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Product // Strategy

A template for forming a product strategy.

A template for forming a product strategy.

Mike Smith

Before you start

Much like my feeling with “product management”, product strategy is not strictly a science but more of an art. It is also probably never finished.

This document doesn’t mean you’ll have a perfect product strategy but I use it to jog my memory on all the things I need to think about.

Enjoy.

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Product strategy framework

1. Scope

‌Mission

‌How do you sum up what your team is doing in a sentence. Why is this important?

Metrics

‌What is the key output metric that you are trying to change? What are the leading metrics that predict this? Check that metrics are:‌

Intuitive - engineers can understand them

Directional - it's clear which way you want the metric to move

Stable - the metric doesn't change much unless you do something

In your control/sensitive - any changes to the metric are the result of your team's work

Measurable - we can track and report on this metric

Important - moving this metric makes a significant difference to the business

‌Domain

‌What are the areas that your team is responsible for?

‌RACI

‌Who are the key stakeholders involved?

Role

People

Responsible

[the team doing the work]

Accountable

[the PM]

Consulted

[stakeholders whose requirements need to be taken into account]

Informed

[stakeholders who need to be kept up to date]

There are no rows in this table

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2. Focus

‌This should explain what the focus of the team is. We need to pick our battles based on what really matters, and we need to limit the number of major problems we’re trying to solve at once. Things to think about:

‌What are the key user flows?

What are the key user needs and problems?

What are the areas we are focused on?

What are the areas we are NOT focused on?

‌Typically this should be presented in a visual framework to aid communication. e.g.:‌

Funnel

Loop

Hierarchy‌

You may want to include a link to a roadmap or some bets

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3. Insights

‌This should explain why we are focused on the areas above. It should draw on:

‌Qualitative insights (user interviews, surveys, etc.)

Quantitative insights (what we see in the data)

Competitor benchmarking

Technology (what is possible with new / existing technology)

Expertise (what is best-in-class thinking on this space, either internal or external)

‌Whilst it may be helpful to link to a long list of resources, the Product Strategy doc should contain the key slides / charts themselves, and be a self contained justification for the points of focus.

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