It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Every team can do this, whether in a spreadsheet, a Trello board, JIRA epics, Notion pages, or using any other tool. Here’s the concept:
NOW
Certain features you’re going to implement ASAP, for the current release, whatever you consider that to be.
NEXT
Some capabilities you’ll decide are “very important we’re going to do a release before them anyway.” It’s important to keep those in a pile. Not buried in a lengthy document, either. The Product Manager must be able to readily see which items are for “right now” and which ones are for “soon after”.
Having this column handy makes it easy to avoid the “feature-creep” that often plagues release schedules. Is a project running late? Consider sliding some unfinished work into the “next” column. It helps the “now” project to be finished on time.
Get that MVP into customer hands!
NEW (“Later”)
This is one tier later. It’s for items which are too large an investment to be slipped into a minor release, but considered important to the overall roadmap.
The team should have their “eyes on the prize”, the big shiny “2.0” that will come someday. Keeping this visible to the whole team is valuable, so that Design and Development can make their plans with the future in mind.
NEVER (“No”)
Keep track of items which are nixed. Each should have a note of why the decision was made to decline that particular opportunity. These are important so that team members don’t waste excessive time continually revisiting old decisions.
It’s okay to change a decision, but at least keep notes around so that everyone an see why the original decision was made.
