Deciding what to build next, and what to leave alone.

01

Start from the outcome, not the tool

Speed to market, capacity visibility, campaign throughput, content reuse, reporting confidence — name the two or three outcomes leadership will be judged on, and evaluate every candidate project against them.

• Two or three outcomes, stated in business terms with a measure.
• A current baseline, however rough, so improvement is provable.
• Candidate work scored on outcome impact, then on effort.
• A written record of the trade-offs, so decisions survive turnover.

02

Review the current environment before buying anything

Reviewing the current environment routinely finds licensed capability that was never configured, features abandoned after a launch, and integrations half-built. That review often changes the roadmap before any purchase conversation.

• What is licensed against what is actually configured and used.
• Integrations that exist, integrations assumed to exist, and the gaps.
• Manual steps that are workarounds for something already owned.
• Data quality issues that will undermine anything built on top.

03

Sequence so every phase is usable

A roadmap where value only appears at the end loses support long before the end. Break work into phases that each leave a team better off, and put the risky and unfamiliar work early enough to learn from it.

• Each phase has an owner, a measure and a date.
• Foundations first where later phases depend on them.
• Unknowns explored small before being committed to at scale.
• Capacity for enablement in each phase, not saved for the finish.

04

How the pieces fit together

The stack pays off at the seams. Workfront runs the work, AEM holds and delivers content, Target decides what each visitor sees, Marketo executes campaigns, App Builder extends what Adobe does natively, and Data Connect brings Workfront data into Snowflake or your warehouse for reporting.

• Workfront and AEM: briefs, approvals and assets sharing context.
• AEM, Target and Marketo: one content source feeding personalization and campaigns.
• App Builder: custom interfaces and logic inside the Adobe ecosystem.
• Data Connect and Snowflake: governed reporting alongside the rest of your business data.

05

Licensing and packaging fit

We are an Adobe partner and a professional services firm, and those are different jobs. Our advice on packaging is about fit for the work you have described — including telling you when the capability you need is already inside what you own.

• Match capability needs to what your current entitlements cover.
• Understand which features require a different package before designing around them.
• Plan user counts and roles against how work will actually be assigned.
• Time renewal conversations around what the roadmap genuinely needs.

06

Where AI belongs in the plan

AI earns a place on the roadmap where it removes repetitive work inside processes you already trust. We are a Claude shop and use AI in our own delivery daily, which is why our recommendations are specific rather than aspirational.

• Rank AI candidates by time saved, risk and effort.
• Wire AI into existing workflows rather than standing up a pilot beside them.
• Guardrails, human review and clear data boundaries from the start.
• Enablement so teams use it as a habit, not a demo.