 Good morning everybody or good afternoon if you are in a different time zone than Pacific my name is Ameya and Today I would like to talk to you about My experiences and opinions about how to build a sound product strategy I have been working with Netflix for about four months now as a senior product manager responsible for building their enterprise apps and building the strategy around that Before Netflix has spent about five and a half years in Salesforce building their enablement products And before that I spent a few years in OpenTable and in Motorola Building ERP, SAS and other applications Today what I would like to focus on is how to build a sound product strategy and I would say right at the offset that there is not a Right formula or magic bullet to build the sound product strategy Product strategy is based on multiple of factors But what I want to share with you all today is some of my learnings that I've gathered over the past Number of years that I've been doing this and also an opportunity to learn from you to learn from your questions And make each other successful and as product managers So just a little bit about myself before we dive into the presentation My name is Ameya. My last name is Soshi and I'm here because I love to build stuff and make presentation which Those of you who are either aspiring product manager or seasoned product managers will know that's something that we have to do day in day out Oh in my free time. I do love soccer and Legos as well. So if you If you have any questions or interesting topics to talk about about any of those feel free to hit me up Before we get too far into the conversation, I just wanted to put a little disclaimer out there That whatever the opinions I will express in this presentation and some of the experiences that I'd share They're solely based on My 10 plus years of experience building and managing products. I have built on Thomas products SAS products predominantly technology products and The expressions and the opinions of today are based on those experiences They do not reflect the opinions of Netflix, which is my current workplace or any other companies that I previously worked for so Having said all that let's get into it And what is a product strategy? Let's start there There are many different variations of it. There are many different definitions of this But for me a good product strategy It really crystallizes the problems to tackle the audience to solve for and the measurement of success for the product That's a lot to unpack there and we will go through those as as we talk through this presentation One of the key part that you realize here that I have not talked about is I have not Explicitly talked about product strategy including the individual features of the product and there's a good reason why I Strongly believe that a product strategy should not over our features of the product because features of the product or As we call it the usability of the product is really one function of a successful product however For a product to succeed for a product to be able to scale and for a product to be able to be long lasting and Stand the test of times It's really beyond simply the features and what the end user sees. It's really the strategy around What are those focused problems that we want to solve and who do we want to solve those for and One of the things I realize from my experiences is some of these things get a little bit sign line for various factors That eventually ends up harming a decent product strategy I'll talk about these in detail as we go through the presentation, but just something that I strongly believe Should form the basis or the better off of a strong product strategy This is something that we all are familiar with but I just wanted to touch a little bit here as you You all who have been building products or who wish to build products Will know that a product lifecycle rewards among other things three key pillars One of the big and very popular is the stakeholders and audience so who are the chief stakeholders for a specific product that we're building and Who is the audience that we are building the product for and many cases these two could be the same or could be different things for example in a B2C product or a business to customer product a stakeholder and audience might be the same However in a B2B product or a business-to-business product The stakeholders for a product and the audience for the product might be different. For example a CIO of a company might make a decision on whether to implement a Seattle product for thousands or hundreds of users in the company and in that case the audience is going to use the product Or the stakeholder who's going to make a product decision might be different The second pillar is the key business problem and this I believe is the Is the pillar that takes the most amount of time work and effort to define a product manager worth assault and Many of you who have really excelled in this area will always Watch for the fact that the key business problems is the bedrock of a solid product if a product manager Really knows what's the problem that they're trying to solve or what are some of the business problems that they're trying to tackle that Really allows them to build a solid foundation for the product and it also more importantly Allows them to be able to really control the framework of what Should make it into the backlog versus what shouldn't If we are very crystal clear on what are the key business problems that we're trying to solve What user research that we have and what data that we have to back that research that really helps the product manager to Enhance the product as we go along and also to say no to all the scope creep Which we all know happens in any product build just because there are more requirements Get that emerge as a product evolves There are problems that emerge as a product evolves and then there are always a request either from stakeholders or end users As they start seeing the product taking shape So it's very crucial to build a very strong foundation and very strong framework of What that business problem is and what is it that the product is trying to tackle? Expanding that argument further That falls nicely into what does the definition of success mean for the product the definition of success is a very subjective or Relative term that can vary based on what type of Business you're in what's the size of your organization? What's the type of the audience? What's the type of the product? However, it's very crucial that as product managers We have a very crystal clear understanding of what good is going to look like or what success is going to look like But that specific product this does not necessarily mean that you will be able to hit all those matrix right at the first toe or right at the first MVP release however, it Allows you to have a good understanding of Anything that evolves within the product needs to be able to align to the definition of success as an example if I am going to build a product that is going to improve Let's say employ productivity and there are multiple measures of your measured productivity Then any new request or any new backlog item or any new roadmap item that comes along for that product Needs to be able to fall within that free work And if it does not It allows you the product manager to have that conversation with the stakeholder to have the conversation with the requester to say here's why I'm not doing it the reason is X Y and Z but Building the definition of success building that success metric building that non-star metric Right at the beginning of the product life cycle and then evolving it as you build the product is really key Do a successful product build as well as launch? so why spark strategy so important and This is something that I have seen in my 10 12 years of experience and power management that Over time the focus of product managers has shifted from somebody who builds product and features to somebody who really defines a strategy and I Have put together like about five big bucket items here That are very crucial for success of a business This is not by any means an exhaustive list that are multiple different factors that affect this however, if we look at any Large medium to large-sized business today There are multiple attributes that define what that business is what the success for the business is and how that business is going to function Over the next few quarters next few years. It really starts with the vision of the company and All of us we work in different companies. We know that our companies have a Vision of how they see the world in their specific area which translates into the Mission statement for the company, which is what are some of the key action items or the key steps that the company is going to take to achieve that vision That mission statement could be a tactical mission. It could be a strategic mission. It could be different flavors of it and Then there comes product strategy. So product strategy cannot exist on its own It has to exist along with the users that the company is catering up to the vision and the mission that the company is Thinking about or have adopted and Then what does that mean for the users that that specific product is going to solve the business problems for? Once you have a strong product strategy Then that can translate very easily into product features and also very easily drive adoption and success of that specific product But this is why I wanted to highlight where the overall strategy stands in the success of a business And you could expand or contract this model based on whether it's a 10-person business or whether it's a multi-billion dollar organization catering up to thousands of users but the Principle of this still remains the same that a product strategy does not exist on its own It is really closely aligned with what the mission and vision of the company and having a strong strategy Or having a sound strategy will then help us define what features to prioritize what features to roll out What features to put on the backlog and what product request to? Say no to just because they don't align to the larger vision or larger strategy So I've talked a lot about Why product strategy is important a product a lot about where does it sit within the? Larger context of an organization. So let's get to the little bit of more details around what are some of the attributes of a good strategy One thing I wanted to highlight here is whenever I say product strategy This could exist in multiple different formats this could exist as a one-page document This could exist as a long memo. This could exist as a part one presentation the key here is not the Format that it exists in but for some of the attributes that it should have for you as a product manager to be successful in your role and also Drive a level of understanding and accountability across your larger business whether that stakeholders change managers program managers executives different roles as you might see them So let's go through the list. Um, we've already talked about the key business problems and I think that is really where the conversation really begins is What is this strategy going to focus on? What are some of those key business challenges that you as a product expert? and your stakeholders as your key partners want to focus on and that goes hand in hand with the user persona because If you look at how we typically put product We don't build products to Solve business problems in a vacuum. We solve those business problems for a specific user persona for a specific type of audience and this type of audience could be large or small There are approaches where you want to start with a very small Dam, which is a target addressable market and then scale scale from that point on or there are Other approaches where you want to start a really large Target addressable market and then focus on building new solutions as corner cases in both scenarios The key here is to make sure that we have our strategy represents a good understanding of What user persona are we trying to define? The strategy for and what are some of the business problems that we are trying to solve for those persona? The third one is the right success matrix and this is something that I touched on a little bit when we talked about the product lifecycle The key here is to identify Preemptively what would success look like for the product and what are some of the key matrix that we want our product and the strategy to influence This does not necessarily mean that you will be able to achieve those matrix right at the first goal like I talked about Or this will also mean that you might not be able to achieve those exact numbers when you rolled out the product however This creates a organization level Understanding of why we are building a product and what are some of the specific matrix that we are trying to improve on because if you think about the evolution of a product a product essentially has investment essentially needs to justify ROI and justified success and Building the right success matrix early allows us to do that early because that way we can have A very open conversation with our stakeholders and everybody who has an influence on the strategy To make sure that we incorporate what they view as a success if you don't do if you don't Define the success matrix early what that also means is different stakeholders different Influencers Or for the product will have a different View of what success would look like and as a product manager as you go through the product evolution cycle It becomes really hard to manage so doing this early really helps The fourth one is the change impact and assessment and this is Something that is really key for launching large-scale products where you're not only launching something brand new or you're not only launching something Which hasn't been done before But you're trying to influence or bring about a change whether that's A user behavior change whether that's a user experience change whether that's A user technology change However change takes time and change takes efforts So for you to have think about that change Who is it going to impact how it's going to impact them and then assess what you need to do to manage that change That is really crucial as well as an example In one of my previous jobs, I built a product that was essentially a search rag and content consumed product In this product The change was not only for the end users who are going to look up the content and who are going to Consume the content, but there was also significant behavior change for the content publishers where the publishers had to look for Where to publish content how to curate it how to manage it What type of different metadata to track on those pieces of content? and that is what I mean by Assessing the right personas the changes and the impacts for those personas and then making sure that You build the mitigation factors for those into the strategy And the last but not the least is the data and the analytics So we all know that we look at a whole lot of data around how to build the right product how to target the right audience User research and qualitative and quantitative analysis and we all are familiar with that However, we as we build the product We need to make sure that we also build the right level of analytics within the product to make sure that we are Tracking the right success matrix. You're tracking the right health analytics for the product and you're tracking the right Uh measurements for the usage and adoption Because the aim for us should not be to build a product But the aim for us should be to build a successful product That targets the right success matrix for the right user personas and to be able to do that Building the right level of analytics building the right level of tracking building the right level of mitigation steps Building even the right level of fail saves if your product's uptime is something of a huge importance That's very crucial as you build out a good strategy so like I said There isn't a right formula or a magic bullet to build strategy Are the risks involved? Absolutely but how we How we try to predict those risks and how we try to take those risks Defines the success of our product strategy and hence our success as a product manager for example Every product manager at a certain point has to take on some strategic bets. They have to make some Risky choices They have to take a bet on something that hasn't been done before And they can postulate and hypothesize if it's going to work. However It's not it's not always 100 accurate and some of those are either Back of the paper napkin calculations or strategic bets that they have to go through. However Calling these out and identifying these early with even a mitigation plan Is one of the best bets to build a sound product strategy because If you build a strategy where you're not taking any risks. You're not making any bets and you are Basically building a fail save strategy I think that doesn't do justification of especially in technology markets how the world is moving and How we need to hear into sometimes things I'll think outside the box and think of user problems differently. So If you can if you want to take some Strategic bets if you want to take some risks. Absolutely. Think of the mitigation plan think of How calculated the risks are Even think of Can you estimate the damage if something goes wrong and can you fail inexpensively? Because that Really really adds a lot of value to your strategy Because now you're not only thinking about building a very vanilla set of features But you are sort of pushing the envelope and you are thinking about what could be some of the risks and what could be some of the Failures and are you doing the right tradeoff to think about those early? And are you coming up with the right mitigation plans? Which really makes a great great asset to have as a product manager and for your product strategy as well So we talked about how do we build the strategy you talked about How to take some risks and make some strategic bets, but If we don't drive the alignment for this across the board Then the strategy is simply built in a vacuum that nobody is happy with which is what we don't want to be Is a product manager some of the Methods that have worked for me, and I think this is the biggest one for Majority of us product managers is earlier frequent communication One of the things that we all have to realize Is all of these stakeholders that are influencing that product all of the stakeholders that are opining on a product Have many other things on the plate and that is why To drive that alignment to drive that consensus about What you're trying to do? What are some of the problems that you're trying to solve? Earlier frequent communication always always happens One of the other key aspect of driving alignment is building trusted user focus groups, which is small representative groups of users that you can trust to test some of the early features the beta features of your product and provide some early feedback So you can Correct some of the feedback and mistakes Before your product gets ready for prime time This Is what I mean by failing inexpensively is you're building a feature For a smaller user group and then you're taking the feedback you're taking the risk You're taking the feedback and if it doesn't work, then you can think about a mitigation plan Building visual elements is socializing is also really crucial As we all know we are We are visual We are visual beings for the lack of a better term, which means People will always give you more inputs and no more feedback if you have A visual element or if you have something that people can look for these could be simple mock-ups. These could be simple Back of a paper napkin design or these could be something fancy functional mock-ups as well And and you can sort of define what really works with your stakeholders and your user groups And also educating your stakeholders about the decision framework that we just talked about about Reasoning of why something will fall above the priority line and something will fall below the priority line About what are some of those key pillars your strategy is based on? Providing a visibility to your stakeholders into that really allows you to build the decision framework get early feedback and Hold everybody Account over to that framework as well as have transparency around why you're prioritizing features a and b But why are you not prioritizing features c as an example? One of the things that I did want to touch on also is What is not a good product strategy? And these are some of the very common mistakes that I have seen That I don't think make a good product strategy And I'm happy to have a conversation about this. I'm happy to Listen to your thoughts as well about this however One of the biggest mistakes and I did this as a as a product manager in my early career Is building a roadmap and a strategy which was not problem-based, but which was feature-based The Key disadvantage of this approach is when you are building a product strategy, you're not necessarily Thinking about what would be the features of the product But you're thinking about what are some of those problems that I want to solve? And how is my product going to improve some of those metrics for some of those audiences? And that is why I strongly believe That a strategy or product strategy needs to be more based on the business problems that you want to tackle Rather than features of a specific product because features are a living and breathing Aspect of a product which will evolve over time because as Your competitive landscape changes your business landscape changes A product will evolve and the features will evolve and that's what if you build a feature based roadmap You're kind of locking yourself in early Without thinking about evolution of those key business problems evolution of your Competitive landscape as well The other bad example of a product strategy would be a stakeholder based roadmap What I mean by this is typically when you work with more than one group of stakeholders Sometimes you might be tempted to build a strategy around Hey, I'm going to do x for a specific group of stakeholder And then I'm going to do y for this and z for this and sort of try to make everybody happy The challenge with this approach is you're eventually end up Going to build a minimum common denominator strategy Well, you're trying to make sure that everybody gets a little bit piece of product rather than organically thinking about what should be the right approach to a specific problem or what should be the right approach to a specific Specific persona or a specific user matrix. So That doesn't necessarily mean it's uh, it's a bad approach or that doesn't necessarily mean you cannot do that I strongly believe that organically good product strategy will always Begin with a solid business problem case to solve for rather than thinking about a specific feature or specific stakeholder group And that is where we need to drive a little bit of alignment around why do we need to take a different approach? Last but not least is the role of analytics and I touched on this a little bit when we talked about the key attributes of a product but the role of analytics is Very key in building a product because We're not only trying to track the user activity in the product But as product manager and as executive stakeholders, there are different matrix that we want to track There are different matrix that tell us different Inferences or different stories for example product matrix, especially at our health of the product or health of content Tells us as product managers about which of the areas that our product is performing strongly in and which are some of the Areas where we need to work more on maybe build some more features or maybe build some more User experiences or better experiences User matrix and executive matrix are something very interesting because these are These are more focused at users. However, they are more used to define not only The health of the product but also to look at how your product is performing How your option is looking around how is the success of your product and Are some of these matrix lying back to the non-star matrix or success matrix that we Built in the beginning of the product strategy And if there's not a correlation between these two or if you think that one is not helping the other Then as product manager, we need to look at what are some of the other things that we could be tracking about Or it might not be a technology problem, but it could be a user awareness problem or product marketing problem But those are some of the attributes that we would typically get as part of this exercise So to summarize it sounds to our product strategy. This is one of my favorite examples Does look like an ice cream You'd really see on top what you see or what the end users see Are the product features something that they're going to interact with something that they're going to Touch and feel however There's a lot more that happens underneath and as a product manager We need to be aware of those which is the business problems personas success matrix analytics and change management so There's a lot that goes into thinking about what does sound stop sound product strategy is I have done my share of thinking however. I know there's still a lot to learn for me as well So if you have any thoughts if you have any Feedback any concerns any agreement disagreements with that. I just said Please feel free to reach out Feel free to answer Ask questions in comments or you can always reach out to me at my email address Which is mayersoshi at outlook.com or you can always reach out to my linton as well. Thank you so much