In this series, I aimed to share my principles for building an effective product strategy, which requires clear company goals, a compelling product vision, and a relentless focus on pursuing the right problems for customers. By clearly understanding these dimensions, product leaders can work towards their main goal: create a valuable viable product.
In essence, a successful product strategy is not about rigidly following a recipe but instead being adaptable, data-informed, and customer-focused. It is a journey of continuous learning and effective communication, essential for navigating the complexities of building a successful product.
I understand this may seem like generic advice, but these principles are crucial. Looking ahead, the future of product management is already changing dramatically with the integration of AI. In this ever-changing world, principles are essential to creating a valuable viable product. Below, I summarize the central principles of each essay:
1# The core of a good strategy
- Company purpose and product vision are essential for defining what the company is aiming to achieve and guiding the product strategy.
- Use the GEM Model to prioritize growth, engagement, and monetization, aligning them with company goals.
- The GEM metrics should guide decision-making and ensure team focus on delivering value.
2# Which problems to solve
- Focus on understanding and solving customer problems, not just building features.
- Use frameworks like the DHM Model and 11-Star Experience to detail product vision and create problem hypotheses.
- Continuously update your product vision assumptions based on customer insights and market data.
3# First draft of your product strategy
- Product strategy must balance creating customer value while contributing to business objectives.
- Engage stakeholders in discussions to align on strategies that maximize valuable viability.
- Define strategies as hypotheses and validate them through experimentation, customer feedback and data.
4# From strategy to success
- Define unambiguous success metrics to validate strategies quickly and cost-effectively.
- Use proxy metrics to gauge the impact of strategies on high-level goals.
- Be prepared to course-correct based on data and continuously refine the strategy.
- Bonus! Choose proxy metrics that ideally have historical data, can be proven to correlate with high-level metrics, are within your control to influence, are relevant to your hypothesis, and can be easily tracked.
5# The Mighty Morphin Roadmap
- Use roadmaps as high-level visual tools to communicate product strategy and progress.
- Focus roadmaps on priorities and impact, not on detailed features and timelines.
- Ensure roadmaps foster alignment across all stakeholders, emphasizing strategic goals and adaptability.
My final advice is straightforward: your primary responsibility as a product leader is to ensure that your teams are consistently working towards delivering a valuable and viable product. This should always be your ultimate goal and responsibility.
For further reading and resources, here are some recommendations which I greatly inspire my work:
- Lenny’s Podcast
- Masters of Scale
- Blog posts from Gibson Biddle
- SVPG (Silicon Valley Product Group)
As well as some great books I really love:
- Inspired - Matty Cagan
- The Product Book: How to become a great product manager - Josh Anon and Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrozia
- Badass making users awesome - Kathy Sierra
- Measure What Matters - John Doerr
Feel free to reach out with any questions or for further discussion. Happy strategizing!
Updated Index of all articles released so far:
Right Talent, Right Time
Turnkey technical teams and solo specialists
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