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Recommendation
Do you understand what planning and executing a product development strategy truly entails? In this helpful article, product development expert Vince Law works to clarify the concept of “strategic thinking.” Law explains strategy’s importance and offers a practical framework that contextualizes and defines strategy within the overall product development timeline. Law also offers general and specific examples of the framework and thus, strategic thinking, in action. getAbstract recommends this article to project leaders looking to better understand how to develop and execute strategy.
Take-Aways
- Strategic thinking helps product development and execution proceed smoothly.
- Before developing a strategy, clearly define the problem and articulate in general terms how you plan to fix the issue.
- Develop the overall guidelines – the strategy – that will shape your project’s development. These rules may change as new information or obstacles present themselves.
- Make the broad strategy more specific by formulating the practical steps you will take to achieve your goal.
- Begin to execute the practical steps, adjusting those steps and the overall strategy as needed along the way.
Summary
In the world of product development, the term “strategy” gets bandied about with regularity. But knowing that strategy matters isn’t the same as understanding why it matters or what true strategic thinking and planning entail. A well-conceived and articulated strategy helps teams avoid problems in both the planning and execution stages of product development. Understanding how to formulate strategy is critical if you want to succeed as a product manager or leader.
“Strategy represents the set of guiding principles for your roadmapping and execution tasks to ensure they align with your mission and vision.”
Five components illustrate how strategy fits within the larger product development framework:
- “Mission” – You must define the problem in need of a solution in broad terms. This is likely formulated at the highest level of a company or organization.
- “Vision” – Define the idealized solution within the mission.
- “Strategy” – Identify the main guidelines that will shape your project’s development. You may need to adapt these guidelines as new information or obstacles present themselves.
- “Roadmap” – Transform the practical steps you will take to achieve your strategic goals – including specific deliverables and timeframes – into a workable plan.
- “Execution” – Implement your roadmap by adjusting those steps and the overall strategy as needed along the way.
“For those who don’t constantly think about it or haven’t been exposed to a lot of it, strategy can often be confusing at best and intimidating at worst.”
The car manufacturer Tesla provides an excellent example of this framework in action: Elon Musk has clearly articulated Tesla’s mission (to promote electric cars), its vision (to save the environment by creating electric cars), and its strategy (to use the sale of more expensive vehicles to build more affordable cars and offer other “zero emission electric power generation options” to consumers).
About the Author
Vince Law is a product consultant, coach and instructor. He is the director of product management at General Assembly and senior project manager at Storm8.
This document is intended for the use of ACRIP employees.
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