Top Tools, Tips, and Frameworks You Can Use To Build a Product Strategy

As a product manager, I know firsthand how crucial yet tricky crafting a product strategy can be.

The time it takes to create a product strategy can vary greatly depending on several factors, including:

• Product complexity
• Company size and culture
• Available resources
• Desired level of detail

But with the right tools, tips, and frameworks, you can quickly set your products up for success – and with less stress.

In this post, I’ll share some of my go-to tools and tips that help me build effective strategies to set products up for success.

What Tools Should You Use to Build a Product Strategy?

Instead of listing a bunch of tools and tips without context, I’ll take you through the steps I feel are important (the ones I notice my peers battle with) and mention the tools I use in each step.

I highly recommend using a versatile project management platform like monday dev to map out your strategy. The customizable templates facilitate every stage of the FEE (Form, Educate, Embed) framework I follow.

• Form: Gather information to create the strategy
• Educate: Share the strategy with team members and stakeholders
• Embed: Create a product roadmap and execute the strategy

One of the main reasons I prefer using monday dev is because it improves collaboration and ensures all work links back to the core strategy.

Either way, get this tool (or a similar one) so you can follow along with the steps in this blog.

1. Research (Form)

Start by identifying market gaps your product can fill. Understanding your target users' pain points is key. Dig into their struggles through surveys, interviews, observation, and analysis of user data.

Identify gaps your product can fill. Then, craft a clear vision statement defining your product's future destination. This vision should guide decisions at each stage.

Your tasks:

• Identify 3 specific online communities where your target users gather (e.g., forums, Reddit groups, Facebook pages).
• Develop 10 open-ended questions focused on their struggles and unmet needs. Understand the "why" behind user struggles. Analyze responses with word clouds or sentiment analysis tools.
• Reach out to 20-50 individual users for in-depth interviews. Record and analyze their responses for recurring themes.
• Analyze existing user data (website analytics, social media engagement) to identify pain points and usage patterns.

2. Foster Collaboration (Educate)

Involve cross-functional partners like engineering, design, and business early for guidance and keep them looped in. Align on priorities, plans, and success metrics. Make team development a priority as well.

Your tasks:

• Plan a "product visioning workshop" for all core team members. Use tools like Miro to brainstorm ideas and collaboratively define shared goals.
• Schedule weekly "sync-up meetings" with each team (engineering, design, business) to share progress, discuss roadblocks, and maintain alignment.
• Set up a dedicated communication channel (Slack channel, team wiki) for ongoing collaboration and information sharing specific to roadmap planning.

3. Product Roadmaps (Embed)

Having trouble visualizing how all the strategy pieces fit together? Try creating a product roadmap that displays timelines, sprints, objectives, and key results for everyone to easily see. (I find this incredibly helpful for keeping everyone aligned.)

Your tasks:

• Use monday.com's roadmap templates in monday dev to build a timeline view of your strategy. Their flexible board structure makes mapping out quarters, sprints, and milestones a breeze.
• Identify 3-5 key strategic objectives for the year based on leadership priorities and start listing them as parent items.
• Break down each objective into measurable key results for that sprint/quarter as child items nested under the relevant parent goal.
• Make use of monday dev features like colors, tags, and icons to categorize roadmap items based on traits like department, theme, priority level etc. This builds visual clarity.
• Set durations/timelines on parent strategy items to depict major milestone dates and anchor smaller sprints/deliverables. Adjust as needed.

4. MVP Testing (Embed)

With the foundation set, it's time to start testing. Don't overinvest upfront. Build a minimum viable product to start validating assumptions quickly and affordably.

Soft launch it, gather user feedback (both positive and negative) and be ready to iterate. Look for trends in user insights to refine the product.

Your tasks:

• Build a simple clickable prototype with your core user flow in a tool like Figma and use it for early user testing/feedback.
• Use monday dev's lean project templates to map out key assumptions and early hypotheses for testing. Build your first user story set based on these.
• Leverage the customer feedback template to easily manage your user studies right inside monday dev.
• Create a dedicated board to track validating activities like interviews, user tests, feedback collection, and data analysis from your early access launch – this will serve as your validation workflow.

Monitor and Adapt

To grow successfully, ensure your product can scale technically and operationally. Stay nimble, monitoring market changes for shifts in trends and being ready to adapt. Have backup plans in place for potential pivots.

Follow these steps, and you'll be on the path to product-market fit. Of course, product strategy is a fluid process, but having access to the right tools can make all the difference.

There you have it - a quick guide to my favorite tips and tools for crafting a winning product strategy! I hope they help you set your product strategy up for success!

Let me know if you have any other questions by leaving a comment below – I’ll be watching! Wishing you the best on your product journey!

Key Takeaways

• Invest significant time upfront, deeply researching your users, market, and competition. These insights inform your strategy.
• Create a clear vision statement for your desired product future state and direction. Use this vision to guide all decisions.
• Get cross-functional partners engaged early for broader perspective and increased buy-in.
• Build roadmaps detailing objectives, milestones, timeframes and metrics to operationalize your strategy.
• Start with a minimum viable product focused on testing assumptions first before over-investing.
• Continuously gather user feedback, monitor the market, and be ready to adapt your strategy based on learnings and shifts.

FAQs:

Q: How often should you revisit your product strategy?

A: I recommend reviewing your strategy quarterly and after every significant product release or market change.

Q: What metrics should you track?

A: Focus on usage, retention, acquisition, revenue, and customer satisfaction metrics. Use qualitative feedback, too.

Q: What's the best tool for building a product strategy?

A: There's no one-size-fits-all answer, but I've had great experiences with monday dev. It's like a project management dream, offering everything from roadmaps to bug tracking and feedback management. Plus, it keeps everyone on the same page, which is crucial for a successful strategy.

Q: Should it include a budget and timeline?

A: Absolutely - having a budget and timeline ensures alignment and accountability. But be ready to adjust.

Q: Who should be involved in the product strategy process?

A: At a minimum, product, engineering, design, and business stakeholders should be involved.