategy roadmap looks like a Gantt chart and in many ways it is, but it isn’t populated with activities, start and end dates. It describes what the organization must change and why that change is happening, which is to achieve its strategic vision.

The strategic roadmap is a bird’s eye view of where an organization is and how it’ll get to where it wants to be in the future. A strategic roadmap is something that’ll change over time, too, as business conditions and strategic objectives change. This means you’ll want one that can be easily edited and shared to best communicate the strategic goals throughout the organization.

Why Use This Strategic Roadmap Template?

Our free strategic roadmap template helps you by laying out all the elements of a strategy. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. This creates a consistent action plan that can be replicated for future strategic goals. You can also customize it to add sections you need or take away those that you don’t need.

Strategic roadmap template for Excel — ProjectManager’s free strategic roadmap template for Excel

In general, a strategic roadmap is essential to prepare your organization for moving from where it currently stands to where it wants to be over the next number of years. If an organization thinks it can just go from having a strategy to executing it, they’re in for a rude awakening. Communicating that strategy throughout the organization is key to aligning everyone for the implementation of that strategy. The strategy roadmap accomplishes this.

Who Is This Strategic Roadmap Template For?

Since the strategic roadmap is an organization-wide document it is used by everyone. The strategic roadmap is a bridge that links the vision and mission of a company with the execution of how it will achieve its long-term goals. Therefore, everyone from CEOs, CMOs to CTOs is going to use it. But the list goes beyond C-level executives. Below is a short list of those whom our free strategic roadmap template is for.

Executive Leadership Team
Department Managers
Product Managers
Project Managers
Project Management Offices (PMOs)

When Should You Use This Strategic Roadmap Template?

A strategic roadmap template is the output of the strategic planning process. Therefore, it’s developed during an organization’s long-term strategic planning. That’s because a strategic roadmap provides a clear and detailed product development process from vision to launch.

The strategic roadmap template is used by research and development teams, product leaders and product teams that are launching a new product or service. As noted above, the strategic roadmap will serve multiple purposes. Besides a bridge, it’s also a tool for communicating the strategic plan to stakeholders and tracking progress against objectives. Here are some other examples of when to use a strategic roadmap.

When Managing Multiple Projects Across Business Departments or Teams

A roadmap is like a Gantt chart timeline only it tracks several projects from start to finish on one page. This provides program managers, portfolio managers and PMOs with an overview of all the projects, which allows them to better allocate resources to ensure that all projects progress on time and within budget.

When Tracking the Action Steps for Reaching the Strategic Goals of an Organization

As stated earlier, the roadmap can be used as a tool to track progress. That’s because it provides a benchmark for measuring progress by outlining the desired outcomes and timelines. This allows an organization to track its progress toward its strategic goals, identify deviations and respond promptly.

When Creating a Strategic Plan for Your Business

Of course, the most obvious use of a strategic roadmap is when illustrating an organization’s long-term plan. This visual depiction of a company’s strategic goals and the steps to get there is used to illustrate those steps and help align projects with those long-term goals.

What Is Included in This Strategic Roadmap Template?

Download our free strategic roadmap template for Excel and you have a fully customizable document that can be adapted to reflect your long-term plans. While there are many ways to create a strategic roadmap, the most common is building on a Gantt chart. However you choose to make a strategic roadmap, it should include the following.

Timeline

This strategic roadmap template has a simple calendar timeline that shows your initiatives and tasks for each quarter of the year. It’ll help you track progress and manage expectations.

Tasks and Activities

Also called actions, these are specific tasks that are related to each strategic initiative. They are the action steps the organization needs to execute to achieve its strategic objectives.

Deliverables

Deliverables are what is created to fulfill the project objective. These are actual items, tangible or intangible, that come out of the project to accomplish your strategic goals.

Milestones

A milestone is any significant event or achievement on the strategic roadmap. It indicates that there’s progress towards achieving your strategic objectives.

Team

There is a column where you can list the various teams that make up your organization. In most cases, a strategic roadmap shows the activities that each business department such as production, marketing, HR, or sales will execute in the upcoming year.

Strategic Roadmap Example

To better understand a strategic roadmap, here’s an example of one. Let’s say a manufacturer wants to exploit a niche in the market for smart sneakers that track a runner’s health. They will create a strategic roadmap to show how they will get this product to customers over a couple of years.

If they already have the technology, then the next step is the plan, which includes assembling resources, creating working plans and securing a team and contracting with suppliers or vendors. The next milestone is testing the product that will be manufactured by making a prototype.

Once the product has shown that it works and can be made at a cost that allows it to be sold at a competitive price, it can go into production. This involves ensuring that there is inventory and contracts with retailers have been secured. The last milestone is launching the product, including any marketing and advertising, and shipping the finished product to stores.

More Strategic Planning Templates

We have created other free strategic planning templates for Excel and Word you can use in conjunction with your strategic roadmap.

Strategic Plan Template

The strategic plan is more detailed than a strategic roadmap. Our free strategic plan template for Work helps you outline your strategic plan from executive summary to financial projections and much more.

Strategy Map Template

A strategy map shows the cause and effect of your strategic objectives in a visual way that addresses more than just the financial perspective. Our free strategy map template for Excel allows you to map your strategic objectives across four perspectives.

SWOT Matrix Template

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Our free SWOT analysis template for Excel can help you evaluate each of those in your organization. This will be valuable information when coming up with a strategic plan.

ProjectManager Is Better Than a Strategic Roadmap Template

Our free strategic roadmap template will help you visualize the steps that can take the organization from vision to achievement of your long-term goals. But it’s not a great working document. Templates are static documents that need to be manually updated and aren’t great for collaboration. It’s better to build your strategic roadmap in ProjectManager, an award-winning project and portfolio management software, that allows you to create a detailed strategic roadmap that visualizes your strategic plan and can be easily shared and edited.

Track Costs and Budgets With Real-Time Project Portfolio Dashboards

Unlike a strategic roadmap template, you can monitor progress in real time with our roadmap. You can also toggle over to the portfolio dashboard and get a high-level overview of all your projects and tasks. Our dashboard doesn’t require a lengthy and complicated setup like you’ll find with lightweight alternatives.

It automatically collects live data and displays it on easy-to-read graphs and charts that show time, costs and more key performance indicators (KPIs). For more information, it’s quick and simple to generate portfolio reports or reports on variance, timesheets and workload. All reports can be filtered and shared to keep stakeholders updated.

Manage Resources and Track Labor Costs

Having control over your resources and being able to allocate them across all your projects is one way to ensure that you meet your strategic goals. Managers can set the availability of their teams, which helps streamline assignments, by noting their PTO, vacation time and, if they’re working with remote teams, global holidays. To keep your team working at capacity and productive, visit the workload management chart. It’s color-coded to make it easy to see their allocation.

You can then reallocate resources right from the chart and balance their workload. Finally, to keep an eye on labor costs and make sure you’re not going over budget, use our secure timesheets to track that and how far each team member has gone in completing their tasks.