Product Strategy vs. Product Roadmap

Product strategy and the product roadmap are central to the work of product managers. Both of them are critical for setting the right outcomes and promoting success. However, there are instances where product professionals seem to have a wrong idea of these concepts and how they relate. Some people think of the roadmap as a synonymous with the product strategy, which is wrong.

What is Product Strategy?

Product strategy is what usually follows after defining your product vision. It explains how to realize or achieve the vision. In other words, it describes the direction to follow towards achieving the vision you have established.

Strategy is basically about choices, according to Harvard Professor Michael Porter. It is a set of choices, usually long-term, that communicate a competitive advantage you are aiming at. It is deciding what not to do so that you can do select things very well.

Anthony Murphy agrees with the view of strategy as a set of choices in a Product Coalition post. According to him, it is about choices to do or be something or, conversely, to NOT be or do something. While you may think of your vision as where you aim for your product in the future, your strategy has to do with how you aim to get there.

Strategy is a key factor in the quality of results that product managers get from the actions that they take. Some companies fail due to their inability to get these choices correctly, although it might sound simple to do.

What is a Product Roadmap?

A product roadmap can be described as a snapshot of what the team will work on for a period of time, on the way to realizing the longer-term vision. It lays out the steps or efforts needed to achieve your overall objectives.

Think of the roadmap as a high-level action plan for your vision and strategy. It is a form of a plan – a tactical plan – that shows the steps you would need to take to achieve your strategy or a desired future state. Product roadmaps link your strategy to the work that you do.   Your roadmap is a plan that outlines the work you need to do to achieve targeted strategic outcomes. It guides how you prioritize tasks and initiatives plus how you allocate resources and track dependencies.

This strategic document describes what you will do (what features to create) over a period – usually 6-12 months – to move you closer to achieving your vision.

What Makes a Good Strategy?

There are foundational patterns of strategy such as Generic Competitive Strategies but the strategy that works one organization may not work for another. Choices that are made are influenced by different contexts. The company and type of product have a role to play in deciding what makes a good strategy.

There are key questions you must answer when looking to build a strategy. In Playing to Win, strategy adviser Roger Martin identified five questions that a strategy answers or should answer:

• What is your winning aspiration or the purpose of your enterprise?
• Where will you play (and not play)?
• How will you win in your chosen playing field?
• What capabilities must be in place to win?
• What management systems and measures are necessary to support choices and enable capabilities?

Michael Porter also suggests five tests or conditions of a good strategy to help you know what a good or bad choice is. These are:

Value proposition – What is the different value that your product will bring to customers? Your strategy must define your unique value proposition. How will your offering differ from the competition, who are your customers, and at what relative price would you work?

Adapted activities – Everything you will do must be geared toward delivering your distinctive value proposition. The activities that you perform differently from the competition are what give you an edge that either results in lower costs or enables you to charge more.

Trade-offs – A good strategy is not the one that pleases all customers. Trade-offs are, or should be, inevitable. You must be clear about what to do or not to do. It will be critical to say no to some customers if that would be for the greater good. As Porter notes, trade-offs make it hard for the competition to copy your strategy without disrupting their own.

Fit – Choices to be made across the value chain must be integrated. Everything you do should improve the value of other things. Parts of the strategy should fit together easily, with one function reinforcing another.

Continuity – Changes, they say, are the one constant thing. Product managers must determine how they will respond to them as they come. Continuity is about making the right choices and not derailing when confronted with changes.

Distilling the Answer

While your strategy identifies the direction you’re heading to achieve your vision, the roadmap outlines the features steps needed to get you there.Your product strategy is more about how than what.   The best product strategies are based on sound research – the exploration of the landscape and competition among others. This research promotes more effective product roadmaps.