Notes
Tuesday, December 09, 2025

The Now-Next-Later Roadmap: Why Timelines Are Killing Your Strategy

Most roadmaps are lies. We organize them by quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) to make stakeholders feel comfortable, but we create a trap for ourselves in the process.

The moment you put a feature in the "Q3" column, your stakeholders don't see a plan. They see a promise.

When Q3 arrives and you're still finishing Q2 work because of "unforeseen complexity" (which is always foreseen, just ignored), you haven't just delayed a feature. You've broken trust. The conversation shifts from value to deadlines, and you spend the rest of the year apologizing rather than building.

The Core Insight

You need to decouple sequence from time.

Switching to a Now-Next-Later roadmap isn't about being vague or avoiding accountability. It's about being honest regarding uncertainty. The further out you look, the less you know. Your roadmap should reflect that reality, not hide it behind arbitrary calendar dates.

This framework shifts the conversation from "When will this ship?" to "Why is this the most important thing to do next?"

The Breakdown

Here is how to structure the buckets so they actually work:

  • Now (Focus: Execution)
    These are items currently in development or starting immediately. The specs are written, the designs are ready, and you understand the complexity. Timeframe: ~4-6 weeks.
  • Next (Focus: Discovery)
    You know what the problems are, and you're actively validating solutions. You have high confidence these will happen, but the specific scope is still flexible. Timeframe: ~1-3 months.
  • Later (Focus: Strategy)
    These are problems you want to solve eventually. They align with your vision, but you haven't started discovery. Crucially, many things in this bucket might never happen if priorities change—and that is a feature, not a bug.
"Later" is not a holding pen for bad ideas. It's a strategic queue for future opportunities.

The Bottom Line

The magic of this approach is in the flexibility. When a new urgent priority lands on your desk, you don't have to explain why the Q3 release is slipping. You simply slot the new item into "Next" and bump something else to "Later."

You're rearranging buckets, not breaking promises. That's not failure—that's good product management.

Sources & Further Reading: