What is NOW-NEXT-LATER roadmap?
Last updated: December 01, 2025 Read in fullscreen view
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What is a Now/Next/Later roadmap?
The Now/Next/Later roadmap is a product management tool that organizes work into three-time horizons, from immediate to long term, starting with the most urgent problems to solve. This roadmap format conveys the overall product vision, as each element of work is tied back to a business objective.
Now”, “Next”, “Later” is a great flexible framework that can be applied to many different types of situations or initiatives.
The core benefit of roadmapping is to visualize your business strategy, making it easier to communicate with all stakeholders and align to business outcomes. Designing your roadmap to be visually attractive is key for engagement and the level of buy-in from stakeholders.
You should use the Now Next Later view when you need a high-level way to visualize and communicate your product plans. Since this visualization is super easy to understand and does not offer too many details it is the perfect view to use when you want to communicate with large groups of people – like a company-wide meeting or a webinar.
Divide your items into one of 3 time buckets – Now, Next and Later. Just like it sounds, you should put your high priority items in Now, and those that are a bit less important in Next. Later items are pushed off until they become a priority. Do not add too many details to Next and Later items as the purpose of this view is to provide a high-level overview of the company’s current priorities.
This view is great for external audiences or internal ones that do not usually get to see the product roadmap as it offers a general perspective on the product’s upcoming objectives.
Remember to keep your roadmap as realistic as possible. Don’t commit to deadlines you can’t meet and keep implementation details away from your roadmap.
When to use this roadmap?
Now-Next-Later Roadmap is good for
- Communicating with large audiences (e.g. an All-Hands or Town Hall meeting). Simple, streamlined layout reduces noise and is easy for everyone to understand.
- Communicating broad plans without committing your team to specific deadlines.
We do not recommend Now-Next-Later Roadmap for
- Communicating with executives. If your audience needs any kind of detail – deadlines, teams, or company objectives, for example, consider an Objectives timeline roadmap.
- Communicating within the Product organization. Hopefully, your Product team already understands what’s being worked on now, next and later! Consider a Sprint planning roadmap.
Conclusion
Now Next Later is a professional and modern template that contains seven stylish and fully editable slides. If necessary, you can change all elements of the slide in accordance with your corporate requirements. This template will be useful for project managers, startups, company leaders. Now Next Later template will seamlessly complement your presentations and will be a great addition to your collection of professional presentations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is roadmap same as timeline?
- Roadmap: A roadmap is a document that communicates the goals that the company (or product) is aiming for.
- Timeline: A timeline is a visual that sequences chronological events with firm start and end dates. Deadline: A deadline is a set due date for a project or event.
How do you create a now next later roadmap?
- Build Roadmaps. Connect your backlog with always up-to-date and easy-to-share roadmaps.
- Prioritize Features. Know what to build next based on user insights and company priorities.
- Centralize Feedback. Capture and collect all your customer feedback in one place.
- Validate Ideas.
What is difference between Output and Outcome?
Both outputs and outcomes are the result of the project. Therefore, we usually use these words interchangeably. However, there are distinct differences between output and outcome. Below are some key differences:
- Output is linked to activities. Outcome is linked to objectives.
- The outputs are the actions or items that contribute to achieving an outcome.
- Outputs are the steps an organization or business takes to reach a desired outcome.
- Outputs are achieved immediately. Outcomes are not achieved right after the implementation of activities or projects/programs.
What is an outcome based roadmap?
An outcome-driven roadmap provides context for specific items on the roadmap and their prioritization while simultaneously ensuring that the product strategy is both communicated and consistently pursued. Everything is there for a reason, the reason is well understood, and the goal is measurable.
Why "Now, Next, Later" roadmaps are better for OKRs
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are meant to be guideposts and benchmarks for the company at large, so you know where you are aiming and how well you are getting there.
Initiatives are the actions you are actually taking to achieve results and hit goals. Initiatives are the game plan. These are items you’ve spelled out on the Now/Next/Later roadmap. This is why NNL are better for OKRs. Your business objectives are baked into the product roadmap, so your team works toward outcomes – not just output.
Does measuring outputs help or hinder the outcome?
With outputs, there are a couple of things to note. There is no competition between outcomes and outputs, so they both go towards the same thing. This is important because most outputs are not tightly defined. An input that helps to reach the desired outcome might seem insignificant, but may not actually be crucial if it is not captured in the outcome document. If you measure outputs, you must include them in the outcome document, or risk looking less important, so there’s no incentive for people to improve your output. A measuring mechanism with no visibility makes the outputs less important because they’re not included in the outcome document, and people will forget about them, not noticing if they improved. On the other hand, measuring outputs can create the same issue.
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