Now Next Later vs Quarterly Roadmap: Choosing the Right Format
This skill teaches you how to evaluate when a Now-Next-Later roadmap outperforms traditional date-based or quarterly roadmaps, and how to transition between formats without losing alignment or stakeholder confidence.
Choose a Now-Next-Later roadmap when your team operates in environments with high uncertainty, frequent reprioritization, or outcome-focused cultures. Choose quarterly or timeline roadmaps when you have hard external deadlines, regulatory compliance dates, or stakeholders who require date-level commitments. Many teams run a hybrid, using Now-Next-Later internally while translating to timeline views for executive or customer-facing communication.
Outcome: You produce a documented recommendation for which roadmap format fits your team's context, along with a transition plan if you are switching formats, so your organization moves to a format that matches its actual planning certainty.
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of the Now-Next-Later Framework and its three horizons
- Experience with at least one traditional roadmap format (Gantt chart, quarterly plan, or timeline roadmap)
- Familiarity with product discovery and delivery workflows
Overview
Every product team eventually faces a format question: should the roadmap show dates and quarters, or should it organize work by priority horizons like Now, Next, and Later? The answer is not a matter of preference. It depends on how much uncertainty your team manages, how often priorities shift, what your stakeholders need to see, and whether your delivery cadence is predictable enough to anchor to calendar dates. Getting this choice wrong creates a cascade of problems. A timeline roadmap in a high-uncertainty environment turns into a fiction that erodes trust every time dates slip. A Now-Next-Later roadmap in a compliance-driven organization can frustrate stakeholders who genuinely need calendar commitments to coordinate their own work.
This skill, part of the Now-Next-Later Framework, gives you a structured way to evaluate the now next later vs quarterly roadmap decision rather than defaulting to whatever your last company used. You will assess your environment across five dimensions: planning certainty, stakeholder expectations, delivery cadence, external dependencies, and organizational culture. The output is a written recommendation document that captures your reasoning, identifies which format to use (or whether a hybrid is the right answer), and outlines a transition plan if you are moving from one format to another.
The comparison is not binary. Many mature product organizations run a Now-Next-Later view for internal planning and discovery, then translate selected commitments into quarterly or timeline views for external communication. This skill covers that hybrid pattern as well, including how to set up the translation layer so the two views stay synchronized. The concrete artifact you will produce is a Format Decision Worksheet: a one-page document that records your assessment scores, your chosen format, the rationale, and the specific actions needed to implement or transition.
How It Works
The core insight behind comparing roadmap formats is that each format encodes a different relationship between time and certainty. A quarterly roadmap says "we will deliver X in Q3." A Gantt-style timeline roadmap says "we will deliver X by August 15." A Now-Next-Later roadmap says "we are working on X now, planning Y next, and considering Z later." These are fundamentally different promises, and each promise is appropriate in different contexts.
Timeline and quarterly roadmaps work well when three conditions hold simultaneously: delivery timelines are reasonably predictable (the team has shipped enough similar work to estimate accurately), external coordination requires date commitments (other teams, partners, or customers need to plan around your releases), and scope is relatively stable (priorities do not shift dramatically quarter to quarter). When all three conditions hold, the precision of dates adds value. When any one breaks down, dates become a source of organizational friction rather than clarity.
The Now-Next-Later Framework works well under different conditions: when the team is exploring new problem spaces where scope is uncertain, when priorities shift frequently due to market feedback or strategic pivots, and when the organization values outcomes over output. By replacing date commitments with sequence commitments, Now-Next-Later absorbs change without requiring the roadmap to be redrawn. Moving an item from Next to Now does not break a cascade of date dependencies the way moving a Gantt bar does.
The five assessment dimensions you will score are designed to surface which set of conditions your team actually faces. Planning Certainty measures how accurately you can predict delivery timelines. Stakeholder Expectations captures what your key audiences actually need to see (dates, sequences, or outcomes). Delivery Cadence measures how predictable your shipping rhythm is. External Dependencies captures whether other teams or customers need date-level coordination. Organizational Culture measures whether your company rewards commitment to dates or commitment to outcomes. Each dimension gets scored on a 1 to 5 scale, and the total guides your format recommendation. Scores below 15 strongly favor Now-Next-Later. Scores above 20 favor quarterly or timeline. Scores between 15 and 20 suggest a hybrid approach.
The hybrid model deserves special attention because it is the most common real-world pattern. Teams maintain a Now-Next-Later board as their source of truth for planning and prioritization. They then extract items from the Now and near-Next columns that have enough certainty to receive date estimates, and present those in a quarterly or timeline view for stakeholders who require dates. The key discipline in a hybrid setup is maintaining a clear translation rule: only items that have passed specific graduation criteria (see Defining Graduation Criteria Between Horizons) qualify for the timeline view. Without this rule, the timeline view fills up with speculative dates and recreates the same trust problem the team was trying to avoid.
Step-by-Step
Step 1: Inventory Your Current Roadmap Format and Pain Points
Before you can recommend a new format, document what you are using today and what problems it creates. Write down the current format (Gantt, quarterly grid, kanban, spreadsheet, or informal). Then list the top three to five pain points your team and stakeholders experience with the current format. Common pain points include: dates that slip every quarter, stakeholders who distrust the roadmap, excessive time spent re-estimating timelines, confusion about what is committed versus aspirational, and difficulty accommodating new strategic priorities mid-quarter.
Interview at least two stakeholders outside your immediate team (a sales leader, an engineering manager, a customer success lead) to capture their specific frustrations. Record direct quotes where possible, because these will be valuable when you present your recommendation later.
Tip: Ask stakeholders 'What do you actually use the roadmap for?' rather than 'Do you like the roadmap?' The first question reveals whether they need dates, sequences, or simply visibility, which directly informs your format choice.
Step 2: Score Each Assessment Dimension (1-5 Scale)
Create a simple table with five rows: Planning Certainty, Stakeholder Expectations, Delivery Cadence, External Dependencies, and Organizational Culture. For each dimension, assign a score from 1 to 5 based on specific criteria. Planning Certainty: score 1 if your estimates are routinely off by more than 50%, score 5 if your team consistently delivers within a week of initial estimates. Stakeholder Expectations: score 1 if stakeholders primarily want to know what you are working on and why, score 5 if they need specific dates to coordinate external launches, contracts, or regulatory filings.
Delivery Cadence: score 1 if you ship irregularly with unpredictable cycle times, score 5 if you ship on a fixed cadence (biweekly, monthly). External Dependencies: score 1 if your team operates independently, score 5 if multiple external teams, partners, or customers depend on your delivery dates. Organizational Culture: score 1 if leadership evaluates teams on outcomes and learning velocity, score 5 if leadership evaluates teams on hitting committed dates. Write a one-sentence justification for each score so the reasoning is reviewable.
Tip: Score each dimension independently. Do not let a high score on one dimension pull another score upward. Teams often conflate stakeholder expectations with organizational culture, but they can diverge significantly.
Step 3: Calculate Your Total and Map to a Format Recommendation
Sum the five dimension scores. A total of 5 to 14 strongly favors a Now-Next-Later roadmap, because your environment has high uncertainty, flexible stakeholder needs, and an outcome-oriented culture. A total of 15 to 20 suggests a hybrid approach: maintain Now-Next-Later as the internal planning tool, but generate a timeline or quarterly view for specific audiences that need date commitments. A total of 21 to 25 favors a quarterly or timeline roadmap, because your environment has high predictability, date-dependent stakeholders, and a culture that values schedule adherence.
Record the total, the recommended format, and any dimensions where your score was at the boundary (a 3 that could reasonably have been a 2 or 4). These boundary scores indicate areas to revisit quarterly as your organization evolves.
Tip: If your total is exactly 15 or 20, lean toward the less rigid format. Teams overestimate their planning certainty more often than they underestimate it, so a slight bias toward flexibility tends to produce more accurate roadmaps.
Step 4: Define Your Hybrid Translation Rules (If Applicable)
If your score fell in the 15 to 20 range, or if any single dimension scored 4 or 5 while others scored 1 or 2, you likely need a hybrid setup. Document three translation rules. First, define which column qualifies for dates: typically only Now items and the top one or two Next items that have completed discovery. Second, define the precision level of dates: use quarters for items still in Next, specific sprints or weeks only for items in Now.
Third, define the update cadence: how often the timeline view gets refreshed from the Now-Next-Later source of truth (weekly or biweekly is typical). Write these rules down explicitly, because ambiguity in translation rules is the number one cause of hybrid roadmap drift. Share the rules with the person responsible for the stakeholder-facing view.
Tip: Never put Later items on the timeline view, even with caveats. Stakeholders will interpret any date next to an item as a commitment, regardless of how many asterisks you add.
Step 5: Map Existing Roadmap Items to the New Format
Take your current roadmap and reclassify every item into the chosen format. If you are moving to Now-Next-Later, take each quarterly commitment and assess whether it belongs in Now (actively in progress or about to start), Next (validated and sequenced but not yet started), or Later (strategic intent without validated scope). If you are moving to a timeline format from Now-Next-Later, identify which Now and Next items have enough certainty for date estimates and slot them into quarters. Document items that do not fit cleanly, because these edge cases will surface in stakeholder conversations and you need answers prepared.
For each item, note its current status, the new format placement, and any information gaps that need resolution before the item can be properly placed.
Tip: Start with your Now column or current quarter, since those items have the most context and the mapping will be straightforward. Working from high certainty to low certainty builds confidence in the process before you hit ambiguous items.
Step 6: Draft the Communication Plan for the Format Change
Switching roadmap formats is a change management exercise, not a template swap. Identify three to five key stakeholder groups (executive team, engineering, sales, customer success, external partners). For each group, write a brief message that explains what is changing, why it is changing (reference the specific pain points from Step 1), and what the new format means for them specifically. For example, sales teams want to know how to answer customer questions about delivery timing.
Engineering teams want to know if sprint planning changes. Executives want to know how progress will be reported. Address each group's primary concern directly. Plan a rollout sequence: brief your direct team first, then functional leads, then broader stakeholders.
Allow at least two weeks between announcing the change and fully switching over, so people can ask questions before the old format disappears.
Tip: Lead with the stakeholder pain point, not the methodology. Say 'we are fixing the problem where Q3 dates slip into Q4 every cycle' rather than 'we are adopting the Now-Next-Later Framework.' People care about their problems being solved, not your process choice.
Step 7: Run a Parallel Period and Validate the Format
For two to four weeks after switching, maintain both the old and new formats side by side. This allows stakeholders to see the same information in both views and build familiarity with the new format before the old one is retired. During this period, actively solicit feedback from each stakeholder group. ).
If comprehension or utility scores are low for any group, you may need to add a supplementary view rather than forcing everyone into one format. Document what you learned and make adjustments before fully retiring the old format.
Tip: Set a hard end date for the parallel period and communicate it upfront. Without a deadline, teams will keep maintaining both formats indefinitely, doubling the maintenance burden and defeating the purpose of the switch.
Step 8: Reassess Quarterly and Adjust the Format
Your environment is not static. The assessment dimensions you scored in Step 2 can shift as your team matures, your product enters new markets, or your organization restructures. Set a calendar reminder to re-score all five dimensions every quarter. If the total moves across a threshold (from hybrid range into strong Now-Next-Later territory, or the reverse), evaluate whether a format adjustment is needed.
In practice, most teams adjust once or twice per year, not every quarter. But the quarterly reassessment ensures you catch shifts early rather than clinging to a format that stopped fitting six months ago. Record each quarterly assessment alongside the previous scores so you can see trends over time.
Tip: Pay special attention to the External Dependencies score. This is the dimension most likely to change suddenly, for example when a major partnership deal or regulatory requirement introduces new date commitments into your planning process.
Examples
Example: Early-stage B2B SaaS startup with 8 engineers
A seed-stage SaaS company has a small engineering team, no external partners depending on their release dates, and a product strategy that shifts monthly based on customer discovery interviews. Their CEO currently asks for quarterly roadmaps but rarely references them after the planning meeting. The team spends roughly one full day per quarter re-estimating dates that change within weeks.
The PM runs the five-dimension assessment. Planning Certainty scores 1 (estimates are routinely off by 2x or more). Stakeholder Expectations scores 2 (the CEO wants visibility into priorities but does not actually coordinate based on dates). Delivery Cadence scores 2 (shipping is irregular, driven by feature completion).
External Dependencies scores 1 (no external teams depend on their schedule). Organizational Culture scores 2 (the CEO evaluates the team on customer outcomes, not date adherence). Total: 8. This falls clearly in the Now-Next-Later range.
The PM maps their existing quarterly roadmap items into Now (3 items actively in development), Next (4 items that completed customer interviews), and Later (6 items from the strategic brainstorm). The CEO is briefed with a focus on the pain point: 'We spend a full day estimating dates that change within three weeks. ' The CEO agrees to a two-week trial. After two weeks, the CEO reports that the Now-Next-Later board is actually more useful because it shows what the team is actually doing rather than what they hoped to do three months ago.
Example: Mid-size B2C product team with partner integrations
A 40-person product and engineering organization ships a consumer mobile app. They have three external integration partners who need API release dates for their own development cycles. The internal team operates in two-week sprints with reasonable estimation accuracy. Leadership reviews roadmap progress monthly against quarterly OKRs.
The PM scores the assessment. Planning Certainty: 3 (sprint estimates are decent, but quarterly estimates drift). Stakeholder Expectations: 4 (partners contractually need date ranges for API releases). Delivery Cadence: 4 (consistent two-week sprints).
External Dependencies: 4 (three partners with their own development timelines). Organizational Culture: 3 (mixed, outcomes matter but quarterly OKR reviews create date pressure). Total: 18. This falls squarely in the hybrid range.
The PM sets up a Now-Next-Later board as the internal source of truth for planning and prioritization. Translation rules are documented: only Now items and the top two Next items that have completed technical design get date estimates. Date precision is sprint-level for Now items and quarter-level for top Next items. Partners receive a quarterly timeline view derived from the Now-Next-Later board, refreshed biweekly.
The internal team uses the Now-Next-Later view for sprint planning and discovery work. After one quarter, the PM reports that internal reprioritization is faster (no Gantt bar shuffling), while partners still receive the date commitments they need.
Example: Enterprise platform team in a regulated industry
A financial services company has a platform team responsible for compliance-critical infrastructure. Regulatory deadlines are externally imposed and non-negotiable. The team has 60 engineers across multiple squads. Leadership requires date-level commitments for board reporting and regulatory filings. Estimation accuracy is high because the work is well-understood infrastructure, not greenfield product development.
The PM scores the assessment. Planning Certainty: 4 (mature team with historical velocity data). Stakeholder Expectations: 5 (board and regulators require specific dates). Delivery Cadence: 4 (monthly release trains).
External Dependencies: 5 (regulatory deadlines, cross-team platform dependencies). Organizational Culture: 5 (date adherence is a compliance requirement, not a preference). Total: 23. This clearly favors a quarterly or timeline roadmap.
The PM recommends staying with the current timeline format but adds one modification: a separate Now-Next-Later view is maintained for the 20% of the team's capacity allocated to non-compliance innovation work. This innovation track uses Now-Next-Later because it operates under different conditions (high uncertainty, no external date dependencies, outcome-focused). The compliance track stays on the timeline because that format matches its environment. The PM documents this split-format decision and the rule that any innovation item that receives a regulatory dependency immediately moves to the timeline format.
Example: Growth-stage B2B team transitioning away from Gantt charts
A 150-person B2B company has used Gantt-chart roadmaps since its early days. As the company grew, the Gantt chart became a source of frustration: updates take half a day, dependencies create cascading date changes, and engineering leadership spends more time defending timeline slips than building product. The VP of Product wants to switch to Now-Next-Later but faces resistance from the sales team, which uses the Gantt chart to make delivery promises to enterprise prospects.
The PM interviews five stakeholders and identifies two distinct pain points. Engineering and product leaders cite excessive time spent maintaining fictional dates (8 hours per sprint on roadmap updates). The sales team cites the Gantt chart as essential for closing enterprise deals with contractual delivery commitments. Assessment scores: Planning Certainty 2, Stakeholder Expectations 4 (sales needs dates for contracts), Delivery Cadence 3, External Dependencies 3, Organizational Culture 3.
Total: 15. This sits right at the hybrid threshold. The PM proposes a phased transition. Phase 1 (weeks 1 to 4): move internal planning to Now-Next-Later, eliminating the Gantt maintenance burden for engineering.
Phase 2 (weeks 3 to 6): create a simplified quarterly commitment view derived from Now items only, specifically for sales-facing communication. Translation rule: only items that have completed engineering estimation and received VP-level commitment qualify for the sales view. Phase 3 (weeks 5 to 8): retire the Gantt chart entirely. The sales team gets a cleaner, more accurate quarterly view.
Engineering gets a flexible planning tool. The parallel period runs for three weeks before the Gantt is retired. Post-transition, the team reports saving approximately six hours per sprint on roadmap maintenance while sales reports that the simplified quarterly view is actually easier for prospects to understand than the dense Gantt chart was.
Best Practices
Score each assessment dimension with written justification before discussing with your team, because group discussion without individual pre-scoring leads to anchoring bias where the loudest voice sets the score. Individual written scores create a more accurate baseline that the group discussion can then refine.
When running a hybrid setup, designate one format as the source of truth and the other as a derived view. The Now-Next-Later board should be the source that gets updated first, with the timeline view regenerated from it. If both formats are treated as equal sources, they will inevitably diverge and stakeholders will lose trust in both.
Use the stakeholder pain points from Step 1 as your primary justification when presenting the format recommendation. Abstract arguments about agility versus predictability rarely persuade. Concrete examples like 'we re-estimated Q3 dates four times last quarter' are immediately compelling because stakeholders lived through the pain.
Avoid mixing date precision levels on the same roadmap view. If some items show specific weeks and others show quarters, readers will assume the quarter-level items are less important rather than less certain. Use consistent precision within each view and explain the precision level in a legend or header note.
When transitioning from a timeline roadmap, explicitly relabel items that were 'committed for Q4' as either Now, Next, or Later based on their actual readiness, not their previous date. Carrying over implied date commitments into a Now-Next-Later format undermines the entire purpose of the switch.
Review the related skill for communicating roadmaps to stakeholders before presenting your format recommendation. The format decision itself matters less than how clearly you communicate the change and what it means for each audience.
Document your translation rules and assessment scores in a shared, versioned document rather than a slide deck. Slides get lost after the meeting. A living document lets new team members understand why the current format was chosen and under what conditions it should be revisited.
Common Mistakes
Choosing Now-Next-Later because it seems easier or more modern, without assessing whether your environment actually needs it.
Correction
The format choice should be driven by your assessment scores, not by methodology trends. A team with high planning certainty, date-dependent external partners, and a culture that rewards schedule adherence will be poorly served by Now-Next-Later. The format will feel vague to stakeholders who genuinely need dates, and adoption will fail. Always run the five-dimension assessment before recommending a format, and let the scores drive the decision.
Switching formats without a communication and transition plan, treating it as a template change rather than a change management exercise.
Correction
Roadmap format changes affect how every stakeholder group plans their own work. Sales teams adjust how they set customer expectations. Engineering adjusts how they plan sprints. Executives adjust how they report to the board.
Switching without warning or explanation creates confusion and resistance. The parallel period in Step 7 exists specifically to prevent this. Budget at least two weeks for the transition and brief each stakeholder group individually on what changes for them.
Putting date estimates on Later items in a hybrid setup because a stakeholder asked for a timeline on everything.
Correction
This mistake happens because it feels helpful to give stakeholders what they ask for. But dates on Later items are fiction. They have no validated scope, no discovery work, and no engineering estimates. When those dates inevitably change, it damages trust in the entire roadmap.
Instead, explain that Later items represent strategic intent and will receive date estimates only after they graduate to Next and complete discovery. Point stakeholders to the graduation criteria so they understand the process.
Running both formats permanently without a source-of-truth designation, leading to divergence between the Now-Next-Later board and the timeline view.
Correction
This typically happens when the parallel period from Step 7 never ends. Teams keep both formats because different audiences prefer different views, which is fine, but they update each format independently rather than deriving one from the other. Within a few weeks, the two views show different priorities and different items. Catch this by checking weekly whether the timeline view can be fully reconstructed from the Now-Next-Later board.
If it cannot, the formats have diverged and need to be resynchronized.
Reassessing the format only when things break rather than on a regular quarterly cadence.
Correction
Teams tend to keep using whatever format they adopted until a crisis forces a change. By that point, the mismatch between format and environment has been causing friction for months. The quarterly reassessment in Step 8 catches gradual shifts, like increasing external dependencies or a maturing delivery cadence, before they become acute problems. Set a recurring calendar event and spend 30 minutes re-scoring the five dimensions.
Most quarters nothing will change, but you will catch the quarter where something does.
Other Skills in This Method
Defining Graduation Criteria Between Horizons
How to establish clear criteria and confidence thresholds that determine when an initiative is ready to move from Later to Next, or from Next to Now.
Categorizing Items into Now, Next, and Later Horizons
How to evaluate and sort initiatives into the three time horizons based on certainty, urgency, and strategic alignment.
Building Now-Next-Later Roadmap Templates
How to set up visual roadmap templates in tools like Miro, Notion, ProductBoard, or spreadsheets to represent the three horizons effectively.
Reprioritizing and Moving Items Across Horizons
How to run regular reviews that promote, demote, or remove items between Now, Next, and Later as new information and priorities emerge.
Applying Now-Next-Later Roadmaps to SaaS Products
How to adapt the Now-Next-Later framework for SaaS environments, including continuous delivery cycles, feature requests, and customer-driven prioritization.
Communicating Now-Next-Later Roadmaps to Stakeholders
How to present a timeline-free, horizon-based roadmap to executives, customers, and cross-functional teams without creating false deadline expectations.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I handle stakeholders who insist on dates even when our assessment clearly favors Now-Next-Later?
Start by understanding what the stakeholder actually needs the dates for. Often they need coordination signals, not precise dates. ' For coordination signals, offer a hybrid where only high-certainty Now items receive approximate timeframes. For contractual date needs, maintain a separate timeline view derived from the Now-Next-Later board. Address the underlying need rather than debating the format.
How long should the transition from a quarterly roadmap to Now-Next-Later take?
Plan for four to eight weeks total. The first week covers assessment and recommendation. Weeks two and three cover item mapping and stakeholder communication. Weeks three through six are the parallel period where both formats coexist. Weeks six through eight are the wind-down of the old format. Rushing the transition by skipping the parallel period creates stakeholder confusion and increases the chance of reverting back to the old format under pressure.
Should I compare now next later vs quarterly roadmap formats every quarter, or only when problems arise?
Reassess quarterly, even when things seem fine. The reassessment takes only 30 minutes: re-score the five dimensions and compare to previous scores. Most quarters you will confirm the current format is still appropriate. But environments change gradually, and a quarterly check catches shifts before they become acute problems. Waiting until something breaks means you have already been using the wrong format for months.
Can I use Now-Next-Later for some teams and quarterly roadmaps for others within the same organization?
Yes, and this is more common than a single format for the whole organization. Different teams face different conditions. A compliance team with regulatory deadlines legitimately needs timeline roadmaps. A product innovation team exploring new markets legitimately needs Now-Next-Later. The key is to document each team's format choice with its assessment scores, so the decision is transparent and revisitable. You also need a coordination mechanism when cross-team dependencies exist. Typically one team provides date estimates for the specific items that the timeline-format team depends on.
What tools work best for maintaining a hybrid Now-Next-Later and timeline roadmap setup?
The tool matters less than the translation discipline. Any tool that supports both kanban-style boards and timeline views can work (Productboard, Jira, Linear, Notion, or even a spreadsheet with two tabs). The critical requirement is that the Now-Next-Later view is the source of truth and the timeline view is derived from it, not maintained independently. If your tool allows you to tag items as 'timeline-eligible' and filter to a timeline view, that reduces the manual translation burden significantly.
How do I prevent the Now-Next-Later board from becoming an unstructured backlog?
This happens when teams skip graduation criteria and treat Later as a parking lot for every idea. Set explicit limits on each horizon: Now should hold three to five items per team, Next should hold five to eight items, and Later should hold no more than 10 to 15 items. Anything beyond those limits goes to a separate ideation backlog, not the roadmap. Review and prune each horizon regularly using the criteria described in [defining graduation criteria between horizons](/skills/defining-graduation-criteria-between-horizons). A roadmap is a communication tool, not a storage system.
Why does my roadmap format keep drifting back to timeline-based even after we switched to Now-Next-Later?
Format drift usually happens for one of three reasons. ' and the team starts adding informal dates to avoid the conversation. Second, the team never fully retired the old format, so both coexist and the familiar one wins by default. Third, the team did not run the assessment properly and the environment actually favors a hybrid or timeline format. Diagnose by checking which of these three causes applies. For the first cause, coach stakeholders on how to read the Now-Next-Later format. For the second, set a hard retirement date for the old format. For the third, re-run the assessment honestly.