Pick your battles when defining your Product Strategy (3:6)
Not all problems are equal
In previous articles I’ve stated that product strategy is defining the right approach to make the product vision a reality. The first thing to do when defining your product strategy is picking the problems you and your team will be trying to solve.
To reinforce this idea, I mean choosing 1–2–3 problems that would create an impact when solved -and not choosing a huge list of problems-. The teams’ minds and actions would have to be focused on what the strategy aims to accomplish. Therefore, you will also then know what not to focus on.
This is easier said than done. Deciding where to concentrate your strategy requires a thoughtful evaluation. Especially when there are multiple identified problems, technical debt, perhaps, and other stakeholders’ requirements on the road. Even more, you may get to the point of thinking you need to solve everything. But, I’ve learned you must focus on what you have decided is critical for the business and the customers at this time.
Here is where you bring your ability to understand data, the business and those dynamics; identifying what could bring substantial long term value.
Be clear on the fact that not all problems are equal and solving just a few will actually have the chance of generating an impact. I’m talking about something different than prioritizing over here. It doesn’t work as if you gather and set a sequence of all the problems you and your team will be working on because you speculate or estimate how much each will profit. What you’ll indeed prioritize -which occurs at the end of the strategic process- are the actions that will hopefully make an impact on the problems you are focusing on.
There would be no certainty that the picked battles will succeed. That is why strategies change periodically and you will need to be good and fast at experimenting. In this same way, you will see that you won’t be testing all of your strategies in parallel. But, we’ll see that when we get to tease out the strategy.
Now that you understand where to focus your attention, what’s next is to study and find opportunities that will work to figure out the product strategy.
This article belongs to a Product Strategy thread. Next one in line is:
In the following article, I highlight where we can find these critical opportunities so as to get a good strategy.
Here are all of the articles from this thread:
- The one where we talk about Product Strategy
- Product Vision and Goals as leads for your Product Strategy
- Pick your battles when defining your Product Strategy
- Identifying needs and opportunities to build your Product Strategy
- The right way to turn your Product Strategy into action
- Proper management keeps Product Strategy alive
