#now, #next, #later: Roadmaps without the Drudgery
Whiteboards, sticky notes, and brainstorms within a team are the fun part. Then comes the hard part: how to capture all those ideas, stack ranked, vetted, and communicate them across your company.
When your company has fewer than 20 people, written roadmaps are overkill. There are a handful of projects, everyone talks at lunch, and you don’t have the runway to plan more than a few months ahead.
When your company is 1,000 + people, you probably need complicated processes and committees for any company-wide initiatives. Aggregating OKRs from teams across Google required numerous PMs working practically full-time for weeks per quarter. There are stakeholders across sales, marketing, support, and more to coordinate with.
Between 20 people and 1,000 people is the sweet spot for a light-weight approach to product roadmaps. We have tried many at Foursquare, but none have stuck — including a few attempts at OKRs. The alignment from OKRs is great, but the measurement overhead is overkill for companies changing quickly and the quarterly cycle is too inflexible.
As we near 200 people, we’ve finally found a system that feels great and is lighter weight than anything we have done before: #now, #next, #later.
