When running a business, there are no shortcuts or magic bullets. There’s only the constant grind of analysis and decision-making to move the organization further down the path of success. It’s challenging, but it’s not impossible.
While quick fixes are few and far between, guidance, direction, and accountability can provide a roadmap that keeps the decision-making process manageable. These three vital elements comprise your business’s strategic plan.
The strategic planning process assists leaders in envisioning the company’s future state, laying the groundwork for every business decision and prioritization going forward. From the plan’s implementation, every sprint, resource allocation, and action item will align with your overarching strategy.
Establishing a comprehensive plan of action for your business may sound grueling, but you can leverage simple-to-use tools to simplify the process. One of the best resources is the strategic plan template. Using a template gives you a starting point for strategizing, helping identify and analyze the correct data to develop a straightforward strategic roadmap.
What’s a strategic plan template?
A business strategy template provides guidance to translate organization, department, or team-level goals and objectives from the executive summary into a clear roadmap with actionable steps — such as projects, deliverables, and progress benchmarks. A template also helps establish a decision-making framework, ensuring every initiative aligns with the company’s long-term goals.
The strategic plan’s format incorporates vital business information like the mission statement and data generated from PESTLE or SWOT analyses. This way, the plan ensures the team has a complete projection of the business’s circumstances, including potential weaknesses that could prevent achieving the required outcomes.
A strategic roadmap template also outlines the operational plan’s milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs). These metrics establish focus and let you evaluate progress toward achieving strategic outcomes. And including an employee communication plan in your map creates organizational alignment to build momentum, contributing to the strategy’s successful execution.
What makes a good strategic plan template?
To optimize the strategic planning process, consider using a visual strategic plan template that integrates with your Jira-enabled project management software and includes the following capabilities:
- Multiple views: Get a different perspective on your project’s workflow by switching between a timeline similar to that of a Gantt chart and a Kanban-like swimlane view of the work’s progress.
- Timelines: Establish measurable milestones and delivery deadlines within the roadmap’s timeline.
- Flexible organization: Organize tasks by theme, team, and status to create an agile-friendly roadmap.
- Customization: Streamline reporting by creating and saving custom data sets to provide information different audiences require.
- Portfolios: Break down silos to visualize the big picture by mapping epics, user stories, and tasks. This also helps identify interdependencies and optimization opportunities among projects.
- Task tracking: Use the roadmap to assign tasks to individual team members and track their progress.
- Resource allocation: Note resource use in your template for both individuals and teams.
The 9 best strategic planning roadmap templates
Don’t spend hours scouring search engines for free templates to build your operational plans. Here are nine of the best roadmapping tools for your project management and product roadmap planning.
1. Strategic roadmap
Bring your vision statement to life with a strategic roadmap that outlines each step of the organization’s mission. This template establishes long-term timelines and deadlines, allowing team members to focus on critical company goals and comprehend the organization’s larger mission.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
2. Business development roadmap
By mapping out opportunities for fast revenue and market-share growth over 12 months, you can help the sales, marketing, and product teams visualize projected business evolution and their departments’ impact. This business development roadmap identifies each group’s objectives and projects to achieve aggressive growth and strategic business outcomes.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
3. Cloud strategy roadmap
Outline how IT will transition to distributed computing technology with the cloud strategy roadmap. This template communicates tasks, deliverables, and deadlines for the three roll-out phases: planning, infrastructure, and implementation. Clearly defining these phases keeps stakeholders accountable and on track to achieve their goals.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
4. Data strategy roadmap
A data strategy roadmap visually represents how an organization plans to improve its data acquisition, storage, and management methodologies. This roadmap illustrates the planning, process, and review phases, allowing CIOs and data teams to follow best information management and security practices while aligning objectives with organizational processes.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
5. Marketing roadmap
The marketing department focuses on executing simultaneous projects to carve out a competitive advantage, and a marketing plan template provides a clear picture of their activities to keep team members on track. Chart strategy across multiple channels — including digital, advertising, and events — and highlight key team projects and priorities. These roadmaps also serve as a communication tool, promoting transparency around the marketing strategy planning across the organization.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
6. Startup roadmap
A startup roadmap establishes how an emerging enterprise plans to launch and scale, guiding the management team and maintaining focus on end goals. This template helps chart a high-level, lightweight strategy for growth that offers flexibility, allowing the company to develop value-adding solutions for its customers while outpacing competitors.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
7. IT strategy roadmap
An IT strategy template assists organizations in aligning their core information technology initiatives with their overall business strategy. Using a roadmap to tie IT tasks to key business strategy projects, the rest of the organization can comprehend how their technology department’s goals, objectives, and projects contribute to key business priorities.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
8. Business intelligence roadmap
Business intelligence (BI) roadmaps help visualize all areas of BI, including data analytics, adoption, and training. This allows managers across the organization to boost efficiency and performance by quickly responding to at-a-glance data. With the roadmap, teams can determine their learning and analysis strategies and communicate them to the C-suite and the rest of the company.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
9. Change roadmap
A company can’t expect to remain successful if it stagnates. A change roadmap plots an organization’s evolutionary strategy by clearly illustrating the operation plan for transformation and visually representing desired outcomes. This roadmap acts as a top-down guide, helping managers spearhead changes within their departments and promoting transparency for alignment with the overall vision.
Timeline view
Swimlane view
Top planning tools by Tempo
Tempo Strategic Roadmaps offers these and many more planning templates for your Jira-enabled project management tool. Using Strategic Roadmaps and its free templates, you can build easy-to-read, boardroom-ready project and strategy roadmaps. Learn how Tempo can help simplify your team’s project prioritization and support alignment for the greatest organizational impact.
