Catalog
concept#Product#Governance#Delivery

Product Strategy

A long-term plan to create customer value and business impact by prioritizing, positioning, and making portfolio decisions.

Product strategy defines long-term goals and priorities for a product portfolio and how value is delivered to customers and the business.
Established
High

Classification

  • Medium
  • Business
  • Organizational
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Product roadmap tools (e.g., Aha!, Jira Roadmaps)Analytics and BI platformsCRM and sales systems

Principles & goals

Customer value first: decisions are guided by real customer needs.Hypothesis-driven: strategies are validated through experiments.Clear success metrics: goals and KPIs are defined upfront.
Discovery
Enterprise, Domain

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Wrong prioritization due to incorrect assumptions.
  • Overfocus on short-term KPIs instead of long-term value.
  • Conflicts between product and business strategies.
  • Combine qualitative customer interviews with quantitative user data.
  • Define clear hypotheses and measure relevant KPIs.
  • Ensure visible leadership involvement and transparent communication.

I/O & resources

  • Market analysis and customer research
  • Company objectives and financial constraints
  • Technical feasibility studies
  • Strategic product priorities and roadmaps
  • KPIs and measurement plans
  • Communication and go-to-market plans

Description

Product strategy defines long-term goals and priorities for a product portfolio and how value is delivered to customers and the business. It combines market insights, competitive analysis, and roadmap prioritization to set guardrails for product decisions, resource allocation, and growth paths across the organization.

✔

  • Improved prioritization of investments and roadmaps.
  • Coherent market positioning and messaging.
  • Better alignment between product, engineering, and business.

✖

  • Requires continuous updates with market changes.
  • Can cause long-term inertia if applied too rigidly.
  • Needs reliable data and leadership engagement to be effective.

  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

    Value contribution of a customer over their lifetime.

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)

    Measure of customer satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

  • ARR / MRR

    Recurring revenue as an indicator of business growth.

Scaling a SaaS product

Focus on retention and pricing optimization to grow recurring revenue.

Repositioning after a pivot

Adjust target segments and core messaging after an altered product vision.

Portfolio consolidation

Merging redundant products to focus on core offerings and increase efficiency.

1

Perform a current-state analysis of market and internal capabilities.

2

Define strategic goals and success criteria.

3

Prioritize initiatives and create a roadmap.

4

Plan regular review cycles and adjustments.

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Legacy platforms constrain new product initiatives.
  • Lack of analytics infrastructure hinders measurability.
  • Fragmented data sources slow decision processes.
Data availabilityLeadership alignmentCapacity constraints
  • Maintaining a roadmap as a substitute for strategic discussion.
  • Cutting budgets based on short-term KPIs without strategic reassessment.
  • Centralized strategy without local market adaptations.
  • Confusing tactics with strategy.
  • Insufficient stakeholder alignment before decisions.
  • Ignoring non-customer needs during prioritization.
Market and customer analysisStrategic thinking and prioritizationStakeholder management
Market and customer requirementsBusiness goals and growth strategyAvailability of resources and capabilities
  • • Budget and time constraints
  • • Regulatory requirements in certain markets
  • • Technical dependencies of existing platforms