Web product roadmap
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One of the non-negotiables in leading the strategic management and improvement of a large, complex web environment is having a roadmap of activity for a given period of time, broken down by program and project that clearly outlines the main outcomes to be delivered. Activities in the roadmap should all align with strategic priorities and be designed to deliver improvements in key performance indicators.
I’m really pleased and proud of the roadmap my team has been working through in 2021. Our current roadmap divides our projects into the following programs; strategic priorities, core website inititiatives, marketing projects, technology & performance improvements, PMO projects (that we are supporting), and ‘other’. Whilst we plan the roadmap a year in advance, each quarter key members of my management team gather to discuss specific planning activities for projects commencing in the upcoming period.
Strategic priorities this year have including projects for search engine optimisation, conversion rate optimisation (including the introduction of new technology), product page redevelopment, the introduction of new lead generation opportunities (and technology), the redevelopment of one of our application portals, and the redevelopment of the ‘discovery’ phase of the user journey for our primary audience.
Somehow in addition to all this, we have maintained a busy centralised website publishing service, and worked through a range of more ‘BAU’-style projects designed to maintain and improve our main public website and support of a range of annual marketing campaign-style activities. Most significantly of all, we have been able to balance delivering all these improvement activities whilst simultaneously rebuilding our underlying core content management system, Drupal. This has increased significantly the level of complexity and planning required to ensure we don’t hold up work, whilst at the same time, avoiding delivering work in the old version of our CMS that will need to be rebuilt in the new version.
The year is not over yet. I only hope we manage to deliver most of what we’ve planned to achieve. And it’s now time to kick-start the planning process for the 2022 roadmap!
