Creating a Miro Board as Your Starting Point

I usually kick off the process by setting up a Miro Board to act as a central reference point. From this foundation, I generate presentations and visual roadmaps based on the collected information. This technique allows me to dive in quickly without getting bogged down in intricate templates or elaborate roadmaps. By taking a broad approach, I can craft a product strategy in mere days rather than months.

Here’s the five-step framework:

1. Identify Your Product Moats
2. Capture Your Product Signals
3. Align Company Goals
4. Determine Product Bets and Metrics
5. Summarise with a Product Vision

Let’s explore each step in detail below. 👇

Step 1: Identifying Your Product Moats

The initial step involves pinpointing the three critical components of your Product Strategy: Positive-Sum, Product Powers, and Profit Models. These elements represent the competitive advantages of your product. We delve into these aspects more thoroughly in our post about Product Strategy Mindset.

To define your unique moats, conduct a workshop with your team and relevant stakeholders. Include your Tech Lead, Designer, Decision Maker, and any subject matter experts. A diverse group offers invaluable insights.

On a whiteboard, write down the three components and guide the team through these questions:

• What distinguishes us from competitors? What do our customers appreciate? (Positive-Sum perspective)
• What advantages will take competitors 3–5 years to replicate? (Product Powers)
• What business models enable us to achieve profits above the industry average? (Profitability)

Explore both the current and future states of your product or product line and add these insights to your Miro Board.

Step 2: Establishing Your Product Signals

Once your product moats are defined, the next step is to set up your Product Signals. The three key signals to focus on are Market, Customer, and Business Signals.

Your Product Signals help mitigate the three main types of risks: Market risk, Value risk, and Viability risk. Start with Market Signals. If market conditions are unfavorable, reconsider your direction.

Research the following five aspects and document them on your Miro Board:

• Market size of your product
• Market competition
• Market growth
• Technology dependencies
• Regulatory/Stakeholder approvals

This step requires thorough research and data collection. You can gather insights from sources like:

• Google searches, ChatGPT, SEM tools, market research sites, competitor websites, shareholder presentations, government statistics, or industry publications.

Next, delve into Customer Signals, which highlight customer needs that must be addressed to generate market value. Balance quantitative and qualitative research by investigating:

• Customer needs/gains/pains
• Switching costs for customers
• Customer purchasing power

These insights can be derived from:

• Customer interviews/research, surveys, NPS feedback, A/B testing, customer service teams, or web analytics.

Finally, to ensure you deliver business value, focus on researching:

• Business objectives
• Long-term drivers
• Strategic focus areas
• Vision/Mission statements

These insights can stem from:

• Revenue forecasts, OKRs, CEO vision presentations, investor/board presentations, departmental strategies, or leadership team strategy discussions.

Consolidate all your Product Signals into your online whiteboard. As you refine the board, your Product Intuition will improve.

Step 3: Aligning Company Goals

After gathering your Product Signals, it’s crucial to identify a company metric to focus on. Company goals serve as a framework for prioritizing product and feature development.

To begin, schedule one-on-one meetings with senior stakeholders (Head/VP of Product, GMs, and other leadership members). In these discussions, ask about their high-level objectives for the year, indicating that you will document and prioritize these with the broader leadership teams.

Utilize OKRs and the S.M.A.R.T. goals framework to clarify these objectives. When stakeholders propose product ideas, ensure you clarify the goals and metrics the proposed solutions would achieve. Consider asking your leadership team to rank these goals in order of importance.

Focus on one or two primary objectives each quarter, but don’t worry if you don’t hit them immediately. Some companies need several attempts to hone in on their focus. Persistence is key.

Step 4: Identifying Product Bets and Metrics

Next, pinpoint the Product Bets that have the greatest potential to meet company goals, and set metrics to measure progress. Generating product ideas is a complex task I will address separately, but you can start by revisiting your Product Signals for inspiration.

Once you have gathered a list of product ideas, maintain and prioritize them using an Ideas Backlog—a simple spreadsheet that lists all your product concepts along with various prioritization factors.

🔗 Here is the Ideas Backlog template for your convenience.

While numerous prioritization tools and frameworks exist, I favor a straightforward Scorecard Prioritization method.

🔗 Here is the Ideas Backlog template for your convenience.

Begin by adding these columns:

• Priority, Initiative or Product Name, Tactical or Strategic Bet
• Impact on the customer—an estimate based on feedback and research
• Your short- to medium-term company goals and long-term business drivers
• Confidence level as a percentage, which will grow as you gain insights about the feature/product
• Value detractors like effort and market competition
• Lastly, include a column for "Reasons to Believe" and any other contextual details relevant to your prioritization.

Be cautious not to overload the backlog with columns; too many can lead to confusion. Each additional column should provide a clear rationale for why you're developing this product or feature.

🔗 Here is the Ideas Backlog template for your convenience.

After establishing priorities, the next step is to set metrics for each strategic bet. These metrics will help ensure you’re on the right path to meeting your business objectives.

Ask yourself these three questions:

1. "If we are on track to achieve this strategy, what customer behavior do we want to influence?"
2. "If customer behavior changes, what user metrics will reflect that?"—this serves as your leading indicator.
3. "If we see a shift in that user metric, what business metrics will also change?"—this is the lagging indicator you’re aiming for.

Here are some tips for developing metrics:

• Start with benchmarks by reviewing internal or external reports.
• Analyze competitors, especially if they are publicly traded.
• Model the anticipated impact of your product based on user uptake and retention.

You can have multiple metrics, but it’s best to distill them into two categories: Leading and Lagging metrics. Achieving about 70% certainty is adequate, but be ready to adjust metrics once your product is launched.

Once you have defined your priorities and metrics, the next step is to organize your features according to these metrics.

Wait, this resembles a Product Roadmap, doesn’t it? That’s because a roadmap is essentially a representation of your product strategy. Strategy comes first, followed by the roadmap.

Step 5: Summarising with a Product Vision

After establishing all your product bets and metrics, you can encapsulate your Product Strategy with a Product Vision. You may wonder why the Product Vision comes at the end of this process rather than at the start.

The Product Vision reflects the culmination of all the Product Signals, Company Goals, and Strategic Decisions that have been made throughout the process. Thus, understanding the context first is crucial before formulating your Product Vision.

Your Product Vision serves as a motivational tool, guiding others and acting as a north star for meaningful contributions.

A Product Vision differs from a Company Vision. The Company Vision outlines where the organization is headed, while the Product Vision explains how it will support the realization of that corporate vision. Essentially, the Company Vision is the input, and the Product Vision is the output.

Here’s a template for developing a Product Vision Statement:

Our product assists <target customer> in <achieving this outcome>.

We will accomplish this by:

1. Expanding on: <these strategic bets>,
2. Exploring into: <these strategic bets>,
3. Enforcing our lead in: <these strategic bets>.

For instance, using Blinkist as an example:

Blinkist aids busy individuals who want to read more non-fiction books and absorb knowledge in minutes rather than hours.

We will achieve this by:

1. Expanding the range of languages available in the app.
2. Exploring summaries of non-fiction podcasts and video content.
3. Strengthening our position as a leader in providing high-quality book summaries.

Once you have crafted a Product Vision statement, you can illustrate the future of the product through videos, designs, and demonstrations.

Here are some examples:

• Apple Glass: Concept video
• InVision Studio: YouTube
• SpaceX: YouTube
• Pico — Garden in Your Palm: Kickstarter

And there you have it! That’s the five-step process for formulating your product strategy:

1. Identify your Product Moats
2. Capture your Product Signals
3. Align your Company Goals
4. Determine Product Bets and Metrics
5. Summarise with a Product Vision

Visualizing Your Product Strategy

To assist you in visualizing this process, I have compiled all the necessary steps into my Product Strategy Miro board. Feel free to make a copy and tailor it to your needs.

Once you’ve developed your Product Strategy, constructing your Product Roadmap becomes a logical next step. The items on your roadmap represent strategic bets, with timelines dependent on estimates and efforts (a topic I will discuss in my next post).

If you’re encountering this guide for the first time, it’s essential to grasp the three Product Strategy mindsets before embarking on your product strategy creation.

Remember, product strategy is 80% mindset and 20% execution. Without the right mindset, no amount of tools or processes will lead to success. Check out the related post below:

Enjoy strategizing!