Qualities of good product strategy
01 Aug 2024, by Calum ShepherdI set out to answer the question ‘What are the qualities of a good product strategy?’.
We all aim to create strategies that are well understood and for colleagues to feel comfortable socialising them, but just how do we go about doing that?
It felt like strategies should have some consistent qualities, and if we get those right then we could free up our time to worry about the ‘what’ of the strategy.
So, I spent some time doing some research.
I’m going to cover what a strategy is, why one is important, what to avoid, and what to aim for.
I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me!
What is a strategy?
“a detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry, or sport, or the skill of planning for such situations” - Cambridge Dictionary
The key thing for me here was the phrase ‘detailed plan’. I have always tried to make them as clear as possible, and clear often means a sufficient level of detail - so it sounds like I was on the right track.
Why is strategy so important?
Your product strategy is what drives alignment and coordination across your company. It ensures everyone is pulling in the same direction at the same point in time. It’s about creating focus.
Imagine shipping a series of new features for a specific segment over the month and your marketing campaigns all being ready to go, customer success talking about them with confidence, support being ready to answer questions, and sales pitching to these new segments.
This really resonated too, and definitely felt like something I had been aiming for.
What makes a bad strategy
Sometimes it is easier to start with what something isn’t.
- It isn’t fluffy. Some people might explain that strategies ‘aren’t supposed to be actionable’. They’ll paint a vague picture for you, leaving you unable to take action. That isn’t ideal. If it isn’t actionable, it isn’t a meaningful strategy
- It isn’t financial metrics. Simply telling your teams to increase revenue shouldn’t really be considered a strategy either; it’s a method to measure success. If you target X segment with Y value to achieve Z revenue, then that’s a much better place to be
- It isn’t how your teams collaborate either. Explaining how your teams will work together isn’t a strategy; that’s probably more a topology. Team topologies define the purpose and relationship of teams. They are important, no doubt, but I’d steer clear calling them a strategy
If you are into team topologies, then you can read a great post on team topologies by Martin Fowler. It’s a fantastic read :)
What makes a good strategy?
The best write up I found wasn’t from a product management source (surprisingly). It’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. You can pick it up on Amazon for cheap as chips.
And, this excellent Marty Cagan piece on product strategy.
So, what makes a good strategy?
- It identifies a series of problems or opportunities
- Written in the order you’ll tackle them
- Each has a diagnosis breaking things down a little
- Each has a series of actions for the team(s) to enact
Additionally, a good strategy should also:
- Be in plain English
- Have a ‘curator’, or ‘owner’
- Be updated when new insights come to light
- Be re-communicated when changed
- Be an iterative document
- Be explainable by everyone across the company
- Move you towards your product vision
I’m planning to stick to this from now on, and hopefully it’ll allow me to continue refining things for the better in the coming months!