Tool:
Product Strategy ‘One Pager’
Your Product Strategy on a Page
I’ve used this Product Strategy one-pager a few times now with different clients to help them articulate their strategy on a page.
One pagers are a great tool to communicate and share information quickly and easily. But it’s important to note that this tool is not designed to be a canvas. It’s not a replacement for a proper strategy. Rather it is designed to be a communication tool to package up and summarise your strategy into an easy to digest format.
It’s therefore pertinent to include necessary links to the more detailed Product Strategy - at one client we used these one-pagers as an executive summary page at the start of each strategy, with the rest of the strategy following for those who wish to read on.
Product Strategy ‘One Pager’
Taking inspiration from Roger L Martin’s book, Playing to Win, this strategy one-pager is designed to summarise your strategy into the following 6 key sections:
Winning Aspiration
What is your overarching aspiration for your product? What is that higher level goal or vision that you have for it which the strategy is anchored to?
How Will We Know We’ve Won?
If this strategy is successful how will we measure success? What does that look like and what metrics are we hoping to move as a result.
You can choose to use the OKR format here to represent your metrics (although not mandatory).
Where We’ll Play
In the playing field available to you (aka your industry/market) who are you choosing to target? Who is your target market segment (and if necessary secondary target market too)?
How We’ll Win
What ‘big bets’ are you going to make to realise your strategy? How will you measure the success of each of bets?
Key Capabilities and Considerations
What key capabilities and/or considerations are necessary to realise your strategy?
These could be key hires, key enablement projects, or even considerations on capacity/risks/skills/etc.
Product Principles
If you have product principles here is where you would put them. Product Principles are a great tool to help guide decision making to ensure that you’re making smart decisions and steering your product in the desired direction.