I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. All product managers should develop well-researched and well-supported product strategies, even if your boss is not requiring it. It’s difficult to make the time, especially with the dozens of activities that product managers are usually simultaneously juggling, but it must be done.
Why?
- Otherwise, you will only arrive at your desired destination by happenstance.
- Otherwise, all your time will slip away fighting fires – many of which would never have started to burn had a clear product strategy been in place.
80% of the value of creating a product strategy is for the product manager. It clarifies your thinking, challenges you to come up with new ways of addressing problems, helps you better express WHY this is the best plan to all concerned, and gives you confidence that your plan is good, which in turn gives you the motivation to doggedly pursue your vision for the product. You will need this motivation. In fact, the best product managers are beyond “motivated” – they are “passionate”.
The other 20% of the value is in communicating your vision and your plan to others – the developers, the sales people, your customers, the market in general. Having done your homework, you’ll be confident with yourself, credible with others, and convincing even to the skeptics and folks who like to play “stump the chump”.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I couldn’t agree with this more. I work mainly with startups and one thing I see is that startups put a lot of energy and effort into the first release and then never do much thinking beyond incremental features after that. It’s hard to stay ahead of the market without a vision for where the company should be and a solid product strategy that supports that.
April
Here is another thought to an extremely important topic.
The strategy, or game plan, provides the true north for any organization, and for any product / product line. Without a strategy, there is no anchor. Without strategy, anything goes.
However, the product strategy cannot stand alone as a single threaded process. The marketing mix still counts. If the product’s strategy doesn’t deliver compelling value, the pricing strategy would be “reactive” at best. Without a plan to promote or communicate, no one will know. Without a plan to distribute, the product cannot get from source of supply to point of use. It is the product manager’s job to make sure it all comes together.
April, thanks for your comment. I agree that startups are particularly vulnerable to skimping on product strategy – they often view it as a “nice to have.” But in reality, the product strategy is even MORE essential to startups.
Steve, I also agree that having a plan to promote or communicate is also essential. Lots of companies fall down on this one, but I actually think it is more common to neglect the product strategy than to neglect the marketing plan or product launch.
I tend to recommend one day a week should be spent on either developing the roadmap or validating the roadmap. I call them r0admap supporting activities. Should be noted (maybe), but my roadmap is my strategy.
Stewart
Arguably the most important component of product strategy is positioning. It encompasses the decisions of which customers to target, what primary problem(s) it solves for them, what messaging to use, and what should drive most product decisions going forward.
Roger, I completely agree with you.
Stewart, I only agree if what you are calling a roadmap covers all the elements of a product strategy – target market, market problems, trends, competition, the opportunity you want to exploit, how you plan to get there, and what type of results you expect.
However, in my experience almost all product managers have a roadmap that is mainly a timeline stretching out in to the future with rough timeframes for releases and the features expected in each release. In my experience, this type of roadmap is insufficient – the bigger work of developing a product strategy (the way I defined above) needs to be done first, and the roadmap then flows out of it.
A product strategy should exist somewhere in the organization. I don’t know it is the product manager’s baby. I know that the voice of the customer is non-linear when you move to the next phase of the technology adoption lifecycle. A single product manager is paid to be linear and focused. Listening to the voice of customer across phases has killed companies, so the product strategy must inform the product manager when to stop listening. On this kind of scale the product strategy coordinates the product manager team.
Roger I agree that position is important, but more important than the well articulated vision?
Sue, I agree that most roadmaps are powerpoint slides with a line in the middle and features plotted along it. I maintain that is hardly a roadmap. My view of a roadmap is as you describe.
Stewart, I believe the positioning we choose for our product is a large part of the vision and should largely drive the remainder of the vision. It is the primary determiner of what our product will be, what will go into it, and how we prioritize what we put in a roadmap.
Hi David,
If the product manager is not responsible for the product strategy, then who is? If it’s a true one-product startup company, then perhaps the founder or the CEO owns the product strategy, but once you start to have multiple products and target multiple customers, the product manager should step up and take ownership.
In the companies I’ve worked with, I’d say that about half of the time the product managers don’t do a product strategy, but then no one else steps up and does it for them. In these cases, my opinion is that the PMs are just not doing their jobs.