The choices a good product strategy has to make
The Product Leaders work group on the customer problem, the value to deliver first, the work to leave out and the evidence that would reopen a 'no'.
Updated
A good strategy names a customer problem, makes one clear choice about the value to deliver first and says what the team will set aside, clearly enough that teams can use it in daily decisions.
- Start from a customer problem. Shaun Clowes's test is whether the team can explain who has the problem, why it matters now, how the market is changing and why the company's strengths give it a credible way to win. Tamar Yehoshua starts with which problem the team is solving, why it can solve it well and how it will know the customer is better off.
- Choose what comes first, and what waits. Ami Vora would make one clear choice about the value to deliver first. At WhatsApp, calls and messages had to go through, for free, every time, before more features. Jiaona Zhang writes down the choices set aside: at Linktree, a strategy FAQ said which creator groups to focus on and how much attention mobile apps, mobile web and desktop would get.
- A strategy should explain a 'no'. Shaun says a strategy earns its keep when it lets the team explain a specific 'no' to an important customer and keep their trust. Tamar would reopen a 'no' when customer conversations and observed use show the job is widespread and a prototype shows the core product can stay simple.
- Name the buyer and the shared costs. Jiaona would make the buyer and the budget explicit before committing to a roadmap. At Webflow, the team chose a professional tool over a small-business site builder. For a multi-product strategy, Yuhki Yamashita would say which experiences should feel connected and fund the shared work alongside each new product. Figma's FigJam decision exposed the cost of building each product in isolation.
- Check that the org funds it. Jiaona checks whether teams and goals reflect the chosen areas; if the org keeps funding work outside them, the strategy is not yet an operating decision. Shaun adds that the growth model has to support the value choice: at Atlassian, a human-help prompt late in the trial lifted purchases by double-digit percentages, and the team still chose to keep improving self-service. Ami would keep customer time on the calendar after the strategy is set, so the team can revise its assumptions.
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Product Leaders
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you tell a product strategy from a roadmap?
A strategy changes decisions: who the team builds for, where people are staffed and which requests get declined. Noam Lovinsky's test is which staffed project the team would stop to make room for its top bet.
How do you run customer interviews that change what you build?
Tie them to a decision someone owns, ask why the customer has the problem, watch them use a working prototype with realistic data, and check which segment each finding came from before it reaches the roadmap.
How do you scope an MVP?
Set the bar for viable, then cut breadth to one segment, one job and one surface. Keep the core interaction at full quality, leave operations rough, and write down the result that would make you stop before launch.
How should a product team handle feature requests?
Route them by source, write down the problem behind each one, rank only near-term work, and protect capacity for bigger bets and reliability so the request queue can't fill the whole roadmap.
How do you tell whether a new feature worked?
Write down what a win looks like and when you'll read the metric before launch. Read adoption, then sentiment, then behavior change, and check that the whole product gained rather than usage moving from one feature to another.
How do product managers keep stakeholders aligned on scope?
Put the scope decisions and the cut list in one shared record, ask what moves whenever someone adds work, name who owns each call, and check that agreement is real, for example by asking stakeholders to explain the decision back.
How do you forecast delivery for a project full of unknowns?
Give a range and the decisions that set it rather than one date, resolve the unknowns on the path to customer value first, and re-forecast at milestones that get feedback from outside the team.
How is AI changing the way product teams are organized?
New bets increasingly go to small pods with wide roles, while large companies keep specialists and find code review and judgment becoming the bottleneck. Either way, someone on the team still has to push for the user.
What makes a product brief useful?
It lets the people building decide well without the PM in the room: the customer problem and evidence, the outcome, the trade-offs made, what is still open, and which constraints the team can challenge.
