How to Create a Product Development Strategy
A product development strategy is the overarching plan that defines how an organization will develop its products to achieve its business objectives. It sits above the product roadmap — which plans the specific work to be done — and below the corporate strategy — which defines the organization’s overall direction. The product development strategy provides the framework within which roadmap decisions are made.
Most organizations have roadmaps but lack explicit product development strategies. This gap produces roadmaps that are well-executed plans for the wrong things: the work is done efficiently, but the strategic direction it advances is never clearly articulated.
What a Product Development Strategy Includes
Target market definition and prioritization: Which markets and customer segments will the product development program serve, and in what priority order? This definition determines which user needs should drive development investment and which represent addressable but lower-priority opportunities.
Competitive positioning: How will the product compete in its target markets? What capabilities will differentiate it from alternatives? What value proposition will it deliver that competitors don’t or can’t? This positioning guides which investments to make and which to defer.
Technology strategy: What technology architecture and capability investments will enable the product capabilities required? This includes platform decisions, build-vs-buy evaluations, and technical debt management philosophy.
Development methodology: How will the product be developed? What cadence, what process, what quality standards, and what organizational structure will govern the development program?
Capability development roadmap: What organizational capabilities — in engineering, design, user research, product management — need to be developed to execute the product development strategy? This includes hiring plans, skill development programs, and tool and process investments.
Measurement framework: How will the success of the product development strategy be measured? What metrics will indicate whether the strategy is producing its intended outcomes?
Distinguishing Strategy from Roadmap
The product roadmap is the execution plan for the product development strategy — the specific work that will be done to advance the strategic direction the strategy defines. A strategy that says “we will win in the mid-market through ease of use advantage” implies a roadmap that prioritizes the usability investments and the mid-market customer requirements that advance that strategic position. The roadmap should be directly derivable from the strategy.
When the roadmap and strategy aren’t connected — when roadmap items can’t be traced to strategic priorities — either the roadmap is being driven by forces outside the strategy (stakeholder politics, competitive imitation) or the strategy isn’t actually guiding development decisions.
Key Takeaways
A product development strategy provides the framework — target market, competitive positioning, technology approach, development methodology, capability plans, and measurement — within which roadmap decisions are made. Creating one requires the difficult work of making choices about what the product will and won’t focus on, which markets it will and won’t pursue, and which capabilities will and won’t receive investment. The roadmap is only as strategically coherent as the strategy it’s derived from.