What I’m going to call NSSN is a lightweight roadmap and planning system I’ve used informally for a while. It works ok as a todo list, but I think it’s also a good approach to communicating a roadmap to customers/consumers. NSSN stands for the four priority buckets, Now, Soon, Someday, and Never. (I started out calling Sometime Later, but like the symmetry of another S.)

Each bucket has a particular meaning and priority, which should be fairly obvious from the name, but maybe a little explanation is appropriate. There can be multiple items within each category, and they should be roughly, flexibly sorted. Priorities change over time, so it’s not worth sweating the details. The key point to remember is that NSSN categorizes based on release dates, not necessarily what’s happening at your desk. On to NSSN.

Now - Things you are doing right now because you should have done them yesterday. Things like security fixes. Ideally, you’d like this category to be empty, because you’re focusing your efforts on the coming soon stuff. Even if you’re currently working on a feature, something new may pop up, so it’s not really a Now thing. The value of this category is to communicate that you are aware of a critical issue, have correctly prioritized it right up at the top, and the fix is only moments away.

Soon - What’s coming in the next release. Or at least what you hope to include in the next release. The top of this list is is where your currently scheduled tasks belong. Towards the bottom, you may include a few items for the release after, depending on release frequency. In general, you are firmly committed to delivering these features in a timeframe where asking the customer to wait is reasonable, most likely because the work or planning is already underway.

Someday - Things you would like to do but just don’t have the time for and things that are planned for a distant release. Whether you are solidly committed to delivering them or not doesn’t really matter, because if the delivery date is far off, there’s no such thing as a solid commitment. You can express confidence by ordering items in this list. Don’t let this list get too long. Be realistic and push things to Never if Someday is never going to arrive. If a feature is languishing in Someday for too long without getting promoted to Soon, it’s probably time for it to move in the other direction.

Never - Whatever you just aren’t going to do, for whatever reason. This could be requests that don’t fit with your goals or features that are so large you can’t see ever getting to them. It’s good to say no. In theory, this list could be the longest because it will only ever grow and you’re explicitly not trying to work through it.

Nothing is cast in stone. Items can move between lists. The goal is to communicate the big picture. To that end, it’s also important to clarify that while Now, Soon, and Someday do specify a strict ordering, there’s lots of flexibility within each list. Customers should expect to see all of the Soon features before anything from Someday, but that says nothing about whether Someday feature #1 will be out before or after Someday feature #2. You probably shouldn’t update the list more than once or twice a release, or you’re overworking it.