Roadmap
A Now / Next / Later roadmap built from your actual epics, with the reason each item sits where it does. Paste them or pull them from Jira. The reasons are the point: a roadmap nobody can argue with is a roadmap nobody believes.
- Asks for
- Your epics — pasted, or from a connected Jira project
- What the next quarter or two is for
- Anything fixed: a date you have committed to, a dependency you cannot move
- Gives back
- Now, Next and Later, with each item placed and the reason given
- Dependencies made visible, including the ones that force an order
- What is being deliberately left out, and why
- Where your stated outcome and your order disagree
- Plan
- Free
- Use next
- Prioritisation, Capacity planner, OKRs, Epic
What it gives you
Now CSV import — unblocks everything else; 31% of trials stall without it. Ranking on import — the reason to import at all. Pairs with the above. Next Jira read-only sync — wanted by 2 of 10 trials. Waits on import shipping. Later Team permissions — no evidence of demand from people working alone. Disagreement: the quarter’s objective is activation, but two Now items serve retention. One of the two is in the wrong column.
How it works
A roadmap with dates on it is a promise about work nobody has started, and it is wrong by the second month. Now / Next / Later says the same thing honestly: this is what we are doing, this is what follows if nothing changes, this is the direction. The cost of that honesty is that you have to explain the order, which is exactly the conversation a dated roadmap lets you avoid.
So every item carries its reason — what it depends on, what it unblocks, which outcome it serves, what happens if it waits. That turns the roadmap into something a stakeholder can disagree with specifically rather than generally, and a specific disagreement is a decision you can make in a meeting instead of a mood you absorb afterwards.
From Jira it reads the epics as they are, including the ones nobody has touched since April. That tends to be the useful part: a roadmap built from the real board shows you what is actually in flight next to what has been Next for three quarters.
Who it is for
A PM who has to show a roadmap to people outside the team and would rather defend an order than a set of dates.
Where it stops
It arranges and explains; it does not decide the strategy. If the objective for the quarter is vague, the roadmap will be a tidy arrangement of a vague quarter — and it will say where the order and the stated objective disagree, which is usually the signal to go back a step.
Questions people ask
Why Now / Next / Later instead of dates?
Because dates on unstarted work are fiction that everybody treats as a commitment. Now / Next / Later communicates the same order without promising a month, and it moves the conversation to what matters: whether the order is right. The trade is that you have to be able to explain the order, which is why every item here carries its reason — without those it is just three columns of wishes.
Can it build the roadmap from Jira?
Yes, from a connected project: it reads the epics as they exist, including the stale ones. That is often the most useful output of the first run — seeing what is genuinely in flight alongside the four epics that have been Next since the spring. You can also just paste a list, which works identically; the connection saves the copying, not the thinking.
What does it do when the order contradicts the objective?
It says so, naming the items. If the quarter is about activation and two of the three Now items serve retention, that is reported as a disagreement rather than smoothed over, because it usually means either the objective or the order was decided without the other in the room. Which of the two to change is yours — the useful part is that the conflict is visible before the roadmap is presented.
Run it on your own work
Roadmap needs an account, because it writes against what you give it and remembers what you have told it before. It runs on the Free plan. Or see what the plans cost first.