2.1 Product strategy

Our definition of ready aligns us for success. It relies heavily on the outputs created in the upstream activity, 1.3 Product vision:

Before starting

Product strategy turns an aspirational product vision into an achievable plan. The activity produces three artifacts: customer personas (who will use the product), a value proposition (how it meets their needs) and business objectives (the initiatives you’ll deliver). These become the foundation for OKRs, the roadmap, and every downstream delivery decision — so 1.3 Product vision needs to be finished first.

Guide to product strategy

Successful product strategies begin and end with user needs. Spend time understanding your customers, their needs, what they see through their user experience, and what’s most important to them.

It’s important to define clear, measurable benchmarks you can test to see if the product is meeting key objectives. Ideally we can translate user needs directly into specific deliverables with outcomes we can measure.

For example, if your customer base consists of visually impaired users, then we need objectives that reflect that. A poorly stated objective would be:

Poorly stated: Deliver an accessible user interface.

This doesn’t really give us a clear benchmark to meet. A well stated objective must incorporate the customer need:

Well stated: Deliver a user interface optimized for visual accessibility needs, including screen reader and ARIA support.

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of roles and attributes that define ways to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. By calling out that goal here we connect the user need with a specific, measurable outcome — it pushes us toward writing acceptance tests that require ARIA compliant attributes, for instance.

It’s a subtle difference, but being specific like this is very important. I like to ask myself, “is that goal specific enough that I know precisely what I would test to prove I’ve met the customer’s need?” The more we can connect objectives with measurable outcomes, the easier it will be to define test-driven results later.

In chapter 2.2 Roadmaps & OKRs, we’ll connect our objectives with specific, measurable Key Results. Our objectives (defined in this section) are qualitative. Connecting those with specific, measurable outcomes is where we protect our value delivery. If we can measure it, we’ll know if the goal has been met.

Inputs

• Product vision statement describing the aspirational future state product.
• The right people with deep customer and product knowledge.

Process

This is a foundational exercise, so you’ll want to involve the whole team and as many stakeholders as possible.

Remember that the success of your product strategy depends on your empathy for user needs. This is about discovering your customer’s attributes — who they are, what they do, what they want, what they need, their obstacles.

Using a workshop format, prepare the team for a collaborative exercise. This is largely a free-form exercise. First we’ll start by describing your customers and their needs. As we go, we’ll elaborate on business objectives that meet their needs.

Step 1: Define personas

Start by creating your customer personas. A persona fills in a picture of a specific customer, the customer’s needs, and obstacles or drivers that might motivate them. Typically, you’ll define a handful of personas where each one fills a stereotype (such as “first time buyer,” or “returning customer”):

1. Identify the customer stereotype. You don’t need to define every user stereotype, you can come back and add more later. Look for different needs, wants, and drivers — these are your different stereotypes. You can use this template as a starting point.
2. Identify their needs. What exactly are the needs and wants of your customers? Include needs that seem outside your product scope too — it can be helpful, and sometimes changes the product direction.

Start this exercise by focusing on the customer. Explore the needs and attributes of your customers, looking to capture a “picture” of each. Focus on identifying what problems the customer needs to solve — not on what your product does.

I like to begin by sketching out a customer profile using a table similar to the following. This is a hypothetical customer viewed from the perspective of a new financial services platform developer:

Notice we aren’t talking about product features yet. We want to focus on the customer to build a profile of who will use the product, and what motivates them.

In the long run, using these personas will help you stay focused on the core value proposition that attracts your customer. As we begin the next activity, 1.4 Business capabilities and functions, these personas become central to your use cases.

Step 2: Define business objectives

Once we have at least one fully fleshed-out persona, start thinking about business objectives. These are not product features. Business objectives are initiatives that the team will deliver. Product features are finer grained — at this point, we want to stay strategic.

An initiative encompasses a whole business outcome or capability, such as “deliver a modern, accessible loan-to-purchase experience that surpasses our competitors.” Breaking this down into specific features that expresses the fine-grained detail of how that happens comes later.

Start by creating a list of business objectives that align with and meet the customer persona needs:

1. Business objectives. Exactly what will the business achieve that fulfills your customer needs? Objectives must align with both your businesses mission and the customer needs. If they don’t align, it might be time to challenge the viability of the product as currently envisioned.

In the case of our hypothetical bank and the “Sally” persona, we might end up with these objectives:

Notice that these are not features — each objective supports the customer needs. These high-level initiatives will establish your long-term strategic objectives. They will also direct exactly how you build specific features, when that time comes. For instance, from the example above we know the product needs to be mobile, modern, support accessibility, and be responsive. Those strategic objectives will push us toward specific architectural decisions.

Keep in mind that product differentiation is a crucial aspect of a successful product strategy. It helps define how your product will stand out from the crowd and compete on the marketplace.

As you start to collect your business objectives, you will likely find some that seem more important than others. You might find it helpful to use a SWOT analysis to better understand the landscape and determine priorities. Use these insights to inform your strategy.

Outputs

• Customer personas. A list of personas, filling in a picture of the customers, their needs, wants, obstacles and drivers.
• Business objectives. A concrete list of high-level initiatives that establish your long-term strategic goals. Each should describe a specific, measurable outcome.

Templates

• User personas template

Next activity

• 2.2 Roadmaps & OKRs