My Take on Tranisitioning to Now, Next, Later Roadmapping

“What should be my timelines for Now, Next, Later?”

I’m currently working with a client, and we’ve implemented the Now, Next, Later roadmap format, and one of the key questions that I’ve been asked is about what the timelines should be for this.

I’m sure a bunch of you want to use the Now, Next, Later format — to help you to move away from timelines. However, you might have a transition phase where people need to understand how this is working in practise.

So hopefully this will help you to make that transition.

The definitions for Now, Next, Later out there are all pretty similar..

Now: In progress, you’re actively working on it, you have details and specific tactics here.

Next: You know you’ll pick this up once you’ve finished your now work. You might be breaking these topics down and defining exactly what they look like.

Later: These are more likely to be high-level opportunities that you know are a priority in the near enough future.

To help people transition to this format I usually look at it as..

Now: Anything w’ere actively working on (either in code or getting ready to develop). I love just in time development, so for me — that usually looks like the current month / 6 weeks — but if you’re working on bigger initiatives / are more prepared further out, then it could be the next 3 months.

Next: Anything that we definitely know that we’ll pick up once our current load has cleared. It’s likely we know what these items / opportunities are, but you haven’t defined the detail within them. This usually looks like 6 weeks — 4–6 months.

This is super dependent on the size of the work as to how far ahead we might be looking.

Later: Any key opportunities we definitely know we need to prioritise and start thinking about. They might be big topics / outcomes we want to focus on, that we’re not yet ready to tackle / really need to break them down to the next level of detail.

This time span is usually 4–6 months+ depending on the scope of the work.

The key for Later for me, is that we only list out anything that really is a priority here — it shouldn’t be a catch all bucket for anything leftover.

You’ll still be ruthless on what even makes it into this category.

Discovery: We also use a discovery section in this company, for anything that has come up that we’re not sure whether we think is a good enough opportunity to make next or later — this allows us to do a quick bit of analysis and understanding before deciding whether a topic should make the roadmap or be left off.

Some other key tips..

The benefits of Now, Next, Later — is that it is less timeline focussed, and allows a change in view from crystal clear, to a little more hazy over time.

This should mean that you’re not strict on timelines, but can use rough guidelines to help you to think about what makes sense as you implement this.

I also encourage you to be ruthless and not to add too much to the roadmap, or look too far in advance in detail. We all know that priorities have the tendency to change all of the time — so the magic is in planning just enough to have confidence and a view of where you’re trying to get to, but making sure that as little effort as possible is wasted.

PS. If you want any details on Now, Next, Later — how to implement this, what it means etc. You can find a great article here.