Agile Product Roadmap (Now, Next, Later)

About Agile Product Roadmap (Now, Next, Later) template

This is a Themes-based Product Roadmap in a modified "Now, Next, Later" form made to assist teams who transform to a Product Operating Model to build Outcomes-based High integrity Product Roadmaps because it is so different from what those teams are used to see and use as Product Roadmaps. This Roadmap has prefixes "probably", "maybe" in addition to "Never", "Next", "Later" to emphasize its agility nature: if something is on Agile Roadmap it doesn't mean that it will be eventually delivered to the customers. It's absolutely not!

How to use Agile Product Roadmap

1. Start with the "Now" section. Add some Themes (hard, real customers/users/company problems that your team is working this quarter/month) sticky notes to a "To Do" section of "Now." Themes must be based on (i.e., exist there because of, prioritized, and split among the existing teams) a Product Strategy created by Product Leaders. "Now, Next, Later" sections represent Product Strategy prioritization. The "Now" section split by Product Teams represents teams topology. Example of Theme: "Signup completion rate is about 20%, which is too low."

2. Move some of Themes from "Now" to "Next" and "Later" sections to init Product Roadmap prioritization (or simply create new Themes in those sections).

3. Change Themes in a "To Do" list of "Now" section to OKR's (Objectives & Key Results). Example of OKR: "Increase signup completion rate from 20% to 50%."

4. Move sticky notes from "To Do" to "Discovery / Delivery" and then to "Delivered" or to "Next" or to "Later" or even to "Never". Working in a Product Operating Model, we do Product Discovery and Product Delivery. It may happen that the team discovers that it is very expensive for a company to solve this problem. And that's why this problem (an OKR) will get to "Never" instead of "Delivered."

5. Use "Delivered" section to keep sticky notes there when you start a new quarter/month - so you can see what you've recently done. This helps to change and track the course of the Product Strategy.

6. Keep items in the "Never" section. Once a sticky note gets to a "Never" section we need some document that explains the story behind that sticky note: what was Discovered that lead to a conclusion that our company Product Leaders (along with the Product Teams) decided not to deliver a solution to that problem (at least for now).