Product Strategy
What is a product strategy?
A product strategy is a birds-eye view of how a team will deliver its product against the company’s vision, with this key piece of work the team can then allocate the work and resources to set the objectives and goals that will ensure that their product is successful.
The product strategy should include an analysis of customer needs and wants, competitive landscape, pricing structure, distribution channels, and promotional activities. Additionally, it should also consider how to best position the product or service in the market, as well as how to best leverage technology and other resources to maximize success.
A successful product strategy should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure it remains relevant and effective.
When to set a product strategy?
Every product needs a product strategy in place for it to be successful, once you’ve set your product vision you will then translate that into a product strategy. It’s important to set a product strategy early on in the product development process, as it will help you focus your efforts and resources on the right areas.
The best time to set a product strategy is when you have identified a need or opportunity in the market that your product can address. This could be anything from a new technology or feature that customers are asking for, to an existing problem that needs to be solved. Once you have identified the need or opportunity, you can then begin to develop a product strategy that will help you reach your goals.
Why is a product strategy important?
A product strategy is important because it provides a framework for the development and marketing of a product or service. It helps to ensure that all resources are being used in an effective and efficient manner and that the product or service is positioned correctly in the market. A well-thought-out product strategy can also help to identify potential risks and opportunities, as well as provide guidance on how best to leverage technology and other resources.
Ultimately, a product strategy is essential for any successful product launch, as it provides the roadmap for how to best reach your goals.
Products without a strategy are going to fail, without a product strategy a company leaves itself vulnerable to unnecessary issues, like becoming a feature factory, not solving your customer’s needs, building the wrong things, and not prioritizing the right features.
With a product strategy in place, you can avoid all of those issues because you will have:
1. Work prioritized that will support the strategy
2. Knowing what to build next and why
3. You can easily work out what is the next priority
4. Full transparency with your company on why you doing what you are doing
Remember it’s impossible to be strategic without a product strategy in place you’ll just be working tactically.
Documents to help you write a product strategy
Some well-known documents to help outline your strategy and vision are:
Product management tools are a great asset for making sure that your product strategy is well-documented and at the center of everything you do. In ProdPad for example, the portfolio and the product canvas are a combination of the three canvases listed above, focused on ensuring you have all the information needed to outline a killer strategy, with added flexibility and customization.
How to write a product strategy
Creating a product strategy involves looking ahead and assessing the situation, rather than focusing on the tasks at hand.
You’re looking at the bigger picture: In essence, what is our goal? Taking a broader outlook into consideration involves many inquiries.
- What are all the options available to us and how can we execute them?
- Where do we stand in the market compared to our competitors?
- What makes us unique? What skills do we have that others don’t? How can we harness these skills to solve problems in an original manner?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can start working out the various ways you can get to a solution, there will be so many avenues you can go down but with your vision in place, and your OKRs set you’ll soon find the right path to go down – even if it ends up changing the business! That’s how a strategy is born.
BUT it’s important to remember that a strategy once set isn’t complete, it’s constantly evolving with continuous discovery and experimentation.
You can write a strategy as a product strategy document (PSD) but product management best practice calls for a lean now-next-later roadmap to execute your strategy.