roadmapping across business segments – implementation of roadmapping … · 2019-05-25 ·...

International Association for Management of Technology IAMOT 2018 Conference Proceedings

ROADMAPPING ACROSS BUSINESS SEGMENTS – IMPLEMENTATION OFROADMAPPING AT GRUNDFOS TO SUPPORT TECHNOLOGY PLANNING

CLARE FARRUKH, MICHELE ROUTLEY, ROB PHAAL University of Cambridge, Institute for Manufacturing, Engineering Department, UK

[email protected] (Corresponding), [email protected], [email protected]

CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN Grundfos, Technology Department, Denmark

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the customised implementation of product-technology roadmapping across eight business segments within a large technology-intensiveEuropean company over the last three years. The aim was to achieve improved technology direction and alignment across the business by implementing and evolving roadmapping at Grundfos as part of the existing technology planning process.

Key elements include the successful adaptation and implementation of the standard T-Plan process for product-technology roadmapping, and the importance of ownership and transfer of the process facilitation to people within the different areas of the organisation. Additional significant insights are the need for iteration in developing a customised approach, and the context specific learning about building on existing processes, data collection and familiar representations.

To customise the selected approach the company chose an exploratory development process. The initiative was led by a technology manager who drew upon roadmapping experience in other companies within an industrial-academic consortium as well as taking advice from external facilitators. The technology manager secured support from peers across the organisation who were then trained as internal facilitators. Together they created their own roadmapping process and templates drawing upon established materials and activities related to technology planning within the company. They iteratively developed the process between each workshop in the first application and evolved the process year on year and have adopted a Roadmapping Roadmapping (R2) review template to plan future steps. The resources needed and lessons learned from this exploratory development process are also outlined.

Links are made between the practical experience and the related literature on the integration of tools, the use of boundary objects and the need for flexibility and persistence in use, which extend the discussion to include wider organisational dimensions and to give further insights into how to successfully embed roadmapping. This highlights, for example, the related issues of timing and ownership, as the organisational circumstances need to be favourable for a change in process, as well as the importance of working across organisational boundaries, integration within the organisation’s processes and achieving alignment of diverse perspectives and co-ordination structures.

In summary, the paper’s contribution is to provide insights into the evolution ofcustomised roadmapping as a mechanism to improve alignment in technologyplanning across a business. The experience underlines the importance ofownership, transfer of roadmapping skills and iteration of the process in

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embedding roadmapping within the business. In addition, it highlights thesignificance of context, as even a customised approach will need to evolve tobest fit the aims of the organisation and its environment.

Key words: Product-technology roadmapping; implementation; customisedapproach; templates; alignment

INTRODUCTION

Why roadmap? Roadmapping links technological resources to business objectivesto support strategy and innovation (Phaal et al., 2010). Companies roadmap for many reasons – for example, to address a challenge, to activate a step change inbehaviour or to plan for the future by improving direction and alignment. So where does roadmapping fit in the wide range of management tools available? Roadmapping is a great integrator and is often used in conjunction with other tools, for example portfolio management, supplying the canvas to show gaps in knowledge and to structure and display the data collected to support decision making (Phaal et al., 2012).

This paper illustrates the benefits of roadmapping across business segments as ahelpful mechanism within ongoing technology planning activities at Grundfos, a global leader in advanced pump solutions and a trendsetter in water technology. The company contributes to global sustainability by pioneering technologies that improve quality of life for people and care for the planet, and is continually looking to develop its people and processes to further these goals. Grundfos’s interest in roadmapping developed over time and resulted in a successful initiative in June-August 2015 led by a technology manager who provided ownership of the process and took the opportunity when the time was right for the company. The developed process has been applied twice since and the company is planning future steps.

Why is Grundfos’s experience important? This paper is an illustration of a company-led customisation of product-technology roadmapping, using it as a focused mechanism to improve the alignment within existing technology planning activities. The independent approach, drawing on industrial and academic experience, is a leading example of exploratory strategy tool development and implementation across multiple business units.

The main aims of this paper are to share the exploratory development process and learning for other companies to draw on, and to record and demonstrate the value of industrial-academic collaboration as part of a strategic technology and innovation management consortium. This collaboration has enabled access to roadmapping research and practice, including learning from other companies’ roadmapping initiatives and the availability of facilitation support. As such this paper forms one case study in a growing repository of roadmapping applications.In addition, links have been made to the wider literature to allow preliminary insights into embedding roadmapping securely into organisations.

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In summary, the paper’s contribution is to provide insights into the evolution of customised product-technology roadmapping as a mechanism to improve alignment in technology planning. In addition, it highlights the importance of context, as even a customised approach will need to evolve to best fit the aims of the organisation and its environment.

LITERATURE AND PRACTICE

Roadmapping approaches

Linking technology to business planning by combining a range of tools and techniques in a sensible way is an aspiration of many companies (Probert et al., 1999). Roadmapping as a technique has been applied in industry for over 30 years as one way to do this. Motorola was the first published company application where the final roadmap matrix was a summary of a set of key background documents (Willyard & McClees, 1987). Later on, companies such as Philips (Groenveld, 1997) and those within the EIRMA working group (EIRMA, 1997) pioneered the graphical multi-layered format that is most widely used today. However companies still find it a challenge to get started without committing large amounts of resources before clear benefits are apparent. This was the inspiration for the ‘fast start’ methods developed in the form of T-Plan (Phaal et al., 2000, 2001), for product-technology roadmapping, and S-Plan (Phaal et al., 2010), for strategic landscaping, as a way of focusing in on key opportunities and securing buy-in for wider roadmapping initiatives.

Roadmapping implementation issues

Industrially-related literature gives an insight into tackling the challenges of setting up an ongoing roadmapping system, for example how to integrate across BUs and have different levels involved (e.g. Cosner et al., 2007) and what the process success factors in preparation, implementation and follow-up are (e.g. deLaat and McKibbin, 2003; Gerdsri, 2007). Configuration of the roadmapping process is always required, but a general dynamic systems framework (Phaal et al.,2004) is useful as it prompts appropriate definition of the layers of the interlinking roadmaps in a wider system. When looking across the company at BU level (Phaal et al., 2010, p.92) a hierarchical taxonomy is needed, and the common structure is helpful across BUs, although configuration of this to contextwill always be required. Recent in-depth experiences of collaborative in-companydevelopment (Kerr, Phaal & Thams, 2016, 2017) show both the importance of customising roadmapping processes and the level of effort involved. Reviewing recent roadmapping and tools related literature highlights a number of useful aspects to consider in implementing and embedding roadmapping (see Table 1).

Table 1: Selected literature: implementing and embedding tools in organisations

Source Aspects to consider

Examples/explanation

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Gerdsri et al. 2007

Dynamics of implementation Initiation, Development and Integration phases in terms of objectives, measures for success and roles/responsibilities

Simone et al. 2015

Significance of timing Strategy of time pacing, Synchronizing dialogues, Mapping innovation elements to a timeline, Competitive timing

Holmes & Ferrill. 2006

Update and renewal Process for reviewing roadmapping

Howard-Grenville 2005

Flexibility and persistence inuse

Agency, Organisational context, Routine embeddedness Technical suitability for roadmapping (pacing, prediction, divisibility of development), alignment of co-ordination structures with roadmapping

Kappel 2001 Three levels of decision influence as outcomes of roadmapping processes

Level 1. Understand – measured by accuracy and clarityLevel 2. Persuade – measured by aligned priorities and decisionsLevel 3. Synchronize – measured by ongoing co-ordination

Kotter 1995 Creating and sustaining the case for change

Eight steps for business transformation – create a sense of urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a strategic vision and initiatives, enlist a volunteer army, enable action by removing barriers, generate short term wins, sustain acceleration, institute change.

Cosner et al. 2007 Integration of roadmapping into organisation’s planning processes

Architecture and process for roadmapping across business units, roadmapping as part of company’s overall business process

Kerr et al. 2012Simonse et al. 2015 Carlile. 2002Cacciatori. 2012 Jarzabkowski et al. 2013a

Boundary object or artefact enhancing communication between disparate groups

Cogitate, Articulate, CommunicateBuilding concepts from practitioner insightsBoundary objects in new product developmentResolving conflict in problem solvingMaterial artefacts - doing strategy with ‘stuff’

Jarzabkowski et al. 2013bMortara et al. 2014

The role of tools and templates

Tool structure, uptake and usage

Characterising tools in use

The motivation for roadmapping at Grundfos

In the late 1990s the technology development organisation and the business segments at Grundfos reached out to each other and started a yearly alignment session, called Technology Planning, where business needs and technology opportunities were shared. Every year the alignment sessions were improved based on experience from previous years and inspiration from outside the company.

After 15 years it had been proved that the Technology Planning activity had led to new technologies entering the products and the process was institutionalized within Grundfos. However, with a view to continuous improvement several issueswere identified:

i. Repetition – some technologies were presented year after year (e.g. ten years) and received positive feedback from business units. Technology development was continued but no transfer or very slow transfer of the technology took place.

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ii. Ambiguity – technologists and business developers changed their minds and found new areas that were ‘most important’ based on personal preference from one year to the next.

iii. Ownership – product and technology ownership was in many different parts of the organisation and these parts had different ways of seeing the development of future offerings.

iv. Ambition level – both the business needs and the technology opportunitiespresented were much greater than the capacity of the technology development function, and the expectations after the alignment session were very high leading to inevitable disappointment afterwards during execution.

In summary, the Technology Planning process worked well in the sense that new technologies entered products but was less efficient concerning the time spent, the lead-time for technologies and sorting out priorities.

Grundfos was looking for two things to improve the technology planning approach:

i. A way of creating a common picture of future needs and technologies delivering on those needs across business segments

ii. A clear direction on which products and offerings to focus on across business segments and in terms of technology development.

A change in top management then provided newly clarified strategic choices, and roadmapping became a possibility as a way to create a common picture and bridge the gap between strategy and executable tasks. This timing was very significant. The internal champion was able to make the link to see how product-technology roadmapping would then work well for Grundfos .

METHODOLOGY

An exploratory development process – “learn, design & develop, debriefand iterate”

Grundfos’s realisation that roadmapping could meet their technology planning needs and be implemented successfully was supported by their participation in the Strategic Technology & Innovation Management (STIM) Consortium1 programme from 2013 onwards. They started conversations with other members of the Consortium to draw on their experiences, including industrialists, academics and practitioners. In addition, they wanted to make sure that as muchinformation as possible was being pulled from processes and outputs that already existed within the company.

The company gradually built up belief in the potential of the roadmapping technique, and trust that it would deliver benefits, through discussion of the experiences of peer companies in the STIM Consortium. Several companies

1 This academic-industrial consortium now involves over 20 companies and around 18 research projects. See www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/ctm/stim

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shared their experience of repeatedly using and improving the roadmapping process and the advantages and disadvantages of using an external facilitator. Other companies shared how roadmapping could be carried out at different organisational levels and their insights into the behaviour of people in the workshops and ways of engaging the right stakeholders. This resulted in a preference for a customised process based mainly on internal resources right from the start.

Building on this background knowledge and the motivation to improve their technology planning process, Grundfos identified a champion who co-ordinated the creation of a draft roadmap process based on the IfM T-Plan process (see Figure 1). The approach was used in an ambitious initiative which created 9 product-technology roadmaps in 6 weeks over the summer of 2015 with background support from an external facilitator for tailoring and workshop techniques. T-Plan was chosen as it focused on product-technology planning which fitted with the new strategy program’s emphasis on continued development of 9 existing and well established Critical to Succeed (CtS) products.

Figure 1:T-Plan standard process (Phaal et al., 2000)

The champion worked with an external facilitator who provided practical knowledge and guidance on the T-Plan process, how to use template wall charts

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in an efficient way, what people to have in the room and what the outcome of each step should be. This helped Grundfos to make a firm execution plan for the roadmapping process, including taking the decision that they would draw on existing company documentation as much as possible and train internal managers as facilitators for the process. In addition they decided to carry out off-line preparation work for the first part of the T-plan process, rather than run workshops 1 & 2, and then focus on group work during workshops 3 & 4.

Grundfos then triggered the customised process which followed a ‘design, develop, debrief and iterate’ approach similar to the Kolb experiential learning cycle (Kolb 1984). The core roadmapping team in Grundfos reviewed and adapted the initial pilot process, implementing learning throughout the 9 rapid applications in the summer of 2015. The external facilitator was present for only the first workshop as an observer, which was facilitated by Grundfos, but kept in touch throughout the remaining 8 workshops.

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Key steps of the Grundfos roadmapping process

The current roadmapping process in Grundfos is limited to technology development to support the product portfolio. Technology planning’s core activityis the one day Technology Roadmap (TRM) Workshop, comprising workshops 3 & 4 in the T-Plan Standard Process (see Figure 2) where gaps in both product and production technology capability are visualised for a particular product program using standardised templates (see Figures 3-4 below). Key elements of the process are detailed below.

Figure 2: Grundfos roadmapping process

Firstly, a TRM is created for each of the Critical to Succeed (CtS) products in a one day workshop. The input for the workshop is prepared using focused templates for Technology and Capability (Figure 3). These aim to use minimal input for maximum output and provide consistent data collection across product programs.

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Figure 3: Technology and Capability data input templates

Figure 4: Capability plan and Product roadmap templates

Market drivers and the plan for the product program are used as market pull input and technologies that are relevant for the product program are collected bya technology driver/owner and used as technology push input. A facilitator supports the practical execution of the workshop. The facilitator ensures that all print out material and office supplies are available at the workshop.

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After the workshop the data is digitalized, consolidated by the facilitator and technology driver/owner and reviewed by the technology director and the program manager. The same template format is used across all product programs (Figure 4). The gaps in technology are prioritized based on how time critical it is to close them and if they are needed for a product release.

Based on this prioritization, technology activities are defined to have a balance between a bulk of activities that close time critical needed gaps and long-term activities targeting product visions. The technology activities are now taken into the portfolio of technology projects where resource planning and alignment with frontloading, production technology, product development and business development take place. The technologies are delivered through execution of projects according to the technology development process. The time horizon for the TRMs is the strategy period, technology planning is a yearly event and the alignment between technology, frontloading and platform portfolios is quarterly. An overview of the roadmap hierarchy is given in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Roadmap hierarchy overview

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RESULTS

After the 2015 roadmaps had been developed, a review of the implementation was carried out, by reflecting back to why Grundfos was using roadmapping, what had been achieved and the effort involved.

Review of motivation for starting roadmapping

The original motivation for roadmapping relied on several issues arising from the established technology planning process. These have been successfully addressed as outlined below.

Repetition – “Due to the greater transparency of the process, it was seen that technologies that are interesting but not directed towards a release or product vision either gradually fall out or initiate a change in releases”.

Ambiguity – “More consistency has been obtained with the roadmapping because it is much easier to challenge the change of mind. Some product management teams have moved from disagreements to being well aligned. The most consistent roadmaps have had excellent traction and we are looking into completion of the five-year product vision. The good alignment of current teams may well be due to other organisational reasons not necessarily just the roadmapping process”.

Ownership – “Much more clarity on product and technology ownership. This is also influenced by a new business development head”.

Ambition level – “We have been able to set expectations better with the technology roadmaps. I believe it is because we actually document and communicate the decisions and consequences. A serious down side of the clear product focus has been that we shifted towards being too short term focused and we are now steering towards a longer technology perspective by incorporating some more of the nice to have features in the product vision”.

Review of roadmapping technique’s performance

The choice of roadmapping was made due to its expected contribution in the following areas, and the progress made and questions raised are detailed below.

• Give personnel a big enough picture to be vision-driven. It was realised that it was necessary to keep the roadmaps simple and high-level without getting sucked into too much detail – but communicating how the roadmaps link to the detail (ideally by pointing to existing documentation or processes).

• Show how technologies have a way forward into products. The roadmaps needed to keep this visual linkage, and significant changes need to be captured. It was thought that the product release details could be clearer (from product roadmaps) to give more guidance to technology and production.

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• Create alignment across company: between business units, product development, and technology development activities. High level visual outputshould incorporate these elements. Workshops should include representatives from these areas.

• Align roadmapping in an annual cycle with business planning, and in a quarterly cycle with production capability and product development. Roadmap update frequency needed consideration to provide this alignment, together with who would be responsible for the updates. Would the meeting provide the impetus for update, and they would be updated in advance, or does the roadmap itself provide a mechanism for discussion during the meeting for real-time, for post-meeting consensual update?

• Provide prioritisation of technology projects to run, with transparent justification for projects selected. The discussions and summary chart have provided this. An annual update is thought to be sufficient for the budgetary choices, however any significant changes should be flagged and will be visible from the critical timing/impact chart.

Cost of the roadmapping initiative

The time taken in briefing, preparation, consolidation and the workshops for the first round of the initiative have been summarised below (Table 2). This can be converted to approximate costs.

Table 2: Main activities and time taken for developing first 9 roadmaps

Item Description Hours Total hours

Man months

Briefing PreparationBriefing meeting

580 85

WorkshopsPreparation per workshop

Technology inputProduction technology inputPoster printingPoster editingData capturingPre-meeting with program mgtArrange roomFacilitator preparation

155315314

37 x 9

Post processing per workshop

Pack down postersDigitalise materialWrite up capabilities and overview

1630

37 x 9

Workshop hours per workshop

7 hours x 23 participants on average

161 161 x 9

Total Summing up 9 workshops 2200 15

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DISCUSSION

The results of the ongoing implementation can be viewed from a number of perspectives. Firstly there are the lessons learned identified by the company after the initial 2015 roadmapping initiative. There are also additional benefits identified, leading to deeper understanding of the process. This is then enriched by the evolution of the roadmapping since the first implementation, with each iteration increasing the value of the roadmapping process to the organisation. Finally there are links between the practical application and the wider literature on using such tools which give further insights into embedding roadmapping more generally.

Grundfos lessons learned

In the first review of the 2015 roadmapping work, the lessons below were identified.

Fast start success. The T-plan process has been a great way of introducing roadmapping to Grundfos.

Timing is everything. The clear strategic direction was critical to success of roadmapping. The Grundfos champion states that “The roadmap will be no better in execution towards a target than the target itself. Without that target wewould not have started the roadmap implementation”.

Corporate culture. During start up and the workshops the impact of the positive Grundfos ‘mindset’ was clear. And there is still good buy-in after this first initiative.

Effort & Cost. Grundfos underestimated the effort needed to organise the workshops. This took more of the champion/facilitator’s time than expected. However the activities themselves would have had to be done anyway as part of Technology Planning and in that context would have been expected to have taken longer.

Deeper understanding acquired

This had a number of strands, however using the established technology planning process as a vehicle for the roadmapping implementation helped acceptance and linkage into organisation processes. From the very start, Grundfos decided to take an independent approach, based on their own objectives and ways of working. They took their time and drew upon external inputs and support as they felt necessary. At no point did they hand over responsibility for the TRM process to anyone else and they developed their own customised process using an iterative development approach with the following characteristics:

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Independence of Grundfos approach and background nature of external influences

Pulling together elements of what they already had, including templates and a yearly technology planning cycle, to form the customised Grundfos process

Roadmapping as an integrating mechanism within the organisational functions/groups

Discussion of ideas for reviewing and updating roadmaps, including material based on literature and practice.

A common picture of needs for product releases and technology capabilities was achieved between the business units and technology organisation. An understanding of necessary linkages between the core technology development and production technology departments was obtained.

The use of templates worked well on several fronts. They drew upon existing data collection and display mechanisms and prevented over-summarising the data during the roadmapping process. Both these elements seem to have had a strong effect on cross-organisational buy-in to the final process. For example, as part of their exisiting Technology Planning process Grundfos were already summarising key information into common formats to be able to capture, share and track progress within the Business Units and Technology departments. Theseexisting formats were modified to align with the TRM while still presenting the same level of information to each group, and then integrated into the process as new templates. Also the roadmap templates separated out the details in the overview by visualising bundles of technology in the form of capabilities and by using a one page description template of each capability (Figure 4). This allowed participants to retain a clear view of their inputs and the decisions made.

It was realised that the process allowed BUs and functions to see how they fit in and which ‘bit’ they are contributing to the roadmap – this ensured that production technology people were invited to workshops as it was thought there would be overlaps, even though they own their own roadmaps. Likewise, while Technology dealt with multiple product roadmaps they were able to consolidate the outputs into one technology roadmap, based on the technology capabilities required (Figure 5).

Evolving roadmapping since the first implementation – the value of iteration

The second time (2016) the roadmapping process was used as part of the technology planning process on the same target products it was felt that less value was gained, because much of the insight had been captured in the roadmaps from the previous year.

The third round (2017) of technology planning based on roadmapping has just been assessed. Grundfos were able to make it a very lean process based on updating the previous two years of work. It is estimated that the resource needed was around 25% of previous years even though the scope of technologies considered was widened for the longer-term product vision. The lessons learned were captured using five dimensions: Strategic Drivers/Targets,

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Stakeholders, Templates, Communication/Documentation, Chiefs & Tech Managers, against the timeline view of the technology planning process.

The key review headlines were:

i) Each time the technology planning cycle is initiated, it is necessary to reviewthe strategic drivers again. So, need to add a step to assess the drivers from last time and add new drivers as necessary. For example, sustainability as a major focus remains. Digital transformation is not new but is now well articulated within the business so can be added.

ii) To ensure that both managers and those that need to do the roadmapping work remain aligned and committed, it is necessary to re-communicate what is required before, during and after workshops.

iii) Stakeholders do change and must be included in the process. For example, anew post has been recently created with the role of driving excellence in the product management organisation. Alignment with this new and important stakeholder is necessary.

iv) Using templates has been a key part of the implementation process. Drawingupon two new templates has been very helpful in providing a detailed script for a roadmap review meeting that resulted in an effective one hour update. These templates are ‘Scoping your roadmapping initiative’ (Kerr, 2017) whichincludes a set of review questions and ‘Roadmapping Roadmapping’ (Phaal, 2016) which was used based on the 2018-2020 timeframe.

The fourth round (2018) the technology planning activity will start with detailed preparations in July, workshops in August and final reviews in November.

Wider literature and implications for embedding roadmapping

Initiating roadmapping in an organisation is difficult but keeping it going in the long term is even more of a challenge (Phaal et al., 1999). There is a wide range of literature relevant to roadmapping, including strategy, knowledge management, the application of tools and templates, organisational behaviour and communication. The literature also specifically addresses issues such as the integration of tools (Kerr et al., 2017; Mortara et al., 2014), the demands of change management (e.g. Kotter, 1995), and the need for flexibility and persistence in use (Howard-Grenville, 2005). Some of these diverse influences are included in this paper (see Table 1) but make any tentative recommendationsfor embedding roadmapping in industrial organisations largely context specific.

The following areas are proposed as important aspects in the successful embedding of roadmapping and illustrated with examples from the Grundfos implementation:

Timing: Roadmaps by definition include a time axis, but the dynamics of implementation (Gerdsri et al., 2007) in terms of phases, people, especially in terms of appropriate ownership, and metrics are also key. The importance of synchronising dialogues and the need to choose appropriate strategic timing are also crucial for effective implementation (Simone et al., 2015). The Grundfos implementation relied upon significant ownership by a key technology manager who spotted the strategic opening in terms of timing and secured buy-in and

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acceptance of the process by involving key colleagues across the organisation within the contextual timeframe of the annual technology planning process.

Organisation boundaries: Sharing technological knowledge across internal groupscan be challenging (Farrukh & Probert, 2002) but use of boundary objects (Carlile, 2002) such as roadmaps help to capture individual insights within a wider framework of reference (Kerr et al., 2012), reduce difficulties in thinking strategically (Jarzabdowski et al., 2013a) and reduce conflicts during problem solving (Cacciatori, 2012). Grundfos succeeded in utilising existing materials and data to generate accessible templates for roadmaps, technology and capability to improve information sharing across the technical groups involved, resulting in a common picture of technology needs and challenges.

Integration: Building roadmapping into the organisation’s processes ensures that it becomes one of the necessary activities to gather and process relevant data for decision making (Cosner et al., 2007; Holmes & Ferrill, 2006) while aligning roadmapping with co-ordination structures (Howard-Grenville, 2005) gives individuals a clearer view of how they fit within and can interact positively with organisational decision making processes. Grundfos found that by independently customising their own approach and building roadmapping into the existing technology planning process, the value to the business was apparent and resulted in improved understanding by the business units and corporate groups of their contribution and mutual interfaces.

Alignment of diverse and evolving perspectives: This is a challenge in a roadmapping journey, as all those involved become more aware of implementation issues and improvements that could be made, although flexibility and persistence in use helps (Howard-Grenville, 2005). Three levels of decision influence are suggested by Kappel (2001) as roadmapping develops within an organisation, moving through phases of understanding, persuasion andsynchronisation. As has been seen in this paper Grundfos has sustained its roadmapping initiative while being open to pragmatic changes. The first and second years of roadmapping could be seen as understanding technology development, within the organisation and in relationship to the market, more accurately and clearly (increased ‘technology pull’). During the third year the roadmapping work perhaps has been looking to persuade the organisation to align priorities and decisions to achieve a longer-term view of technologies (increased ‘technology push’). Finally the future plan could be seen as an effort to synchronise technology planning activities by raising the level of internal co-ordination to achieve the 2020 vision (balancing ‘push and pull’).

In summary, links between Grundfos’s practical experience and the related literature extend the discussion of how to successfully embed roadmapping to include wider organisational dimensions and gives further insights. Organisational circumstances need to be favourable for a change in process, andthere is a generic need for evolution as the organisation and environment changes, but a successfully customised process with clear objectives will provide

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good value to the organisation through enhanced transparency of purpose and functional alignment.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This paper describes an exploratory process of improving technology direction and alignment by implementing and evolving roadmapping at Grundfos.

The implications for roadmapping practice

A single company case has been presented to give in depth practical insights into a roadmapping journey made over a 5 year period (2013-2017), which is notoften seen in the literature. Key practical conclusions with respect to the successful adaptation and implementation of the standard T-Plan process for product-technology roadmapping include the importance of ownership and transfer of the process facilitation to people within the different areas of the organisation, the need for iteration in developing a customised approach and thecontext specific learning about building on existing processes, data collection and familiar representations. The importance of organisational context was also highlighted. Due to time spent learning about roadmapping it was possible to take the initial steps when the time was right for Grundfos due to strategic changes going on in the organisation. They customised the approach from the start, but as they move forward as a company in terms of their strategy, they willalso need to evolve their roadmapping process further.

The implications for roadmapping research

The paper also builds on contributions in the literature that aim to show both the options for and the importance of customising roadmapping processes, the level of effort involved and the type of resources needed. However, in this case roadmapping is truly a means to an end. Grundfos decided that it would be a suitable mechanism to address identified issues with their established process for technology planning. They customised and implemented the process themselves, reflected on how successfully the technology planning issues were addressed, and identified the need for evolution of the process internally. These issues resonate closely with elements of the literature (Table 1) that seek to broaden out debates on embedding roadmapping to include both methodological, organisational and conceptual issues including timing, working across organisational boundaries, integration with the organisation’s processes and achieving alignment of diverse perspectives.

In summary, this paper is an illustration of customising product-technology roadmapping as a mechanism to improve technology planning alignment, but even a customised approach will need to evolve over time to stay useful and relevant (Holmes and Ferrill, 2008) and Grundfos seems well set to continue on their exploratory journey.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank the STIM Consortium companies and researchers for theirtime, insights and research/tool contributions in this area.

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STIM Consortium: www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/ctm/stim

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