AI strategy and roadmap: a 12-month plan tying AI investment to business goals
A 12-month plan that ties AI investment to business goals, with budgets, owners and an order of work.
Typical balance
80 human : 20 AI
Human-led. Varies by engagement.
Your people keep workshops with leadership to set goals and limits, trade-offs between speed, cost and risk and a narrative your board can follow.
AI takes on market and competitor scanning, scenario and cost modelling and drafting and versioning the plan.
What is AI strategy and roadmap?
An AI strategy and roadmap is a 12-month plan that ties AI investment to specific business goals, with a budget, a named owner for each initiative and an order of work. It answers what to build, buy or partner on, in what sequence, and how you will know it is working.
Also known as AI roadmap, AI transformation strategy, enterprise AI strategy and AI adoption plan
Who needs AI strategy and roadmap?
Leadership teams whose AI activity has spread across departments without a shared plan, and companies preparing to make a significant AI investment who want to make it once.
A good fit when: pilots are scattered across teams and there is no shared plan.
How AI strategy and roadmap works
Goals
Workshops with leadership to agree what AI should do for the business and where the limits are.
Options
We model build, buy and partner options for each opportunity, with costs and risks.
Sequence
Initiatives are ordered by value and dependency, so early work sets up later work.
Commit
You get a roadmap your board can follow, and your leadership signs off each quarter's priorities.
What you get
- 12-month roadmap with quarterly milestones
- Build, buy or partner recommendations
- Budget and return model
- Risk register
How long does AI strategy and roadmap take?
Typically three to five weeks.
Common questions about AI strategy and roadmap
How is an AI strategy different from a digital strategy?
An AI strategy has to plan for people as much as technology, because AI changes what jobs involve. A good one says which decisions stay with people and how teams will be trained, not only which tools to adopt.
How often should an AI roadmap be updated?
Quarterly. Models, prices and regulations are changing fast enough that a plan left alone for a year will have drifted from reality.
Can a small business use an AI roadmap?
Yes. The format scales down: for a small team it might cover three initiatives instead of fifteen, but the discipline of deciding the order and the owner is just as useful.
