Product-Technology Roadmapping

In a rapidly changing business landscape, organisations face constant challenges adapting to new technologies and evolving customer demands. Businesses need effective strategies to align innovations with market needs and organisational goals.

Roadmapping offers a practical yet powerful tool that combines analytical insights with actionable solutions to complex challenges. Cambridge’s fast-start framework, developed through decades of research and practice, helps translate vision into measurable milestones while creating alignment across stakeholders, technologies and strategic objectives.

On this interactive and practical course you will learn the innovative fast-start method which has been successfully implemented by IfM Engage – a world centre of excellence for roadmapping - across a variety of industries. You’ll be equipped to enhance and clarify your overall innovation and technology strategy and to ensure that investments in new technologies are strategically aligned with customer needs and organisational objectives. You’ll explore how to identify critical gaps in market and technology intelligence and integrate new technologies into products and services.

Blending collaborative discussions, peer interaction and expert-led instruction, over six weeks you’ll progress through the entire roadmapping process, leaving with your own tailored product-technology roadmap based on your business objectives You’ll have the tools to tackle the challenges of modern business – using roadmapping to drive organisational performance, market position and bottom-line growth.

Created with IfM Engage(Opens in a new window), part of the Institute for Manufacturing

This course equals 48 hours of the CPD Certification Service(Opens in a new window) time.

This course combines roadmapping fundamentals with hands-on application, empowering you to bridge communication gaps, drive consensus and become a visionary leader in product and technology strategy. Through four interactive workshops, you’ll create a T-Plan roadmap tailored to a real-world example (from your workplace if appropriate), while mastering principles that are adaptable across industries. You’ll explore market, business, product and technology layers, learning to analyse and align them strategically. By the end of the course, you’ll have a custom roadmap and actionable techniques for real-world success.

• Module 1: Introduction to product-technology roadmapping

• Module 2: The roadmapping process

• Module 3: The market workshop

• Module 4: The product and technology workshops

• Module 5: The charting workshop

• Module 6: Customising and implementing roadmapping

By the end of the course you will be able to:

• Describe the concept of the roadmapping framework to support strategy and innovation in an organisation.

• Recognise how roadmapping aligns strategic technology and commercial perspectives.

• Demonstrate how roadmapping can serve as an integrating platform for strategic management tools within the business.

• Analyse relationships across roadmap layers and the need for cross-business involvement in roadmapping.

• Construct a first-cut product-technology roadmap using a fast-start approach.

• Assess how roadmapping applies to your own organisational/professional contexts.

On successful completion of the course, you’ll receive a certificate from the University of Cambridge, along with valuable Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points and a digital badge to display on your LinkedIn profile. These Cambridge credentials not only showcase your knowledge and expertise, but also demonstrate your commitment to professional development – helping to future-proof your career.

This course is designed for professionals across various roles and industries who are involved in shaping and executing product services and technology strategies.

• Product development teams: Ideal for product designers, technologists, R&D specialists, product development specialists and commercial specialists responsible for developing innovative products, their constituent systems and subsystems, and underpinning technologies and R&D, to ensure efforts are collaborative and aligned across functions and over time, so that customer needs are met and market targets are achieved.

• Product managers, technology managers and innovation managers: Perfect for professionals overseeing product lifecycles and associated technological and market innovation, enabling them to develop product roadmaps that help to improve and sustain the success of their product in the marketplace.

• Product portfolio managers and programme managers: Invaluable for professionals managing diverse product portfolios, complex projects or R&D programmes, helping them to clarify strategic direction, streamline effort and optimise resources across their portfolio or programmes.

• Innovation directors, VPs of Innovation, manufacturing directors, VPs of Manufacturing, and R&D directors: Great for senior leaders steering innovation and technology strategies, equipping them with roadmapping knowledge for collaborative and consensus-based decision-making that leads to lasting improvements in R&D, innovation and manufacturing.

• Chief Technology Officers (CTOs): Perfect for CTOs overseeing technology investment within their companies, helping them clarify the longer-term picture and make technology choices which align with current and future market needs and drive business growth.

• Sales and marketing roles: Ideal for marketing professionals who need to understand product and technology roadmaps, ensuring marketing strategies align with product development and market demands.

• Any stakeholder involved in product, service or technology roadmaps: Ideal for all professionals responsible for creating or using roadmaps in product development, technology strategy or service delivery.

Our flexible, online courses – delivered via a world-leading learning platform – reflect the University of Cambridge experience and values, with low learner-to-tutor ratios and academically rigorous standards.

Our online learning model is designed to help you advance your skills and specialise in emerging areas that address real-world challenges. We will help you build your network through an engaging and impactful learning journey that encourages collaboration with academics and fellow learners.

Courses are delivered in weekly modules, allowing you to plan your time effectively around existing commitments. There is an optional weekly live session, which is recorded for anyone who can’t attend. The assessment criteria will be presented to you at the start of the course, so you can approach your studies with confidence and motivation, knowing exactly what’s expected of you and how to meet those expectations.

Throughout your online learning experience with Cambridge Advance Online, you’ll have digital access to a dedicated course tutor, an expert in the field, who will help steer your learning and provide you with support and guidance every step of the way.