How Can A Product Manager Create A Good Product Strategy?

So what's your product strategy? If you are like most product managers, you probably don't have one. Oh sure, if somebody asks you what your product's strategy is, you can quickly come up with some words that sound good – increase market share, drive down costs, beat the competition, etc. But really, just between us girls, you don't have a strategy for your product do you? Good news, I think that I can help you out here…

What A Product Strategy Is NOT

If we're going to talk about what you need to do in order to create a product strategy, then perhaps our time together would be well spent if we started off by having a quick discussion about what a product strategy is NOT. All too often I believe that product managers make mistakes about what can pass as a product strategy.

First on this list is a mission statement. While these are good documents to have for a company, they don't cut it when it comes to laying down a strategy for your product. A mission statement is a "big" thing – it's designed to show a company what they should be trying to accomplish right now. Your product is a much more focused item – it needs to have a smaller scope that fits your product.

More than once I've run into product managers who when asked what their product strategy was would reach into their pocket and extract a list of goals for the year. Once again, this is a good thing to have, but it is most definitely not a product strategy. A list of goals for your product is too vague. Goals can be all over the map and although they may be a good thing to do, they don't clearly show the direction that you want to move your product in.

Finally, I've seen product managers attempt to use a resource plan as a product strategy. This never works out because a resource plan is simply too unfocused. It's a great way to make sure that you'll have everything that you need when you need it, but it doesn't tell you why you need them or even what they need to do once you have the resources.

The 3 Steps Needed To Create A Product Strategy

Now that we've identified what a product strategy is not, how about if we cover the steps that you need to go through in order to create a product strategy. These three product strategy creation steps were created by Dr. Richard Rumelt a very successful professor and business consultant.

1. What Is The Business Challenge?: Every product has a business challenge that they are facing. As a product manager, it is your responsibility to determine what the nature of this challenge is. Are you being crushed by the competition? Can your customers afford your product? Are your customers solving their problem using other types of solutions? You need to determine what is going on.

2. Create A Guiding Policy: Once you know what the challenge that your product is facing is, your next step has to be to create a guiding policy for it. This means that you need to determine the guidelines that you are going to follow in order to address your product's challenge.

3. Create Coordinated Actions: Finally, you need to come up with a list of actions that will put your guiding policy into motion. These actions have to be very specific and they need to build on each other in order to move you closer towards meeting your product's business challenge.

What All Of This Means For You

Every product manager has the responsibility to create a strategy for their product. Even if you don't currently have one, you need to make one. The key is to realize what a product strategy is NOT: it's not a mission statement (too big), it's not a list of goals (too vague), nor is it a resource plan (too unfocused).

Instead, a product strategy is something that you create in three steps. The first is to determine the nature of the business challenge that your product is currently facing, the next is to create a policy that you can use to guide your product so that it will be at an advantage, and finally it's a set of actions that you can execute that will allow you to put your product strategy into action.

It turns out that it's not hard to create a product strategy. You just need to take the time to do it correctly. Once you have a strategy, you'll know exactly what the next steps are that you have to take in order to ensure that your product will be a success.

Thanks to Dr. Jim Anderson / The Accidental PM
http://www.theaccidentalpm.com/strategy/how-can-a-product-manager-create-a-good-product-strategy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ItProductManagement+%28The+Accidental+Product+Manager%29