Meeting canvases · Prioritise
Now Next Later roadmap: plan by confidence, not dates
A Now Next Later roadmap sorts a team’s work into three horizons, what it is doing now, what comes next and what it may tackle later, instead of promising a date for each item. Detail and certainty fall from left to right, so the plan can change as the team learns without breaking promises.
Troopa builds the roadmap during your call on Teams, Zoom or Google Meet. Say “Hi Troopa, let’s do a now next later roadmap for the reporting product”, and each item goes into Now, Next or Later as the room places it, ready to present to the people who want dates.
14 days free, no card. Then $15 per seat, per month. Cancel any time. Last checked against the product on 21 October 2026.
Why roadmaps stop being believed
- Leadership asks for dates, the team makes some up, and every one of them slips.
- Later becomes a dumping ground where requests go to be forgotten.
- The columns quietly turn back into quarters, and the roadmap is a timeline again.
- Now holds twelve things, so nothing in it is really now.
- The cards are features someone asked for, not problems anyone has agreed to solve.
- The roadmap is updated in a tool after the meeting, and the people in the meeting never see what changed.
How to build a Now Next Later roadmap with Troopa
Step 1: Open the roadmap
Say “Hi Troopa, let’s do a now next later roadmap for the reporting product”. In a planning meeting, Troopa offers one when the talk turns to what comes after this quarter.
Step 2: Place items by talking
Each item goes into Now, Next or Later as the room decides; say “that’s next, not now” and it moves.
Step 3: Rearrange it together
Drag items between columns on the card while everyone watches, which is when a roadmap meeting does its best work.
Step 4: Keep real dates real
Where a date truly is fixed, an audit, a contract or an event, put it on a separate Gantt chart, and leave everything else undated.
Step 5: Show the people who want dates
Present the roadmap to stakeholders as it stands, then download it as a picture, a PDF or Excel for the people who were not there.
A worked example: a quarterly roadmap review
A software company’s reporting team reviews its roadmap with sales and customer success on Microsoft Teams. Mo, the product manager, runs it with Troopa open.
- Mo“Hi Troopa, let’s do a now next later roadmap for the reporting product.”
- Jas“Now is scheduled report emails, and the dashboards loading faster. Both are in build.”
- Ruth“Sales keeps losing deals for want of a custom report builder.”
- Mo“That’s next, not now. We still need to learn what “custom” means to them.”
- Jas“Forecasting is later. We don’t have the data for it yet.”
- Ruth“Can I tell customers when the report builder ships?”
- Mo“Tell them it’s next, and that we’ll have a date once discovery is done.”
Now Next Later roadmaps beyond product teams
Software and SaaS
The quarterly product roadmap review with sales and customer success, who want dates: the roadmap shows what is certain and what is not, and the conversation is about problems, not promises.
Fintech and regulated firms
Audit and compliance deadlines are real dates, so they sit on a timeline of their own; everything else moves by horizon, as confidence grows.
Public sector digital services
A service roadmap published openly and revised regularly, as GOV.UK expects, which is far easier to keep honest as horizons than as a list of dates.
Agencies with retained clients
This month’s work is Now, next month’s options are Next, and the pool of ideas is Later, so the agency never promises dates for work the client has not yet approved.
Internal IT and data teams
Showing the rest of the business what is coming without committing to dates, where Later is the honest answer to “we heard your request”.
Education technology
A learning platform’s roadmap fitted around the academic year: the start of term is a real date, and the rest of the work moves by horizon.
A Now Next Later roadmap template
It is an outcome-based roadmap, so write each card as a problem or an opportunity, not a feature, and link it to an objective. Agree how many items Now may hold before anything new can enter it.
Roadmap: [product or team] Serves: [vision or objectives] Owner: [name] Last updated: [date] Reviewed: [every month or quarter] NOW (in progress: understood, staffed) - [problem or opportunity] · [objective] · [owner] · [how we will measure it] NEXT (understood, being explored) - [problem or opportunity] · [objective] · [what we need to learn] LATER (bets: low confidence, little detail) - [problem or opportunity] · [why it might matter] Rules: Now holds at most [n] items; one in, one out Real dates (audits, contracts, events): [kept on the timeline beside it]
Questions for the roadmap planning meeting
- What problem are we solving, and for whom?
- Which objective does this move, and how will we know it did?
- What would we need to learn to move this from Later to Next?
- Is this date real, or is it there to make someone comfortable?
- What are we deliberately not doing, and have we said so?
- What has changed since the last review, and why?
Questions about Now Next Later roadmaps
What goes in each column of a Now Next Later roadmap?
Now holds what the team is building or about to build: understood, staffed and specific. Next holds problems the team understands and is exploring. Later holds bets with low confidence and little detail, which may change or disappear as the team learns.
Should a Now Next Later roadmap have dates?
Mostly not. It is a plan without dates for most items, which is the point: it promises an order, not a calendar. Where a date is genuinely fixed, such as an audit, a contract or an event, show it, ideally on a timeline beside the roadmap, and leave the rest undated.
Who invented the Now Next Later roadmap?
It is credited to Janna Bastow, who created the Now-Next-Later roadmap with Simon Cast at ProdPad in 2012; the first sketch was labelled Current, Near term and Future. A Thoughtworks team published a backlog in Now, Next and Later columns the same year.ProdPad, Now-Next-Later roadmap (glossary) →Thoughtworks, Now, next and later (2012) →
What is the difference between a Now Next Later roadmap and a timeline roadmap?
A timeline roadmap puts each item on a date, which suits work with fixed deadlines. A Now Next Later roadmap puts each item in a horizon, which suits work whose size and shape will change as the team learns, and stops dates being invented to fill the chart.
How often should you review a roadmap?
Regularly, and at least every quarter, plus whenever the team learns something that changes it. GOV.UK’s Service Manual expects roadmaps to change as the team learns, which is why the horizons get less detailed the further out they are.GOV.UK Service Manual, Developing a roadmap →
How many items should be in Now?
Only as many as the team is actually working on, which is usually a handful. A Now column with a dozen items is a wish list; agreeing a limit, one in and one out, keeps it honest.
Sources
- ProdPad, Now-Next-Later roadmap (glossary)
- Thoughtworks, Now, next and later (2012)
- GOV.UK Service Manual, Developing a roadmap
Read on 15 October 2026, by the people who make Troopa.
Try it in your next meeting
Install Troopa on your Mac, Windows PC or Ubuntu computer, join your call on Teams, Zoom or Google Meet as you always do, and ask: “Hi Troopa, let’s do a now next later roadmap for the reporting product.”
14 days free, no card. Then $15 per seat, per month. Cancel any time.