What a product team is building now, next and later, by theme, for customers and colleagues.
Customers read a roadmap with dates as a list of promises. Here is another way to lay one out: sorted into Now, Next and Later, grouped by theme, with a status on every item and no date on anything unshipped. The product is made up. Take the structure and bring your own plans.
Who it's for
Product managers and founders who get asked "when is that coming?" by customers, sales and support, and want to answer once. Customers read it to decide whether to wait for a feature. Sales reads it and stops promising quarters.
This is the version for people outside the team. Sprints, estimates and owners stay in whatever tool your engineers use. A page can't take votes or comments, so tell readers how to send requests. The example says to reply to the email the link came in.
What a good one contains
- Three horizons, defined. Now is being built or tested today. Next is scoped or designed, and starts when a Now item ships. Later is a problem you mean to solve. The example prints them above the columns.
- Themes named for what the customer gets. "Talking to customers" and "Knowing your numbers" are two of the four. Buttons filter the page to one of them.
- A problem under every name. "Core charges go unclaimed when nobody remembers which box went back" tells an owner whether the item is for them. A feature name alone doesn't.
- A status in plain words. In testing with 12 shops, Building, Designed, Scoping, Exploring. One item says "Waiting on two-way texting", which explains its place better than a quarter would.
- An empty cell left empty. Nothing is in build under "Knowing your numbers", and the cell says so.
- What shipped, with its date. Past releases can carry dates safely, and two recent ones prove the Now column does empty.
- What moved, and what you won't build. Built-in bookkeeping sits under "Not planned", with its reason. Written down once, a no stops being asked every month.
Why not a calendar
Inside a team, a date is an estimate and everyone knows it. Outside, it becomes a commitment: a customer plans a hire around it, and a salesperson writes it into a deal. When it slips, you lose the trust you earned by sharing the roadmap. Order is something you can stand behind: you do know what you're building today and what comes next.
Put the dates on the page itself. The example says when it was last updated and that it's revised every two months. Keep to that, replace the page under the same link, and say what moved each time.
How to send it
As an open link. Customers forward it to the colleague who asked for a feature, and sales sends it to prospects. Write it knowing a competitor will read it too.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
