We Have Snowflake. Now What?
- Dave Findlay
- Oct 7
- 3 min read
Part 2: From Vision to Roadmap: Anchoring in Alignment
You’ve run your Vision Workshops across departments. You’ve surfaced how success is measured, where people influence outcomes, where data is helping (or not), and where gaps or friction exist.
Now comes the harder but more important step: converting that insight into a prioritized roadmap the business can rally behind, before writing a single user story.
Here’s how I do it.
1. Synthesize and Tell the Story
Start by distilling what you heard across all departments into a concise narrative.
Find common themes: recurring pain points, overlapping priorities, shared data needs.
Highlight value zones: those use cases where a better data experience could unlock real business impact.
Define success: Map how each group defines success and their sphere of influence in achieving it.
Surface tensions or trade-offs: highlight where multiple teams asking for the same datasource, or one group’s “urgent” is another’s “nice to have”.
The narrative becomes your baseline for alignment. It moves the conversation from “my ask” to “our priorities”.
2. Establish a Business-Led Alignment Committee
To avoid political derailment or scope creep, your roadmap decisions should live in a shared, visible process.
I often create a lightweight data steering group of 4–6 business leaders consisting of people who are stakeholders in data-driven goals. This committee doesn’t micromanage they:
Review proposed initiatives together
Surface trade-offs and conflicting priorities
Ensure no one function dominates the roadmap
Guard against “priority drift”
The goal is not full consensus. It’s a shared process people trust.
3. Prioritize with Objectivity, Not Emotion
With your committee, use a simple, transparent framework to score initiatives:
Criteria | What to Ask |
Reach | How many decisions or users benefit? |
Impact | How big is the improvement on efficiency, insight, or revenue? |
Confidence | How well-understood is the need, data, and risks? |
Effort (or cost) | How much work, integration, or technical cleanup is required? |
This is basically the RICE method used in many places. It’s not perfect, but it helps conversations be about tradeoff, not politics.
While doing this, be realistic about readiness. Just because something scores high shouldn’t mean it’s immediately scaffolded. Ask:
Who on the business side has the bandwidth to partner? What dependencies or foundational work is needed first?
When business partners see that you respect their time and constraints, alignment comes faster.
4. Draft (and Share) a Transparent Roadmap
Think of your first roadmap not as a rigid commitment, but as a draft to spark conversation and ownership.
When you present it:
Walk people through why certain items were prioritized, and why others were deferred
If a theme was deferred, provide options for bringing it forward (eg: additional budget to fund another scrum team)
Surface the trade-offs you made
Show timing, dependencies, and resource needs
Invite feedback and iteration
This helps shift it from the data team’s roadmap to the company’s data roadmap.
5. Operate in Delivery Cycles, Not Epics for Eternity
Even the best roadmap should be agile. I recommend:
Quarterly delivery cycles
Focusing on one initiative per cycle
Building, validating, and then iterating based on real usage
Reporting back to your committee on what was delivered, what was learned, and what comes next
This cycle of visibility, adaptability, and shared ownership becomes your alignment mechanism and not a static roadmap pinned on a wall.
Why This Matters
Without this level of alignment:
The data roadmap becomes a wish list
Functions compete instead of collaborate
Priorities shift with the loudest voice
Momentum stalls mid-delivery
When you connect business vision with alignment and planning, you get a roadmap that’s not just strategic, it’s in motion.
At Fuse, we believe a great data strategy only matters if it leads to action.
If you’re ready to move from planning to execution — and build solutions your team will actually use — let’s talk.
