Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
A short view of the major subjects a company sets itself over a horizon, ordered by degree of commitment rather than by date. A subject's absence from it counts as out of scope for the current horizon.
Full definition
In ordinary usage, the word designates a dated delivery plan: features spread over months or quarters, read as a calendar of commitments. The format licenses two readings nobody separates — what the team will do, and when it will do it.
In the articles on this blog, the word designates the Now / Next / Later format and nothing else: Now for committed work, with an identified problem, a promise of value and success indicators; Next for serious candidates, each with its condition for moving to commitment; Later for what stays possible without being a priority, each with its trigger for re-evaluation. Three bounds complete the format: the roadmap fits on one page, the number of slots in each column is set by the team's real capacity, and anything appearing in no column is out of scope — that last effect, the "implicit No", has no column of its own.
Field usage diverges on one precise point: it keeps the three-column format and abandons the limit on slots. An NNL roadmap whose columns lengthen freely is an inventory distributed into three piles.
Finally, the word splits according to recipient. The internal roadmap can carry hypotheses, limits, reasons for non-priority and open debates; the customer roadmap is a separate document, written by hand from the first.
Usage in the field
Quarterly prioritization review, arbitration between a commercial request and a strategic subject, preparing a product committee, answering a customer who asks what is planned, sizing a product team's load.
Synonyms and variants
NNL · Now / Next / Later · "direction map" to stress the function · "dated roadmap" or "calendar roadmap" for the variant the NNL format replaces · "internal roadmap" and "customer roadmap" for the two distinct documents.
Not to be confused with
- Backlog — the collective space of subjects several people are ready to work on together; it organizes the work on what the roadmap has already selected.
- Strategy — the work of understanding and arbitration that chooses which battles to fight; the roadmap is its visible translation.
- Arbitration — a choice that designates a priority and names what is sacrificed to it; the roadmap displays it, once taken elsewhere.
- Commando mode — sacrosanct, bounded working time, held outside the roadmap and reserved for subjects whose value is already known.
- Plan — a commitment to release dates; the NNL roadmap classifies on a degree of certainty.
- Product inventory — a census of everything the company could do; the roadmap retains a number of slots set in advance.
Examples
A B2B administrative-management SaaS holds a Now with two subjects — a simplified tax export, an onboarding irritant — a Next with two candidates, a Later with three possibles, and leaves out of the columns the interface redesign, a small customer's requests and general AI experimentation.
A subject moving from Next to Now hasn't caught up on a delay: its condition for moving is met.
Ambiguities / debates
The costliest ambiguity is that of the recipient: a salesperson or a customer who asks for "the roadmap" almost always asks for dates, that is, the ordinary acceptation, while the product team answers in the NNL acceptation. Both leave believing they understood each other.
A second wobble, this one internal: the status of Later. A column of subjects set aside but kept visible for some, an antechamber to Next for others — the difference decides whether the trigger for re-evaluation has to be written down.