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How To Build The Product Strategy?

What can be the most crucial part of Product Management?

Just like before Every Battle, a Battleplan is drawn out. Similarly, before building any Product, a Product Strategy has to be made.

So How to Craft Out a Perfect Product Strategy? 

For the same, you need to look at three parts.

The first is: What is the Product Goal?

You must know what the real final goal is and everyone on the team working on the product must have complete clarity on it.

Because if they don’t, they won’t be able to organize their thoughts in the respective direction. 

Product Goal can be anything: It can be to Acquire More Users First and figure out on Profitability later or it can be to Focus on Profitability also on the go.

In both cases, the Final Product can have drastic differences and if the team doesn’t have clarity on this from the beginning, it is going to backfire on them later.

So as PM, first you yourself from the Stakeholders must clear out what the Final Objective is and what will be the Monthly Goals. This should be made clear to the team so that everyone knows what we have to achieve avoiding last-minute surprises and conflict

Believe me, this is the most common issue that you as a PM will definitely face. So Sort this out first before building the Product

SECOND PART: ENVIORNMENTAL SIGNAL

After knowing the Product Goal, the second most crucial factor is to be aware of the Environment.

Things don’t go as planned. Shit Happens. We face failures.

But if we keep ourselves alert and be prepared on what’s going to come next, we can bounce back quickly.

One example can be of the recent crisis of COVID.

Those who have started planning for it early, are in much better shape when considered to those who awakened at the last moment. 

Or even if during the initial Product Beta Test phase, if you face negative responses from the Customers, you must be agile enough to quickly adapt to things

The point is: BE ALERT. It’s highly possible that things won’t go as planned. So you should be open-minded about it. 

THIRD PART: CONSTRAINTS

After Setting Out Product Goal and the Environment Signal, it’s time to work on Constraints.

No matter in what company you are working or on what type of product you are working on, you always have to manage and create a balance between three constraints:

a) People

b) Money

c) Time

Let’s talk about People First, because it’s the most complex constraint.

For Building the Product, you must be sure that you have the right set of the team. 

For this, you need to work on Various fronts: Having The Right No of people, making sure every individual is capable of working on a product, Making Sure they all should be able to work together. Here you also need to check whether this can be done inhouse or you need to take an Outside Agency help.

Money: Every Project has a cost involved in it. So you need to first clearly check from Stakeholders what’s the budget allocated for this project so that you can align other resources (e.g. Servers, Third Party Tools, etc..).

Time: Every Project has a deadline to complete. This should be set after discussing it with every team member. What I have often seen is that due to Business Pressure, PM might get a shorter timeline than it is needed to complete the project. In such cases, PM needs to work closely team and Stakeholders to align them on the same expectation to avoid any last-minute surprises.