PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FUNDAMENTALS: BUILDING THE RIGHT THING
Constructing effective product vision and strategies
While the product vision is to inspire and lead teams, product strategy is about execution management and how to deliver on the vision. There are 8 core principles to constructing an effective product vision and 5 for setting effective product strategies.
Defining the product vision
The product vision aims to paint a picture of what the product desires to become in the next 2–5 years for software and 5–10 for hardware devices. A product vision describes how the team aims to attain its goals and gains inspiration from the corporate mission which is a higher-level statement that talks about the organization’s aspirations. A product vision is a statement that aims to persuade the minds of immediate team members, customers, and other stakeholders including investors and partners through narratives, stories, and/or visuals to motivate and align efforts. Furthermore, a strong and successful product vision is the most effective talent acquisition tool and a daily statement of motivation, meaning, and purpose for the team.
It is recommended to test product vision before publically rolling them out, aiming to provoke human emotions, bring hedonic buy-ins, and create a sense that it’s a purposeful pursuit.
Constructing an effective product vision
To build a strong product vision that inspires and motivates stakeholders, consider the following principles:
- Cover the why. The product vision must address why the product team is in this area of business and what it’s trying to create as value. It’s important to be a missionary and not a mercenary and the why will serve as the guiding north star.
- Focus on the problem. And not your solution (i.e., product). This requires a deepened degree of empathy with the customers’ pains and challenges. Again, this will help product teams to be missionaries and not mercenaries.
- Aim big. The more transformative your vision, the more likely is the team to create competitive value and think outside of its comfort zone. Ambitious goals will attract ambitious and disruption-seeking or game-changing talent.
- Disrupt from within. Following on the concept of thinking big, if you don’t think and aim big, someone else will. So it’s better to be disrupted from within than from the outside.
- Revise if needed. (Or skate to where the puck is!) Depending on the market trends, a product vision can be revised; it’s never set in stone. So be flexible, and change your vision statement as the dynamics of your market shift due to demand, competitive, or technological movements.
- Focus on the big picture. The product vision is a 4–5 year outlook direction and unlike functional strategies, it can’t change too often. Therefore it is important to find and focus on megatrends that will be dominant in the long haul and to build the product vision around them.
- Be emotional. The vision is trying to convince human beings to take a leap of faith with the product. Therefore, it needs to convey a hedonic message and provoke human emotions to get them going.
- Make it easy to communicate. The product vision needs to be easy to communicate and to create an ease of evangelism among its members. The vision needs to be easy to sell, or simply put, it needs to sell itself.
Defining product strategy
A product strategy is the logical and prioritized sequence of milestones or releases the product team plans to deliver on the path to realizing its product vision (i.e. the 2–5 years desired state-to-be). In action, product strategies need to be built around a series of prioritized product-market-fits that could consist of varying segments including:
- Market verticals
- Customers
- Geography
In addition to segmented views of priorities, product strategies need to consider the Total Addressable Market and demand opportunity, the cost to distribute or Go-To-Market, and the ROI of demand vs. distribution cost.
In essence, there is no single perfect product strategy for all products, however, it’s best to have a focused strategic plan that aims at tacking prioritized points of value and markets over tackling many topics or goals or markets at the same time.
Furthermore, product strategies must align and consider the needs of other functions including engineering, sales, and marketing to capture value as an organization, which will require the product team to have a broad and deep understanding of the broader business concept.
In short, while the product vision is to inspire and set the direction (i.e., provide leadership), product strategy is about execution management and how to get there.
Constructing effective product strategies
To build effective and execution-friendly product strategies, consider the following:
- Focus. …on one market or persona at a time and don’t build too many solutions for too many problems at once. Try to focus on underserved segments or areas that play to your strength. The choice of field of play will be key to success.
- Align with corporate and business strategy. This will require fully understanding your business context and priorities and the objectives to deliver upon.
- Align with internal stakeholders. This means legal, sales, marketing, procurement, distribution, operations, finance, etc. A strategy constructed in a silo will most likely fail before it gets executed.
- Deprioritize competition. And focus on the customers. Don’t go into a panic over the competitors’ new releases. Rather, focus on solving the pains of customers.
- Communicate. The strategy with relevant stakeholders, ask for their feedback and keep them up to date on your results and achievements. Celebrate wins with others and own and proactively create rescue or recovery plans for failed endeavors.
