Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Pre-PMF, Karim and Élise replace the dated Gantt that kept slipping with three columns, shared with the 10 first customers.
What the team took away
Sophie stopped asking 'when' once she saw her three requests in Next. The board is reviewed every two weeks and nothing in Later gets a date.
How to run it
Preparation
Invite the product lead and the team leads. Five people is ideal, eight is the ceiling.
Send the list of initiatives under discussion the day before, plus the one goal the next three months serve.
Prepare three columns on the board with a one-line definition under each: Now = started or starting this month, Next = when something in Now finishes, Later = we believe in it, no date.
Agenda
10 min
Frame Read the goal and the column definitions. Say explicitly that Later has no date and that this is the point of the format.
20 min
Fill Now Only what is in progress or has a team assigned this month. If Now has more items than the team has people, something is lying.
25 min
Fill Next Place candidates in order top to bottom. For each one ask: 'what has to finish in Now for this to start?' Write the answer on the sticky.
15 min
Fill Later Everything else you still believe in. No order inside the column. Anything nobody defends in one sentence goes off the board.
15 min
Read and lock Read the three columns aloud as a paragraph. Screenshot it. Agree that the board is re-read every two weeks and that moving something into Now requires moving something out.
5 min
Close Post the image in the channel with the date and the goal on top.
Pitfalls
Do not put dates on Next or Later to reassure a stakeholder. The moment you do, you have a roadmap with worse formatting.
Keep Now short. Three to five items for a single team. The column is a commitment, not a backlog.
Do not order Later. Ordering it creates fake precision about things you have not researched.
Afterwards
Now feeds sprint planning directly. Next items get their discovery started (assumption mapping or research plan) so they are ready when a slot opens. Re-read the board every two weeks in the team sync.