It’s easy to feel like public sector planning has become a game of Whac-A-Mole — new initiatives pop up faster than old ones can be delivered, and everyone’s got a different view of what success looks like. Somewhere between the strategy, the service plan, and the spreadsheet, the story gets lost.

That’s where road-mapping comes in.

At its simplest, road-mapping is a structured way to see the future clearly and agree the route to get there. It’s not a prediction, a plan, or a Gantt chart. It’s a shared picture of what could be, shaped by evidence, technology, and a dose of realism.

In the NHS and wider public sector, this kind of clarity is gold dust. When budgets are shrinking, demand is rising, and digital change feels relentless, being able to say “here’s where we’re going, here’s what it will take, and here’s when we’ll know we’ve arrived” can calm the noise and focus attention.

A good roadmap answers three questions:

1.     What does the future look like? (Your vision)

2.     What will get us there? (Your enablers — people, data, technology, estates, partnerships)

3.     What’s the sequence? (What to do now, next, and later)

At Scale’s version of road-mapping adds one more ingredient: the RRR test — Reward, Risk, and Resource. It’s a practical filter for prioritising projects that genuinely move the dial rather than add to the to-do list.

Done well, a roadmap is not just a document — it’s a conversation starter. It gets clinicians, managers, analysts, and finance leads around the same table talking about the same future. It turns ambition into alignment, and alignment into action.

And yes, it can even be fun. (There are few things more satisfying than seeing a group of senior leaders nodding at the same diagram — even if it’s taken three workshops to get there.)

In the next blog, we’ll unpack how to build your own roadmap, step by step — and share a simple worksheet to help you get started.