The systems approach of strategic roadmapping: Framing challenges and contributions whilst flexing to changing conditions and circumstances

For supporting strategy development, corporate practitioners and consultants have long appropriated the roadmap metaphor for journey‐making to establish the concept of strategic roadmapping. The practice involves charting future courses of action to help realize a vision. However, despite the significant uptake and use of the method, there still lacks a discourse on its inherent flexibility. Therefore, this paper outlines roadmapping's flexible nature from a systems perspective. The key attributes of the approach being general, scalable, customizable and dynamic are characterized. The governing framework underpinning roadmapping is depicted and described. To provide guidance on deploying this framework, two critical aspects are covered: (i) framing the challenges being faced and contributions necessary to move forward and (ii) with specific regard to having to deal with the realized unfolding of time, the need to flex to evolving conditions and new situational circumstances.