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Method 05 · Condense and decide

Technology Roadmapping

A roadmap is a timeline with several layers stacked on top of each other — typically technology, products or applications, market and regulation — on which milestones are entered and their dependencies drawn across the layers. Its use is not the prediction of individual dates but the visibility of causal chains: which application needs which technology maturity, which regulation opens which market, when? A good roadmap is therefore less a plan than a structured expectation that is continually held against reality and corrected.

TODAY3 yrs5 yrs10 yrs TECHNOLOGYAPPLICATIONMARKET & REGULATION DependencyMilestone with uncertainty band
Three layers over a timeline; milestones as bands where the estimate is broad; the connections in between are the actual content.

Procedure

  1. Fix timeline and layers. For us: today → 3 → 5 → 10 years; layers technology · applications/products · market & regulation.
  2. Collect milestones per layer. From scanning, S-curves, TRL assessment: what is expected when — with source and confidence.
  3. Draw dependencies. Which application presupposes which technical maturity, which market which regulation? The connecting lines are the actual content.
  4. State uncertainty. Milestones as bands rather than points where the estimate is broad.
  5. Update and log. Every shift is recorded with a date — the change journal.

Strengths

  • Makes dependencies visible that individual assessments miss.
  • Connects the technical view with the market and regulatory view.
  • As a living document, more honest than any one-off forecast.

Limits

  • Invites false date certainty — roadmaps look more precise than they are.
  • Costly to maintain; outdated roadmaps are worse than none.
  • Represents trend breaks poorly; that needs scenarios.

How we use it in our roadmaps

Roadmapping is the backbone of the product. Each of our ten roadmaps has the same anatomy in seven blocks: executive summary, the interactive roadmap graphic with three layers over the timeline, ADL classification for reference industries, maturity and uncertainty, implications for action per horizon, the change journal and the source apparatus.

The most important block is the change journal: what has shifted since the last update, which signals changed the assessment, which recommendation was revised — dated, cumulative, including misjudgements. A roadmap without a journal is a photograph; with a journal it is a film.

References