PM Lesson 7 - Don't ever build a product without a Product Strategy!

Building a product without a product strategy is a fastest way to building a product that nobody needs and nobody uses.

Jul 04, 2025

https://dribbble.com/shots/2840767-Blueprint

A Product Strategy is a framework that enables you to envision the future of your product keeping essential factors in mind. A product strategy must not be confused with Product Strategy Deployment or how you would go about implementing the Product Strategy. Frameworks like Product Kata and Product Canvas are focussed on the execution of the strategy. We will talk about them in another article. For now, we will only focus on creating a product strategy, in a way that is consistent with the future vision of the company and the business goals that must be reached. We will delve deeper into frameworks that will help us create effective strategies for Products. But, is it really important to have a product strategy? Why do we need a product strategy?

Without a product strategy, there is no guiding principle for the team. The Product Strategy provides a compass and a direction. The Team would go into Feature fatigue adding more and more features, without any particular aim. The Team would go about solving problems that do not require solving. They would go on a product building spree adding features without any concern for their utilization or return on investment. A Strategy would align the broad goals and set the direction for the entire product team. Building a product without an appropriate product strategy would only lead to a product that is built for the whims and fancies of the stakeholders and those at the top management or the people in the team who has the loudest mouth. Building a product with competitor feature parity or on the whims of the upper management is like taking a wild run in the forest without a rough idea of how to get to anywhere.

Product Strategy has two simple components - The Product Vision and the Product Road Map

PRODUCT VISION

The Product Vision must capture the current state of the product and the desired future state of the product, with proper data representing both the state to add objectivity to the process. This will also provide a clear objective and eliminate the chance to shift the goalposts at a later stage and scapegoat people. The Product Vision makes sure that everybody is on the same page and avoids and confusion among various stakeholders and the cross-functional team. There is an acid test to check if the team or the organization has set a Strategy of if it is running blind. Ask a few employees why they are building a few features if all of them provide a consistent answer it means that they are all on the same page. If one of them tells that he was ordered to build it and if another member of the team tells us that it would make the product more beautiful, then you can conclude that the Organization has no strategy to guide them and the team has no Product Vision. Setting a product vision begins by understanding the Macro vision of the Organization and the Company, and then it follows by aligning the direction of the product development with the Company Vision and Mission. A Product Vision that isn't aligned with the Product Vision will eventually find itself out of the purview of the organization.

Product Vision or Vision, in general, is a very deep concept, the more you dig the deeper will be the rabbit hole. But the assumption is that the Vision of the Company is properly handed down to the team by the Company. Ideally, the Product Manager or the Product Team should not have any control over the Vision and Mission of the entire company, but they must have control over their Product Vision.

Nonetheless, there is how an ideal Vision is set, taken from the book Strategize.

Vision must be set by taking all these factors into consideration.

For example, the product vision could be "Introduce B2B and B2C Features into Whatsapp for Enterprises to increase the revenue", in tandem with the overall vision of Whatsapp to make money out of Whatsapp through monetization.

CURRENT STATE, DESIRED STATE, VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER & BUSINESS GOALS

Once the product vision is set, the immediate task is to check the current state of the product with respect to the goal and determine the metrics related to the Vision.

Then it is required to create a few business goals that would allow you to achieve the vision. This can be considered the Future State of the Product or the Business Goals of the product.

Finally, to take the product from the current state to the future state, we should not merely create products to fill the fancy, we need to take the feedback of the customers, and the Voice of the Customers to build features that would be accepted. This will help understand the Challenges that stand in between taking the product from the current state to the Future state.

The animation below captures this perfectly, The author Melissa Perry has done a commendable job capturing Product Strategy. Check out her site - melissaperri.com

Capturing the wrong challenges would mean that the Final State of the product will not get us to our Goals. Thus, the Voice of the Customer becomes the core of this process. If the User Research goes wrong, the product development goes haywire.

Observe that so far, we have not made an attempt to devise a process to implement solutions or build the product. We are investing enough time to get the right problems to solve and set the right direction. If enough research and resources are not invested to set the proper direction, all the subsequent actions will only result in a game of blindfolded racing.

The entire product strategy can be captured in a single page, known as a Product Strategy Canvas, don't confuse this with the Product Canvas, which tries to capture the entire product. Product Canvas gains prominence during the execution phase of the strategy or during the Strategic Deployment phase.

DEFINITIONS:

PRODUCT VISION = SET OF BUSINESS GOALS

Having an idea for a new product is great. But it’s not enough. What you need is a vision that guides everyone involved in making the product a success: product management, development, marketing, sales, and support. The product vision is the overarching goal you are aiming for, the reason for creating the product. It provides a continued purpose in an ever-changing world, acts as the product’s true north, provides motivation when the going gets tough, and facilitates effective collaboration.

To choose the right vision, ask yourself why you are excited to work on the product, why you care about it, what positive change the product should bring about, and how it will shape the future. One of my favorite vision statements comes from Toys R Us. The company’s vision is to “put joy in kids’ hearts and a smile on parents’ faces”. The statement concisely captures the intention behind the company’s products and services and describes the change the users and customers should experience.

If you choose the company vision for your product, then that’s fine. Otherwise, make sure that the two visions aren’t in conflict other but aligned.

Business Goals are usually set based on product vision. Business Goals often have quantitative, i.e. metrics that represent the targets that have to be achieved the end of a quarter or the end of the financial year or might also have a long term vision in mind to expand Globally over 100+ countries, or it could be as simple as double the revenue by next decade or something in the lines of "rising to the top 3 competitors in the industry" or gain monopoly status in the industry.

These Business Goals are often passed down directly from the Top Management which sets the Overall Vision. Usually, multiple Business Goals are derived from the Vision.

There are many strategy deployment frameworks used by Companies to spread the strategy across the entire organization effectively. OKR is one such strategy effectively used by Google. HOSHIN Kanri is another very effective deployment strategy used by Toyota. (We will discuss strategy deployment in another article because it is quite complicated.)

BUSINESS GOAL = SEQUENCE OF CHALLENGES

The Business goals are further split into a sequence of challenges,

The challenge is the first Business goal you have to achieve on the way to your longer-term vision. Which area of your customer journey or funnel needs to be optimized first? It’s communicated as a strategic objective that helps align and focus your team around a certain aspect of product development. This can be qualitative or quantitative. Try to keep these still in broad, high-level terms.

But each Challenge has to be validated from the User Research or must be confirmed by the Market Research. Business Goals must be set by careful observation of market conditions i.e. the competitors, the environment, the industry, and so on...

CHALLENGE - First Business Goal = SERIES OF TARGET STATES

Challenges are achieved through a process of discovery by the Product Team. i.e. the Product Team has to find a way from the Current State through a series of Intermediate states and finally reach the Target Condition they seek. During this process of groping for a path, they might have to solve, technical problems, business problems, legal, cultural, UX, or myriad other problems.

TARGET CONDITION:

The target condition helps break down the Challenge. Challenges are made up of smaller problems you need to tackle along the way. These are set in terms of achievable, measurable metrics. When you set a target condition, your team shouldn’t know exactly how to reach it tomorrow. They should have a good idea of where to start looking.

CURRENT STATE:

The current state is related to where you stand in relation to your vision. It also reflects the current state of the outcomes, including the current measurement of those outcomes.

PRODUCT STRATEGY CANVAS:

The Product Strategy Canvas is created by Melissa Perri, and you can find a blank copy over here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/44td2ksgkb3oqns/Product%20Strategy%20Canvas%20-%20Blank.pdf?dl=0

A Sample Product Strategy Canvas created for Uber is provided above and it captures the Target Condition, Current State and the Challenge for a Single Business Goal.

Thus we need to create multiple copies fo this Product Strategy Canvas, one for each Business Goal.

Melissa Perri has derived this Product Strategy from the Unified Field Theory, used at Toyota extensively.

http://theleanthinker.com/2011/11/26/bill-costantino-toyota-kata-unified-field-theory/

Melissa Perri covers the need to create a Product Strategy and to deploy it effectively!

Melissa Perri does a great job capturing the spirit of a Product Strategy, the spirit, which is more important. If you wish to understand her thought process, behind the Product Strategy Framework and Roadmaps, you should read her book.

ESCAPING THE BUILD TRAP.

CONCLUSION:

The Product Strategy is only one half of the complete story. It only talks about strategizing, but implementing the strategy is a completely different ballgame. Before we could even reach the implementation phase, it becomes extremely critical to spread the Vision, the Business Goals, The Product Strategies, the Target Conditions desired, across the organization. Deploying the strategy effectively determines the success of the strategy and thereby the success of the entire product. In the steps below Part (1-4) cover the Product Strategy while the Parts (5 - 8) are about Product Deployment. We will cover Product Strategy Deployment in the next Article.

(1) Product Vision

(2) Current State (Data)

(3) Product Goals (Voice of the Customer/Feedback & Insights) / (Business Goals)

(4) Target Conditions (Metrics)

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(5) Product Themes

(6) Product Initiatives

(7) Product Roadmap

(8) Product Risks and Mitigation Strategies