2 Methodology This Opportunity Assessment focuses on the interconnected problems of network visibility and hosting capacity. This report is the manifestation of a project that has involved significant iteration, feedback, commentary and thought from the authors along with a broader member of stakeholders, who are largely (though not entirely) represented by the Project Steering Committee and the Industry Reference Group (IRG). The three main outputs of this project are a research roadmap, an impact framework, and a set of key performance indicators to track progress within this theme during the remainder of the RACE for 2030 CRC. This section describes the roadmap for developing the roadmap and the other outputs.
Figure 2-1 -- A Roadmap to Develop a Research Roadmap
The research roadmap as such is a list of milestones – specific deliverables we recommend be completed in the next three, five, or ten years to address a set of research questions and research priorities. To arrive at these research questions and priorities, we started by scanning the landscape and understanding the problem space. We conducted a series of more than twenty-five interviews with industry stakeholders and held a dedicated workshop with the IRG to identify and clarify industry barriers. We also conducted a thorough review of existing industry capability – and that review is documented in the next section of this report. By combining this review of industry capability with stakeholder interviews and workshops, we developed an exhaustive list of barriers. To address these barriers, we developed a long list of research questions, that we summarised to a shorter list of twelve. We workshopped these research questions with the project steering committee, to better understand key industry and research priorities. The six identified research priorities form the essential framing element of the roadmap. The roadmap, along with a couple of antecedent impact frameworks, were used to design an impact framework for this topic. The framework includes short- and medium-term outcomes, against which a list of key performance indicators, and metrics to measure them, were developed. 29
