Take Action: How to Align Product Strategy with Product Management
How I came to realize product strategy doesn’t exist in isolation
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” — Robert Frost
I sat daydreaming in the nondescript cafeteria of a Fortune 500 company, unprepared for what was about to hit me. The intoxicating aroma of fresh ground coffee filled the air. I was drifting in and out of thought, not paying attention to my coffee partner, when they broke my spell with a question.
“So what exactly is product strategy? Why is it important if I have a solid product management team?”
I snapped out of la la land. Questions were my business as a consultant. However, for some reason, I felt surprised and a bit offended by this particular one. Maybe it was the seemingly accusatory tone of the question. Yet, as it turned out, it was a Robert Frost moment.
How I defined product strategy would define my professional career. It would make all the difference. A thousand thoughts raced through my head. Then the smell of coffee again wafted in my direction, and I started to drift, thinking about the answer.
“Hey, are you listening?” snipped my coffee partner.
“Uh, yes. How about I draw it up on a slide, and we discuss tomorrow?” using my best-consulting delay tactic.
“I guess that would be okay, although not sure why you can’t just tell me.” My coffee partner wasn’t wrong. I should have an answer at the ready. With my brain whirring a hundred miles an hour, what would I do? Twenty four hours wasn’t enough time.
As I thought long and hard about the answer back in the lobby of my hotel, I realized something important. If you look at most traditional product lifecycles, they start with market development and end with decline/end of life. The agile product life cycle started with ideation/discovery. Others start with innovation. Minimal discussion and representation of the role or need for product strategy existed.
I had a new crusade to take up. So, energized, I got to work.
Product strategy is the opening act
In a product-led organization, product strategy maps company strategy, goals, objectives, and desired outcomes down to a plan for product teams. Therefore it should be first step in the product lifecycle.
For a moment, imagine a play without an opening act, an opening scene, venue, or props. Instead, the play goes from the Title to Act II with only voice and no visuals. That’s the equivalent of going right from your company’s goals and objectives into the product lifecycle without a strategy.
The product strategy is the opening act, the visuals, the backdrop, and the venue. Like a play lacking these essential elements, a product built without a strategy can feel sub-par and abrupt.
Product strategy vs. product management
Product strategy is a creative act to “do something new,” approaching an opportunity from a different angle. It includes the north star, the market opportunity, how the buyer and user will obtain value, how you will win in the market, key outcomes metrics, objectives, assumptions, dependencies, constraints, and how the product will deliver on the companies goals/objectives. It represents an activity skewed heavily toward ambiguity, creative thinking, research, and framing.
As a product strategist, you are writing the outline for the play, framing the opening act, setting the first scene, creating the props, and selecting the location. You are not directing and delivering the play to an audience.
On the flip side, product management is about creative execution. It’s about marshaling resources to deliver a functional product over multiple releases. Product management is the process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service.
It includes the post-strategy lifecycle of a product, from ideation to development and go to market. As a product manager, you are the director and plan out the play, fitting it to the actor pool, rehearsing, all leading to opening night — your launch event. Once launched you manage as it continues, through ebbs and flows, until the audience is tired and its time to retire the screenplay.
Integrating product strategy and product management is a game changer
Back to me for a moment — I realized I had been doing a drop and run. I completed the strategy and left. I didn’t transition it to the product team; I didn’t even consider them. That’s just wrong. Vice versa, they probably looked at the strategy and said, “so what.”
While it may not seem to be, it was a turning point in my career. The realization that two distinct disciplines were complementary and required each other was immense. They both needed to be part of the same lifecycle. Product strategy was just the “new” first step in that lifecycle.
I was missing three crucial points until then.
- Product strategy is the new starting point for the product lifecycle, albeit one missing in almost all lifecycles at the time.
- While product strategy and management both existed, they existed as distinct and separate capabilities in my mind. As I came to find out, it’s true in the mind of many others.
- They required integration. Product strategy and management should no longer exist separately. Instead, product strategy and management must be partner disciplines.
A new strategy + product lifecycle comes to life
While there is no shortage of product management frameworks, I include product strategy as the first distinct step. Product strategy is essential to product development, activation, and management. Yet it’s largely ignored or minimized. Is it a wonder that many new products fail?
With this idea solidified in my mind and a framework (all consultants need a framework), I presented my thoughts to my coffee partner the following day. The reaction — an uninspired, that’s what I thought. Thankfully that’s not where it ended. Following the disappointing response was a fun, heated debate about the details of what falls into each discipline — possibly a subject for a future post.
You must take action
Epiphanies, or in my case, realizations, have no value without action. It would have been easy enough to leave the concept in the world of thought and theory. By no stretch am I saying I should be the person credited with aligning the two disciplines. I am not sure who deserves that credit. However, I can say I took action. I put the alignment of product management and strategy into practice conceptually and in all the projects and products from there forward.
So as you work through the idea of two aligned disciplines — product strategy and management- you must take action. Ask yourself how both teams could benefit from a conversation, structure an agenda, and set the meeting. Take one small step first, even if it’s introducing the two groups and sharing your thoughts from this post. Then watch the magic happen.
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Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.
