A framework and method for developing a Product Strategy collaboratively (Part 4)
A framework and method for developing a Product Strategy collaboratively (Part 4)Also everything you didn’t know about The ShiningThis is Part 4 in a 4-part series. Please read Parts 1-3 before continuing:
Refining and publishing our Product StrategyDuring the course of this series we talked about why our team needed to update our Product Strategy, the framework we settled on, and how we approached the async and in-person work to make it a truly collaborative process. For this concluding part I will focus on how it ended. How we refined the strategy, published it internally, and used it to guide our 2023 planning process. As I mentioned in Part 3, we came out of our retreat with a messy but comprehensive Google Doc with our raw discussion notes about each component of the Product Strategy (see Part 2 for details on the framework). Our next step was to refine it, finalize it, share it, and then most importantly, use it (why is it that so many Product Strategies sit on a shelf and never get referenced?). Once we got back from retreat, our Head of Marketing and I started collaborating on a first, cleaned-up draft of the Product Strategy (consider this a tip: product strategy isn’t just “product”, it’s everything around the product as well—that’s why we collaborated). We took each of the strategy components that we defined earlier (see Part 2), and consolidated our notes into a draft that we could share with the team: After sharing this we asked the team (as well as our leaders) for a final round of feedback: What works, what doesn’t, what’s missing, what’s confusing? Even though I can’t share the details of it all, you can see that there were lots of questions and comments (the yellow highlights), which helped us clarify some of the final details. We were ready to go! No strategy is every “done”, but we felt we were at a point where we accomplished our goals for this work. We had a strategy that:
So we published the strategy internally and shared it around. And that’s the end of it and we lived happily every after, right? Well, no, of course not. A strategy is only as good as the extent to which it influences practical, day-to-day planning and delivery. So even though we felt good (and to a big extent, relieved to be aligned on a bunch of stuff we needed to figure out), the next step was to turn the strategy into an actual plan. We’ve been using W Planning as a team for a long time as a way to enable our empowered teams to plan collaboratively: I plan to write about our approach to W Planning in more detail in the future. For now, that article is an excellent reference. Since it’s a cycle we are all familiar with, and that we know works well, we used that framework for adjusting our product plans based on the new/adapted Product Strategy as well. Phase 1: ContextThe leads team got together to work on the business goals that align with the Product Strategy. We then shared this strategic context with the entire team so that everyone would be on the same page. Phase 2: PlansTeams took those goals and strategic context, and got together separately (product, engineering, marketing, customer success) to discuss the biggest opportunities they see for meeting those goals. Phase 3: IntegrationThe leads team got together again to discuss the opportunities that the teams came up with, how it all fits together, and any trade-offs that needed to be made. Phase 4: Buy-inWe then went back to the teams with a proposal for our main focus areas for the year. This was a particularly fun meeting because we discussed our Now/Next/Later roadmap together, dragged things around, and got alignment on the most important opportunities we wanted to address next. (We use Productboard for our planning and roadmapping—I’ve written about our usage of Productboard before but a lot has changed since then so this should probably also be a topic for an upcoming post.) After this the teams started working on their project plans (I wrote about the project plan template we use here). And just like that, we were off to the races with detailed planning and delivery on customer and business value. The thing I liked most about this process is the reason for the title I chose for the series: developing a Product Strategy collaboratively. This wasn’t a situation where our leaders sat in a room and came up with stuff. Via each team member we stayed close to our customers and our business throughout the process. And we didn’t do this because it feels better (although it does!). We believe that we get better outcomes when decisions are made by the people who are closest to the data (i.e. customer needs, industry knowledge, etc.). That means that if a Product Strategy is not set in a way that ensures you have all the relevant data, it is more likely to fail. So I guess if I have any advice about Product Strategy, it would come down to this: don’t do it alone. There’s probably a lot more to say, but I’m going to end the series here. I really hope this has been helpful. I’d also love to know what questions/feedback you may have on this process—and if there’s anything you’d like me to write about next. Please let me know in the comments! What I’m readingLast weekend I finished the book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fedell and the ending legit made me tear up:
I got a little uncomfortable with some of the “hustle culture” bits in the book. But taken as a whole, this is wonderful read about having a meaningful career and life. Highly recommended. → (Also see my summary of Tony Fadell on the role, responsibilities, and importance of product management) Itamar Gilad recently published a good post on Feature Factories vs. Value Generators. It starts off with some basic definitions that should be familiar to most readers, but the second half expands on the responsibilities product orgs have to ensure a successful transition away from feature factories. We can’t just sit back and hope the rest of the organization goes along—there’s a very important organizational change element here:
This bit about what to measure also stood out to me:
The goal for product teams is not “stop being a feature factory,” it’s “provide more value to customers and the business.” Moving away from “the build trap” is just one of many tactics for making that goal a reality. I agree with Bruce Daisley in The Death of Hybrid Work Is Greatly Exaggerated:
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