Product Must Haves - Part 2 - Strategy, Goals, Roadmap
How to move product creation from high-level vision to actionalbe plan.
If you missed the part 1 of this article, I highly recommend starting from here - Product Must Haves - Part 1 - Mission, Vision, Problem.
But if you read it and already know how to create product mission, vision and find problems which your product will solve, let’s continue.
So, what to do after we have defined the product mission, vision and problems?
Go further and dive deeper - create a STRATEGY. Essentially, a strategy is a high-level plan of actions on how to take over the world achieve product mission, vision and solve user problems. Start creating strategy by answering the question:
What is my plan to achieve the product mission and vision?
Each step of the strategy should solve the user's problem and bring you closer to the vision and mission of the product.
Let's go back to my example - how I created this newsletter about product creation and career in tech.
After I defined the product mission and vision, I’ve got an understanding what my product strives to achieve. If you look at the picture below I started from the beginning of the path (= Today) and aim to achieve product vision & mission (right side of the diagram). Everything between TODAY and VISION is strategy
Let’s move forward and fill in the gaps. On the picture below I added my strategy to achieve the product vision. As you can see - it contains high-level steps that I will take to achieve what I want. These could even be individual products or just large features - depends on the product type. At the strategy level, we need to solve user problems that interfere with the product vision, that’s why I connected each problem to its potential solution.
In my case, creating this newsletter is just one step in the strategy that brings me closer to implementing my vision. After all, my ultimate goal is to create a community of people around product creation.
When we create a product strategy, we need to keep in mind some of the main qualities that a good strategy should have:
Problem-oriented: clearly identifies the problem that needs to be solved.
Practical: outlines specific actions that will solve the problem.
Focused: Focuses on a small number of high-impact solutions.
Cohesive: Each element supports and strengthens each other.
As another example, let’s look at Tesla's strategy.
Tesla's mission: "To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century."
Tesla's vision: "Accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."
Tesla's strategy: "Build an expensive sports car → Use the income to create an affordable car → Use the income to create an even more affordable car → While also providing zero-emission electricity."
As we see, Tesla with every step of their strategy move closer to their vision. After all, the more people can afford to buy their own electric car, the sooner everyone will switch to sustainable energy. Smart.
So, we have the defined strategy. Next we need to understand:
How will we measure progress? How will we understand that the plan has been completed and vision/mission achieved?
To answer these questions we need to set GOALS. Goals should be SMART, where:
S - specific
M - measurable
A - achievable
R - relevant
T - time-bound
Let's take, for example, my product which I’m currently building:
its vision: a community around the product creation.
its goal: 10,000 members on Telegram channel and Substack newsletter by the end of 2024.
The number of users is the main metric of my product, which is called NORTH STAR. In addition to the north star metric, there might be other metrics monitored but it all depends on the product complexity. For example, as a secondary metric I want to monitor % of active users/readers to see if my articles are really interesting for the audience.
After defining goals and metrics, we need to understand
What exactly needs to be done to achieve our goals?
The answer to this question will help us create a ROADMAP. Essentially, a roadmap is a breakdown of each strategy stage into smaller initiatives, projects or epics (the naming varies from company to company).
Let’s take, for example, my first strategy step - to create newsletter about product creation, and create a roadmap for it. In order to achieve the step I need to break it down to smaller pieces - I need to complete 3 small projects (#1, 2, 3) which also should be split into even smaller pieces - tasks (#a, b, c, etc.) which creates the backlog:
Create educational channels:
Analyze existent options & compare them.
Create Telegram channel for content in RU language.
Create Substack channel for content in ENG language
Create a content plan:
Analyze what interests people.
Define main topics.
Create content plan for the next 3 months.
Audience Acquisition.
So, this is how we got from the high-level representation of the product to smaller tasks that are ready for implementation.
In theory, this may look a little confusing, so for those who have never implemented a product or feature, I highly recommend trying to go through all these steps and try to practice it.
Thanks for reading and please let me know if you have any questions or if this articles makes any sense for you!