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15 Free Strategic Roadmap Templates Every Leader Should Have

Article by 
Cascade Team
  —  Published 
March 8, 2023
June 7, 2023

Creating a strategic roadmap from scratch can be time-consuming and draining, especially if the end result is a siloed PowerPoint presentation that no one uses. But there's a better approach.

In this article, you’ll get 15 strategic roadmap templates that come prefilled with examples to help you get started. We'll also show you how to create an impactful strategic roadmap that's useful for your teams and drives strategy execution. 

Whether you’re a team lead or an executive in a large organization, this article will provide you with valuable insights into how to create a strategic roadmap that sets your team up for success. 

Inside this article, you’ll discover: 

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What Is A Strategic Roadmap?

A strategic roadmap is a high-level overview that outlines an organization's action plan to achieve its long-term goals. It provides a visual representation of an organization's objectives, priorities, initiatives, and resource allocation in a single view.

Think of it as a GPS for your business that helps you navigate through twists, turns, and obstacles, and keeps you on track toward your destination - success!

📌Here are the benefits you get with a clear and effective strategic roadmap:

  • Strategic clarity: Clarity to a wider audience about your organization's objectives and priorities.
  • A framework for prioritization: A strategic roadmap identifies the most important actions to take to achieve the organization's goals, allowing different departments to focus their efforts and resources on the most critical areas.
  • Monitoring: A visual way of monitoring progress and milestones, and identifying improvement opportunities.

How Do I Create An Impactful Strategic Roadmap? 

Any strategic roadmap worth its salt should include a vision and mission, strategic objectives, projects, metrics, and timelines. But there's more to it than that.

And while some people think a strategic roadmap is just a nice visualization to wow c-level planners and investors—they would be wrong. 

It's not just a colorful chart to whip out at town halls or shareholder meetings.

If you want to leverage roadmaps effectively for your team, they must be actively monitored, updated, and accessible in real-time. Otherwise, they're just another document taking up disk (or cloud) space.

🥲 The old way:

  • Isolated: Your strategic roadmap presentation sits in a folder on your company drive. It's isolated, disconnected, and never opened. (Cues sad violins)
  • Manually Updated: Changes, pivots, and updates require teams to update their project management tools manually.
  • Multiple Apps and Tools: Communications and execution are scattered across different platforms and communication tools.
  • Static Document: Someone thought sharing the roadmap as a PDF, PPT, or Excel file would be a smart idea. (Nice job, Greg).

😎 The better way:

  • Top of mind: Your strategic roadmap is accessible to everyone as they work and linked to your organization's teams' projects, actions, and KPIs.
  • Automatically updated: Your roadmap visualization is automatically updated whenever you make changes, pivots, or updates.
  • A single collaboration platform for teamwork: Teams can collaborate, communicate, and comment on strategic plans and execution in one place while staying aligned with the big picture.
  • Dynamic: An interactive visualization tool that allows people to drill down, drill up, and gain clarity on strategic plans in a way that's relevant to them.

Sound good to you? Then maybe it’s time to elevate your strategic planning with Cascade. 

Here’s an example of a strategic roadmap in Cascade:

timeline strategic planning corporate strategy

Our Timeline View (Roadmap view) allows you to display your strategy in a Gantt chart-style format with the simple click of a button.

If you are looking for a template to create your strategic roadmap, Cascade has all the most important elements of a highly effective strategic roadmap, including: 

  • Goals and objectives
  • Projects
  • Action plan
  • Timeline
  • Milestones and due dates
  • Owners 
  • Risk management
  • Status
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The 15 Best Strategy Roadmap Templates For Strategic Planning

Now for the good stuff. You came here to find a strategic roadmap template to start your planning on the right foot. We’ve put together a collection of 15 strategic roadmap templates for different teams and use cases. 

All of them are prefilled with examples so you can start customizing your strategic roadmap immediately. 

✨ Here’s a quick note on how these templates work: 

  • Sign up and get instant access to your chosen template. (Yes, it’s 100% free.)
  • Customize the template to fit your needs. 
  • Switch to Timeline view and visualize your strategic plan in a beautiful roadmap. 
  • Monitor progress and update your roadmap accordingly to keep it up-to-date. 
  • Invite your team members to collaborate on your roadmap and ensure it gets executed. 
timeline view gif in cascade

So without further ado, here are our top strategic roadmap templates:

1. Strategic Plan Roadmap Template

If you want to create a comprehensive and actionable strategic roadmap, our Strategic Plan Template is the perfect way to get started.

This template guides you through the process of developing a roadmap for achieving your organizational goals, including identifying key objectives, outlining action plans, and tracking progress.

💡Best for: Any executive, manager, or team leader who wants to ensure that their team is working towards the same goals and achieving success.

strategy plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE strategic plan roadmap template.

Cascade is an eye-opener for managing strategy. It's easy to get started and to map strategic plans within the tool. But once getting into it, the number of options to customize and integrate other sources seems almost limitless.” — Max W, Capterra

2. Business Roadmap Template

The Business Roadmap Template is a pre-designed tool that helps businesses to create a clear and concise roadmap for achieving their business plan.

With this template, you can create a roadmap for your business strategy that includes deliverables, timelines, and key activities to help you achieve key business objectives. 

You can also use it to identify and prioritize the resources required to execute your strategy effectively.

💡Best for: Business owners, executive-level managers, entrepreneurs, and organizations of all sizes and industries looking for a customizable and comprehensive business roadmap.

business strategy template timeline view cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE business roadmap template.

3. Product Roadmap Template

With our Product Roadmap Strategy Template, you’ll get everything you need to set your product development team up for success. 

You can use this template to create a clear and detailed product strategy roadmap and plan your product development process from product vision to launch.

💡Best for: R&D teams, product leaders, and product teams launching a new product or service.

product plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE product roadmap template.

This is a product that solves a key business problem which is stitching together company, product, or project vision to the execution of it. It turns strategy into something tangible and actionable.” — Peter D, Capterra

4. Project Roadmap Template

Cascade's Project Planning Template is an easy-to-use guide for outlining project steps, setting targets, allocating resources, and monitoring progress—everything you need to execute your projects like a pro.

Use this flexible template to plan your various projects, coordinate complex strategic initiatives, and set timelines.

💡Best for: Project managers and team leaders who need a robust, ready-to-use template for project planning.

project plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE project roadmap template.

5. IT Roadmap Template

If you're struggling to create an IT roadmap, use our IT Strategy Plan Template to get moving on yours today.

Start moving the needle on your IT initiatives with this comprehensive template to guide your IT roadmap's strategic priorities, objectives, projects, and KPIs. 

💡Best for: Internal stakeholders such as IT leaders and teams.

IT plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE IT roadmap template.

6. Marketing Strategy Roadmap Template

Maximize your marketing ROI and align your efforts with the overall business strategy with our Marketing Strategy Roadmap Template

Use it to create a clear marketing roadmap, communicate your marketing goals, and provide direction to your teams, decision-makers, and stakeholders.

💡Best for: CMOs, marketing managers, content managers, and other marketing professionals.

marketing plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE marketing roadmap template.

7. Agile Roadmap Template

Looking to adopt agile methodology or improve your team’s current agile approach? Our Agile Roadmap Template can help.

Use it to identify opportunities for improving execution, alignment, and outcomes for agile practitioners. Plus, with Cascade’s robust performance and features, your project team members will be able to work faster, communicate better, and pivot quickly.

💡Best for: CEOs, managers, and team leaders in any industry who use or want to start using agile methodology.

agile roadmap plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE agile roadmap template.

Cascade provides our organization with a level of transparency we've never experienced before. Traditionally siloed teams have insight into what other groups are working on, facilitating a new level of engagement and cross-team collaboration.“ — Katie B, G2

8. Digital Transformation Roadmap Template 

Keep up the momentum and execute your digital transformation plan like a seasoned professional with our Digital Transformation Strategy Template

This template will guide your digital transformation strategic planning and execution. It can also be used to ensure various digital transformation initiatives are communicated effectively to key stakeholders. 

💡Best for: Chief Information Officers (CIOs), CEOs, or teams leading their organization's digital transformation journey.

digital transformation plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE digital transformation roadmap template.

9. Portfolio Roadmap Template

Our Portfolio Roadmap Template (Portfolio Strategy Template) is designed to help strategize and optimize portfolio performance.

Use it to efficiently assess the risks and returns of your investments, diversify your portfolio to minimize risk, and allocate resources to align with broader business goals. 

💡Best for: CIOs (Chief Investment Officers), Directors, Portfolio Managers, and corporate planners who manage SBUs and investment portfolios. 

portfolio plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE portfolio roadmap template.

10. Product Launch Roadmap Template

Are you gearing up to launch a new product? Our Product Launch Plan Template is a structured guide to help you stay on track and achieve your goals. 

With this template, you can outline your product launch objectives, projects, and activities from start to finish.

💡Best for: Product managers, marketing managers, and teams who want to develop an effective strategic plan to launch, promote, and market products.

product launch plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE product launch roadmap template.

11. Technology Roadmap Template

With the Technology Roadmap Template, you'll get a well-structured framework to execute and align technology initiatives.

Use this template to plan and create a timeline for your technology strategy and ensure your team stays on track to achieve strategic goals. Additionally, this template can help communicate the value of complex technology initiatives to the rest of your organization.

💡Best for: Technology leaders, CTOs, and IT managers leading technology strategies.

technology plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE technology roadmap template.

12. Financial Roadmap Template

If you want to quickly jump-start your financial planning strategy process, try out Cascade’s Finance Strategy Template.

With this template, you can easily set up a strategy to manage finances, proactively manage financial risks, and communicate important issues to other key stakeholders in your organization.

💡Best for: Finance managers, CFOs, and other senior planning roles within financial teams.

financial plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE financial roadmap template.

13. Data Strategy Template

Our Data Strategy Template is a proven roadmap framework to plan and execute any outcomes-focused data strategy. Use this template to build a strategic plan roadmap that will enhance how your organization leverages data and analytics in its daily operations.

💡Best for: CTOs, CDOs, and data teams responsible for data strategies or digital transformation.

data plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE data strategy template.

For us, Cascade is solving the problem of how we manage, share, and visualize our corporate and business line strategies, and how we prioritize our work and projects with these strategies in mind. This is allowing us to ensure that the entirety of our company is aware of what we're trying to accomplish and how they plug into those goals.” — Jon K., G2

14. Supply Chain Roadmap Template

Whether you are focused on improving internal processes or increasing profitability, Cascade’s Supply Chain Strategy Template can help you create a comprehensive strategy to get there. Use it to create a strategically aligned supply chain strategy roadmap that drives profitability for both the top and bottom lines of your organization. 

💡Best for: CSOs, department heads, and CEOs who want to have a clear roadmap to optimize their supply chain operations.

supply chain plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE supply chain roadmap template.

15. Innovation Roadmap Template

Looking to make innovation central to your business? Our Innovation Strategy Template can help. This easy-to-use template includes pre-filled focus areas, objectives, and KPIs to kickstart your innovation and continuous improvement initiatives. Start using it to drive growth and value creation in your organization.

💡Best for: Leaders and teams from organizations that want to develop an innovation strategy that drives growth and maintains your competitive edge.

innovation plan template timeline view in cascade

👉 Click here to get your FREE innovation roadmap template.

Certainly, anybody using Excel for strategy or strategy implementation needs to look at what this platform can offer.” — User Review, G2

Create Your Strategic Roadmap With Cascade 🚀

Strategic roadmaps can be powerful tools for planning and monitoring business outcomes.

Don't think of them as visual aids for PowerPoint presentations and planning reports—they're key to guiding teams and stakeholders toward success.

If you're looking for a platform that has all the tools, features, and functionality you need to make the most of your strategic roadmap planning, look no further than Cascade—the No.1 strategy execution platform in the world.

Sign up for a free forever account today or book a 1:1 product tour with one of our Cascade in-house strategy execution experts.

Free Strategy Templates 100+ Free Strategy Templates to Build Your Strategy Discover free templates

FAQs About Strategic Roadmap

What is the difference between a strategic plan and a roadmap? 

A strategic plan is a high-level overview that outlines an organization's goals, vision, and strategies for achieving success, while a roadmap is a more detailed presentation that breaks down the strategies and tactics into actionable steps and timelines.

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