Pursuing Fit for Purpose: An Industry Practioner's Experience With Roadmapping

Since 2006, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) Technology Innovation (TI) Office has applied roadmapping processes to help articulate the federal wholesale electric utility's technology research agenda. The TI Office team has evolved its tools, templates, and process steps considerably over the years in response to implementation challenges, shortcomings in deliverables derived from the process, and maturation opportunities enabled by data management and visualization software. Practioners within the TI Office have sustained their commitment to roadmapping during an era of significant evolution of the practice within industry and academia. The practice came out of product manufacturing environments in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Increasingly since the early 2000s, roadmapping has been applied outside this traditional realm, requiring trial, iteration, and customization of processes, tools, and deliverables to meet different requirements. The TI Office's use of roadmapping is one nontraditional variant because the agency is not in the business of generating profits by creating products in response to market demands. Instead, the TI Office has used roadmapping to communicate the agency's technology research, development, and demonstration agenda to the broader community-national laboratories, universities, manufacturers, etc.-so these external organizations can respond with proposals delivering products with the desired technology characteristics. These products, in turn, enable BPA to continue to fulfill its public service mission as an electric utility and government entity in providing safe, cost-effective, and reliable electricity throughout the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

Automated summary

Since 2006, the Bonneville Power Administration's Technology Innovation Office has been using roadmapping processes to define the federal wholesale electric utility's technology research agenda. The office has made significant improvements to its tools, templates, and processes in response to challenges and opportunities brought by data management and visualization software.