One post tagged with "product-launch"

What is a Product Strategy Framework?​

A product strategy framework is a structured approach to planning, developing, and launching products that will actually sell. It's basically the roadmap that gets you from cool idea moment to actually making something for your customers and they actually love it (which usually means pay.)

Now this is mostly aimed at creating Product Strategy Framework's and not finding Product Market Fit or Problem Solution Fit, you should of course you should you apply a very similar rubric to new product too. Which in it's most basic form is:

• Who is this product for? (your target market or user personas)?
• What problem are we solving and what value will the product offer?
• Why will users care (what's our unique value proposition or differentiator)?
• How will we succeed?
• When and in what order will we roll things out (major milestones or phases, a.k.a. your product roadmap)?

And it should go without saying talking too 100s of clients, customers, users and finding common problems is always always always the way to start this.

Think of the product strategy framework as the bridge between your product vision and your execution strat like the product roadmap and development sprints. It's not about listing every feature you'll ever build; it's about setting guardrails/KPIs and context. This way, even when your team is busy building and iterating, they understand the context and ultimate goal. This differs from a public product roadmap in it's much more inclusive and covers off internal private things, ideas, more precise timelines, team planning, asset allocations but still high level.

Tl:dr A product strategy framework is essentially a structured approach to defining what you're building, why you're building it, who it's for, and how you'll make it successful. It's the high-level plan that connects your product vision to the nitty-gritty of development and go-to-market execution.

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Why Do You Need a Product Strategy Framework?​

If you're a founder or product lead, you might wonder, "Can’t I just iterate quickly and figure it out as I go?"

You can try, but flying blind is a risky way to build a business. Speaking from experience, did that and we built a product now long dead that did exactly nothing useful.

Here are a few big reasons a product strategy framework is worth your time (even if the term sounds like corporate BS):

• Clarity and Focus: A product strategy framework forces you to clarify your product's purpose and niche. Instead of saying "we're building a project management tool for everyone," you’ll articulate something like "we're building a project management tool for freelance designers that integrates with design software and solves the issue of client feedback chaos." That clarity keeps you chasing your tail with random 'good idea' features that nobody wants.

• Alignment: A documented strategy framework is the great equaliser. It gets everyone on the same page about the product direction. When tough decisions come up, you can refer back to the strategy: "Does this new feature idea support our plan or distract from it?"

• Prioritisation and Roadmap Guidance: Filter all the cool to have vitamin bs Feature idea. It helps you prioritise what to build now vs. later. By mapping features to your goals, it makes it muchhh less likely you'll overpromise and underdeliver, and more likely to launch on time.

• Easier Product Launches: Having that strategic groundwork makes launch planning much smoother. Your value proposition and target customer (defined in the strategy) directly inform your marketing campaigns and sales playbook.

• As a bonus it can really help build confidence with your team, users or pesky investors . It shows that you have a a plan, not just a cool idea.

Broad Overview of a Product Strategy Framework​

• Product Vision: You start with a big vision (your "why" and ultimate goal). For a SaaS founder, this might be something lofty like "help small businesses manage their finances effortlessly."

• Product Strategy: Next, you formulate the strategy to achieve that vision. This is where the framework comes in. You decide on your target users, pinpoint the core problem you'll solve, figure out your key differentiators, and set success metrics/KPIs. Essentially, you're crafting your product management strategy here – aligning what you'll build with business goals and market needs.

• Product Roadmap: With the strategy in hand, you create a roadmap. This is a high-level plan of features and releases mapped over time, who, how, when. More broad than a public product roadmap but stays high level (accessible to read in 5minutes.)

• Development & Iteration: Now your team executes, following whatever development framework you prefer (Agile sprints, etc.). Because you have a clear strategy, even as you iterate and adapt, you can check if new ideas support the strategy or not. (This is where having those guardrails saves you from "feature creep" or chasing every shiny object.)

• Product Launch: basically a plan for how you'll introduce the product to the market (which channels, messaging, pricing, etc.). It should align with your overall product strategy.

Common Product Strategy Frameworks​

1. Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)​

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This framework focuses on understanding the "job" your customers are "hiring" your product to do. It's less about what features your product has and more about the progress your customers are trying to make in their lives.

How it works:

• Identify the job your customer is trying to accomplish
• Understand the circumstances and context around that job
• Design your product to fulfil that job better than alternatives

JTBD is fantastic for focusing on real customer needs rather than shiny features. Companies like Intercom have built their entire product development approach around this framework, and they're crushing it.

I'll give you a real example, I think Reid Hoffman is the one I need to credit. A Snickers bar and a KitKat have very different jobs to do. The Snickers is often bought to satiate hunger, the nuts, the chocolate, the fats, it's a quick hit to keep driving that truck. KitKat is not doing that job, its about leisure, or stress relief, it's not to help work.

2. Lean Product Development​

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Born from the Lean Startup methodology, this framework emphasises validated learning and rapid iteration based on customer feedback.

Core components:

• Build a minimum viable product (MVP)
• Measure how customers respond
• Learn from their behaviour
• Iterate based on those insights

This approach is great for resource-constrained teams who need to be sure they're building something people want before investing too heavily. It's why so many startups use this framework—it reduces risk and wastage.

A great example is a landing page with a signup form. It's cheap and fast, can I get 200 people to sign up to this service and give an email. If no, it's not worth it, if yes what's MVP2? ASAP you want them to pay or use your service but proxies for demand early are crucial for learning.

3. Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)​

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Similar to JTBD but more structured, ODI breaks down customer needs into specific desired outcomes and then prioritises product features based on how well they deliver those outcomes.

Process:

• Define customer-desired outcomes
• Measure importance and satisfaction for each outcome
• Identify opportunities (important but unsatisfied outcomes)
• Create solutions for those opportunities
• Test those solutions with customers

If you're data-driven and want a methodical approach to product development, ODI gives you the structure to make evidence-based decisions.

4. Kano Model​

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The Kano Model helps you understand which product features will delight customers versus which ones just meet basic expectations.

Feature categories:

• Basic needs - Must-haves that cause dissatisfaction if missing
• Performance needs - Features where better performance = higher satisfaction
• Delighters - Unexpected features that create delight but aren't missed if absent

This framework is particularly useful when deciding which features to include in your next release. It prevents you from over-investing in things customers don't care about.

5. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)​

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While not exclusively a product strategy framework, OKRs provide a clear structure for setting and measuring product goals.

Structure:

• Objectives: What you want to achieve
• Key Results: How you'll measure success

For example:

• Objective: Launch a product that becomes the market leader in customer satisfaction
• Key Results:
  • Achieve NPS score of 40+ within 3 months of launch
  • Reach 30% week-over-week user growth for first quarter
  • Maintain less than 5% churn rate

Google, Intel, and countless other successful companies use OKRs to keep their product teams aligned and accountable.

How to Choose the Right Product Strategy Framework​

There's not a right choice here, any of these could work for you, jobs to be done is especially important in physical product world whereas lean product is for those earlier stage teams without much of anything.

These questions while help you figure it out:

1. What's your company size and structure?

   • Larger companies might need more structured approaches like ODI
   • Early Stage Startups should go with Lean Product Development

2. What's your product maturity?

   • New products: Focus on frameworks that emphasize market validation
   • Established products: Consider frameworks that help optimize and expand

3. What's your team's expertise?

   • Technical teams might prefer more data-driven frameworks
   • Design-led teams might work better with JTBD or Kano

4. What's your market situation?

   • Competitive markets: Use frameworks that help identify differentiation
   • Emerging markets: Focus on frameworks that help discover needs

5. What's your business model?

   • SaaS: Frameworks that emphasise ongoing value and retention
   • One-time purchases: Frameworks focused on initial value delivery

Implementing Your Product Strategy Framework​

• One-Page Strategy in Notion or Confluence: Write down your key points (vision, target, problems, etc.) in a concise one-pager. Notion, Confluence, or even Google Docs works great for this. The idea is to make it easily shareable and updatable. Many startup teams maintain a "Product Strategy" wiki page that everyone can refer to.

• Visualise : Sometimes it's helpful to sketch out the framework visually. You could draw a simple diagram showing how your vision leads to strategy which leads to the roadmap. Tools like Miro, MURAL, or Whimsical are perfect for making a quick flowchart or even a mock strategy canvas. Think of it like a lightweight version of a Business Model Canvas tailored to product strategy.

• Templates and Canvases: Consider using a template or canvas that guides you through key elements. For example, you might use a Product Vision Board or Product Strategy Canvas or a Lean Canvas. These templates prompt you to fill in sections like vision, target users, problems, and unique value, ensuring you cover all the bases.

• Keep It Simple & Review Often: Whatever tool you use, keep the framework itself simple. We're talking high-level strategy, so resist the temptation to dive into the weeds of solution design in this document. Also, set a reminder to revisit the strategy framework at key intervals, it's not useful if it's not actually used.

So!!! Encourage a culture where team members actually read and reference the product strategy. It's not meant to be a beautiful PDF that sits in your file sharing platform of choice and is never opened again. Incorporate it into onboarding for new team members. Bring it up in planning meetings. Send annoying automated emails with updates, make it something people think about when they're having insomnia, the way I do about regsirating for things in Germany.

Who Actually Makes a Product Strategy Framework​

You'll probably thinking "f... I don't have time for this, who's gonna do this?" In a small startup, the founder or CEO often wears the product strategist hat, it's about the most urgent and important job you'll always have. In larger teams, a product person or dedicated product strategist will formulate the product strategy framework. So, what is a product strategist exactly? It's basically a person (or role) focused on the big-picture vision and long-term plan for the product

This person makes sure that the product direction aligns with market opportunities and business goals, keeping the team on track.

In practice, whether or not you have someone with "Product Strategist" on their business card, the responsibilities are usually shared among the leadership and product team:

• Founders bring the vision and deep understanding of the problem space (often they are the target user or have firsthand experience with the problem).

-** Product managers** (or Heads of Product) take those insights and structure them into a strategy framework, asking the hard questions and validating assumptions with research.

• Marketing and sales contribute by ensuring the strategy makes sense for go-to-market, and that there's a clear value proposition they can communicate to customers.

• Developers will 100% weigh in to sanity-check that the strategy is feasible within technical constraints. Most of the time the first version will not be, try again. (I see you CTO).

The important part is that someone is driving the strategic discussion and documentation. If you're a founder without a product manager, you're the default product strategist. (Trust me don't skip this just because you're by yourself; even a one-person startup benefits from writing down the strategy in a framework, it challenges your assumptions.)

Conclusion​

Here's why having a framework matters:

• It aligns your team - Everyone understands what you're building and why (even if you're team.)
• It helps you prioritise - You know what features/deliveries matter most and what can wait
• It reduces waste - You build what customers actually need, not what seems cool
• It creates accountability - Clear goals = clear metrics for success
• It makes decision-making easier - When in doubt, refer back to your strategy

For this to be useful, you have to remember this framework isn't a static document. It's meant to be revisited and refined. Maybe you discover during beta testing that users absolutely love one feature you thought was minor, and they don’t care about another you thought was key – that feedback might lead you to tweak the strategy (and that's okay). The framework should be a living guide that evolves with new information.