Your roadmap is not a product strategy.

 Your roadmap is not a product strategy.

Of tasks you should do, strategy tends to be the most confused. Too often, some window dressing on a roadmap is called strategy.

Strategy needs to be a level higher than roadmaps:
1. It connects vision & roadmap
2. It considers competition
3. It helps prioritize

1. It connects vision & roadmap

A simple heuristic to remember is the 5 questions (pictured):
· Why → Vision
· What → Strategy
· Who → Segmentation
· When → Roadmap
· How → Specifications

Product strategy helps answer the question, “what are we going to build to achieve the vision?”

Unlike vision, which is timeless, strategy should be specific to the state of now. It should describe key focusing points to inform the roadmap.

2. It considers competition

Consider the word, “strategy.” It comes from general business strategy.

The reason strategy was a revolutionary concept was accounting for competitors. Great product characterizes competition & counter-positions.

Consider the word, “product.” It is about building something for someone.

So product strategy is the plan for how the product will drive its part of the company strategy. Great product strategy helps justify why a product team even exists.

3. It should help prioritize

Strategy is created on the 1-2 year timeframe. Roadmap can be as fine grained as next month or quarter.

A roadmap prioritizes the sequence of features you will work on. Its critical input is the strategy.

Take these examples of different strategies in a similar market - Discord, Slack, & Teams:
· Discord: bringing together communities of gamers & crypto enthusiasts
· Slack: tasteful chat for the technically inclined
· Teams: integrated chat for O365 users

This informs the roadmap for these teams.

For instance, a particular quarter might look like:
· Discord: gamer integrations
· Slack: third party bots
· Teams: ability to live edit word docs

Strategy helps products in the same market pursue different features.

So what does a strategy look like? The format itself is different. What I’ve seen done best is:

Roadmaps : spreadsheets
Strategies : docs

Great strategy docs encapsulate the principle of “Smart Brevity.” It’s not a long novel. It’s a short, well-written doc.