All About Product Strategy
Written especially for Product Managers willing to make better decisions
As the title suggests, in this article you’ll find everything about Product Strategy. This is the right place to read about the things that have to be done to have a good Product Strategy. What would you find in it?
- Why Product Vision and Goals are non-negotiable elements when crafting your Product Strategy.
- The importance of focusing our mind and actions on the right problems so as to get a good Product Strategy.
- The places where we can find critical opportunities and insights so as to get a good Product Strategy.
- How to properly implement a good strategy.
- How great management helps a good Product Strategy survive and how to do so.
I’ve been meaning to write more about Product Strategy for a while. I believe it is a really hard topic to try. But actually, the difficulty lies in its importance.
In my past posts, I’ve talked about the main skills required to build a product team and about why product management basics are essentials to lead great products. In them, I’ve always said that having a strategic context is crucial to solve the right problems.
In my career I’ve experienced bad strategy or in better words, the lack of a well designed and communicated strategy. And as I said above, this may be due to the difficulty of accomplishing this crucial point.
I would like to get you to think about it. Do you feel like the things you’re building are the ones needed to achieve your goals? Do you know what the outcomes you’re trying to achieve are? Just go a little bit over the things that go on in and around your workplace.
Don’t get surprised if you are, have been or know someone in the situation where the answers aren’t affirmative. This happens in many companies. Early in my career, I went through it multiple times. It feels as if you’re indeed doing a good job delivering thing after thing, and on occasion, even faster than expected. That’s a common mistake you, your leads and the team can commit. The whole thing is a misconception. The faster and better you create and release isn’t necessary the more earnings you get.
It doesn’t just work to have a production process that fits the team. What you primarily need the most is to understand what to build that delivers the most value for the customer and the business. What you need is a product strategy.
How do we decide what to build is a product strategy. Your strategy is how you’re planning to bring value; it’s deciding which problems to solve to make your vision a reality.
Below, you will find the key things that have to be done well to have a good and aligned product strategy:
0. Product Vision and Goals as leads for your Product Strategy: keeping in mind where you are going
When talking about products and the organizations that support them, there are some non-negotiable elements. These are crafting an inspirational long term vision, setting specific outcomes and defining a good strategy (check out more in Don’t dare to start work without first defining your product vision, strategy and goals).
Having a solid and exciting 3–5–10 year product vision and specific goals are key in order to define your strategy. When the team meets them, then they have a broader context and can understand where the product is headed. This is meaningful because it basically allows the team to understand where to make good decisions.
Product vision represents what we are trying to achieve and you would need measurable business goals to track the journey.
Take a second to remember the vision and key metrics for the product you lead or are part of. Are the things you and your team delivering aligned with the product vision? Straying from the path and misalignment are actually common. Especially because we often interact with many different stakeholders, think of many ideas, and also receive them.
Still, that’s the point of having all these elements. They are important because they help us keep in mind our destination. At this point, what follows is figuring out how we can make it there; how can we make our vision a reality. The answer to that is Product Strategy.
1. Pick your battles when defining your Product Strategy: not all problems are equal
In the previous step, we saw 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 and efforts 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.
2. Identifying needs and opportunities to build your Product Strategy: take a look at the places where you can find what you seek
To recap, in order to reach our product vision and goals we need to decide which problems to solve. Then, we should spend time with the team trying to discover needs and opportunities that may help sorting out those problems.
For instance, to reach your vision, you establish a north goal. After that, you must think about how to achieve it. As such, you identify a crucial problem that just points towards the delivery of impactful outcomes; and decide to focus on it to accomplish that goal. Now, instead of listing things to develop that you think can solve that problem you must look for customer and business’ needs and opportunities.
At this point, we are not trying to find solutions for the problems we decided to focus on. At least, that’s the way I recommend you follow. For me, strategy isn’t about telling the team what to build, but telling the team what problem to solve. Along with that, you may see that product strategy isn’t a plan nor a to do list. It’s more the kind of tool that helps make better decisions.
So, from where can we bring insights that will turn into the strategy’s foundation? And as expected, the answer to that I think isn’t -as everything good- simple. Again, they don’t come from any chart or matrix just because.
These opportunities can come from anywhere. And you must be on your toes to get’em. That is why having context is necessary. Perhaps, without it you could have faced something relevant, but because you weren’t aware of it, you missed it. Anyway, not everything is that hard.
Besides understanding the business more broadly and how it operates, there are a few practices that can help you get closer to identifying some opportunities. In no particular order, here they are:
The first practice is doing research. It helps us evaluate anything that was released in a qualitative way and on the other hand to discover needs that we may not be considering.
The second practice is data analysis. Opportunities can be found from the data we have collected over time. It will help us explain what the current situation is.
The third practice is benchmarking against your competitors, your industry and even other industries.
The fourth practice is being aware of current technology. Technology’s foundations are always evolving and this means you may run into a new opportunity.
The fifth and last practice is sharing knowledge with peers and of course spending time on this assignment.
Remember, we are not trying to prove anything; we just want to remain curious and learn constantly. Conversations or interactions with your customers, competitors’ customers, potential buyers, proprietary data, on-prod tests, trends, markets’ or competitors’ behaviors are places in which you can find great opportunities.
Now, you have got where to focus and have identified needs and opportunities to make an impact. What follows is taking your product strategy into action.
3. The right way to turn your Product Strategy into action: some might abandon at this point and you’ll see why
If you strongly identify with the following statement and are dead set on it, you might want to stop reading this article: “Team, we need to build this specific feature”.
Still here with me? Nice. Whatever the answer, once again, Nice!
I believe that there are three ways of taking your product strategy into action. The first one is the one in which you don’t have a product strategy at all and still decide to go ahead and build features. In this case, the team is all about delivering and velocity. There isn’t the certainty of achieving value. As in any of the different ways, there’s never a warranty for that. But, in this particular case your team’s energy is scattered because there is no real focus.
The second way describes a scenario where you do have a product strategy, but sadly, you tend to default to some version of the sentence above. Working in this environment is not healthy for the team. In other words, it’s a demanding way for taking your product strategy into action. I would strongly discourage it. Product teams are made up of so many different professional profiles and skills. People need to feel passionate about their product, business and customers, and telling them exactly what to do takes away from all of that. Without fail, this way is only slightly better than the first one.
However, we still have the third way to do so, which is the right way. In this case you have a product strategy, and instead of telling the team what to build, you supply the team with the problems to solve. This gives the team autonomy and the space to discover and propose solutions. Differently to the second case, people feel motivated and their understanding of the context is richer.
I have experienced the three of them. With the first one I ended up quitting my job. For me, it makes no sense to work without purpose, and it was hard to change the company’s mindset. Working in the absence of product strategy doesn’t assure that what you are solving brings value. On the other hand, when experiencing the second one, I was lucky enough to learn from that and switch to the third one. It is really valuable to work in a space that is open to that kind of change. Today, I embrace the third way and see the cultural benefit in it.
Still, the right way doesn’t stop there. We need to build a process or methodology that fits the team and measure the process of each problem to be solved. When referring to methodologies I’ve talked about it before, pretty intensely as well. I’ve highlighted that there are different tools out there, but as a leader you must find the one that best fits the team, as every team is unique (check out: A shortcut to Product Leadership). When discussing measurement, it’s all about turning the strategy into objectives. I believe that a team that shares metrics becomes empowered. I’ve worked within a product team in which Product Managers, UXers and Engineers have different objectives. I still don’t get it, as we are all a single team. That practice ends up leading people to focus on different actions. I have no doubt that when a team takes into account what they are targeting and that target is shared, then greater ownership and unity to solve the problem at hand occurs.
You now understand the right way to take the strategy into action. Nonetheless, trusting the team to solve the right problems and enabling an adequate process is not enough to keep the team on track. Obstacles will surely arise and leaders must be there to facilitate things.
A shortcut to Product Leadership
These are the main skills required to build a product team
medium.com
4. Proper management keeps Product Strategy alive
You’ve made the decision to share the product strategy with the team, so everyone is aligned and speaks the same language. In that same context, you’ve already provided the vision and goals. Just to add, the team now understands which problems to solve and what to measure.
In that scenario, as a Product Manager you have given them the tools and the autonomy to propose solutions. That’s cool! That is indeed all that is needed to succeed. But as you may foresee, I’m not stopping there. Neither would you.
Understanding what to build and providing the right environment aren’t the only things required for your strategy to last. Once the team jumps out to the field you must still be there to solve mishaps efficiently and connect the right people. For a product strategy to survive, consistent and good management is a must.
You will be there to make things easier for the team. That isn’t doing their job or preventing them from coming up with their own solutions. It’s all about unlocking tasks, facilitating and assisting. Depending on your seniority, you could also coach others on the right way to deal with a situation and help them reach their full potential.
Again, this is not about micromanaging. Proper management is about responding to help requests, finding things at the right time, and removing barriers.
That, is up to you. However, having an organization that supports this process makes this kind of leadership more realistic. Keep in mind that product centric organizations are interested in providing a suitable place that allows you to solve customers’ needs in ways that work for the business.
To sum up, remember that you will have to make trade offs almost every day. To get the team inspired and focused on the strategy, make it a clear one, and if it’s possible count with people that care about the customers. Know your stakeholders, look for outcomes and not outputs, iterate and learn, share those learnings and be on the lookout for more opportunities.
Keeping your product strategy alive will drive you and your team to create real value.
Now, you got strong concepts about all of Product Strategy. Here’s my last impression:
I’ve learned that having a sharp delivery process is important. Yet, having a transparent product strategy is essential. A strategic mindset enables others to make better decisions.
