What thought leaders teach us about product strategy – Part I

11/04/2023 – As a product manager, having a well-defined product strategy is crucial to ensure your product is successful. However, creating and communicating such a strategy can be challenging. Here are some insights from three well-known and experienced product leaders to help guide you in crafting an effective strategy for your product. Part I features Marty Cagan, Melissa Perri and Roman Pichler.

Marty Cagan, Founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group

For Marty, the key to successful product strategy is focus. It's important to identify the few things that really matter to the business and choose which goals are truly impactful. Many companies make the mistake of chasing too many big goals or initiatives, leaving product teams with no time to deliver. Therefore, insights for product strategy should come from analysing data and learning from customers to identify opportunities and understand the competitive landscape.

Key takeaway: Focus is key. It's better to fully solve one problem than to partially solve ten.

Further deep-dives: Marty created a whole series of articles about product strategy.

Melissa Perri, CEO, Produx Labs

For Melissa, the most important outcome of a good product strategy is to avoid what she calls the "build trap". That's a situation where a team's focus is on shipping features instead of prioritising real outcomes - that is, delivering value to customers and driving business results. The latter is usually much harder to measure; it's easier to count the number of features shipped than to find out what impact they've had on our users.

For her, strategy links the vision of a product to the options and ways to get there. It's not a product roadmap at all, but a framework that helps everyone make decisions and take action.

Key takeaway: Focus on outcomes – means desired impacts or results – not outputs. Use the product strategy as a guideline to enable teams and individuals to make informed decisions.

Further deep-dives: If you want to go all in, Melissa’s book “Escaping the Build Trap” is a must read and absolutely recommended. If you prefer listening over reading, head over to one of her talks about the same topic.

Roman Pichler, Product Strategy Expert

To enable product leaders to create compelling product strategies, Roman developed the Product Strategy Model. It is a practical four-step framework that helps companies develop and evolve their strategy with a structured approach. Even if it says Strategy Model, you’ll see that it goes far beyond that.

Step 1 – Establish the product vision. This involves defining the purpose of the product and the positive change it will bring.

Step 2 – Develop the product strategy. This involves identifying the target audience, understanding their needs, analysing the market and competitive landscape, identifying features that differentiate you from the competition, and setting business objectives.

For the initial two steps, Roman recommends a Product Vision Board, which is similar to the well known Business Model Canvas.

Step 3 – Create a product roadmap. This roadmap outlines how the product strategy will be implemented over the next twelve months. It should include specific product goals, dates or timeframes, selected high-level features, and metrics to measure progress.

Step 4 – Create the product backlog. This identifies the functionality and features required to achieve the next product goal. The backlog should prioritise the most important features and provide a clear plan for development and delivery.

Key takeaway: To successfully create and implement your product strategy, start with the high-level goal (vision) you want to achieve and work your way down to the lower levels (strategy, roadmap, backlog).

Further deep-dives: Roman provides extensive insights on his website and blog.

TL;DR: A good strategy provides focus, is outcome-driven and a serves as a decision-making-framework

So, what can we learn from Marty, Melissa and Roman? In conclusion, successful product strategy requires a clear focus on the few things that truly matter, prioritizing real outcomes over shipping features, and a structured approach that starts with a compelling product vision. On top of that, it enables informed and de-centralised decision making for everyone working on the product.

Stay tuned for Part II with more insights from other big names from the product community!