Product roadmap

A date-based roadmap ages badly: as soon as a priority shifts, the calendar stops adding up and needs rewriting, and meanwhile everyone treats commitments that are no longer true as settled. Ordering the roadmap by horizon instead of by date communicates what actually matters, what comes first and what comes after, without promising an exact day that almost never holds.

This board places each initiative by its horizon, from ideas to validate to long-term bets, so the team and anyone asking can see priorities at a glance. It suits a product manager who needs to align several teams and a founder who wants a clear direction without locking it into dates.

Now, next and later

An initiative starts as an idea, gets validated and climbs horizons as its moment approaches. These are the columns and their sample tasks.

Ideas

The place for what is not decided yet: noted, debated and validated before committing to anything.

• Sample idea to validate

Now

What the team is building this quarter, the real focus of the moment.

• Initiative in progress this quarter

Next

What starts as soon as the current work frees up, already decided but not begun.

• What comes after the current work

Later

The longer-term bets, important but with no near date.

• Long-term bet

How it works in Foco

On import, Foco creates the "Roadmap" job as a Kanban board with these four horizon columns. Each initiative is a card you drag from one column to another as it rises in priority: on desktop with drag and drop, and on mobile by switching between each column's tabs.

Assign each initiative to whoever leads it, and when you manage several products or areas, Panorama shows initiatives from all your jobs at once, each in its job's color, so you get the overall picture without opening each board.