 Hi, everyone. My name is Mahir, and I'm currently working as a product manager at Google. So today, I want to just talk about creating a product strategy, some kind of experiences on how creating it, like some kind of guidelines as well. A brief intro about myself. So I started my career as an R&D engineer for HP. I'm working for imaging and printing enterprise software. I did my MBA because I was very fascinated about building products, managing products, and so on, like features for products. So I work for Sling as a product manager for cloud services earlier. Then I moved to Logitech where we built the first Harmony Express which is the first universal remote with Alexa built in. And currently I work for Google as a product manager for Cast and Chromecast. I also want to tell a disclaimer here that whatever I'm going to discuss now is all based on my experiences. It's not like something that is practiced, especially with one of these companies. Like it's actually an experience driven guidelines, more than anything. OK, I know I want to start with product strategy, but there are a few things which we need to discuss even before going further. So you hear a lot of these terminologies, like your mission, what is your mission statement, like what is your vision statement, what is the product strategy, and so on. I just want to clarify a few things before we go forward. The first thing is we do have an aspiration. Like our aspiration is our mission statement and the vision. So where do we want to see our product in five years? Here's a vision. And you see your product roadmap and execution. Like this is how I want to go there. And that's the execution part of it. Your roadmap is like guiding principles. Strategy is the how part. So how do you achieve your vision is the strategy side of it. So strategy compromises a lot of things, basically, which we'll actually go into detail. But this is what I want to mention clearly here, that the difference between mission and mission. Another thing which I want to say is there might be a few companies with mission statements. But if you're building a product from scratch, like for a startup, you need to build the mission statement as well. So for some companies and established companies, you might already have the vision statement and you are building a product vision around the mission statement or building a product tying up to the mission statement. We'll discuss in detail. So I want to start with the product vision, especially because I think this is what we hear a lot. And this is a core part of our product strategy. So I want to clearly discuss this right now. And then we can actually go in detail later. So product vision or product vision statement describes the overarching long term mission of your product. Vision statements are aspirational and communicate concisely where the product hopes to go and what it hopes to achieve in the long term. So I think it's clearly articulated here. But your product vision is where you want to be, a long term vision. Long term is probably, we cannot explain how many years is exactly long term. Like sometimes it is three years. Itself is a long term. And sometimes it's like five years. Like space, for example. Long term is like long, really long term. Like whatever NASA is doing or SpaceX is doing, like going into Mars or something, that's a long term thing. Whereas there are some ever changing fields, like in FinTech, where your long term is not like five years. Probably three years itself is a long term. So they're different things, different stuff. So product vision should be clearly articulating and guiding everyone, where do you want to build the product and so where do you want to take the product and how do you build the product? So this gives the guidelines to everyone who are building the product. So a few examples of product vision. I want to clearly say here something else. And there is no right or wrong way to say, like this is my vision. Some companies and some products tend to say it in a single liner, which is clearly articulation. Like Google search, organizing world's information. Google Pay is a safe, simple and helpful way. Oculus, now meta, but it's also the same thing. Like our mission is to enable people to have meaningful interactions regardless of physical distance. And there are certain companies which they actually explain more because they want to give more details. DJI, you can actually go into, you can read through here. This is something which I got from their website, but then you see the last one where you see, we believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world and have fun together. So can you actually guess which one it is? Three to one, and this is snapping. So this is completely different, right? Like snap, we generally think about a messaging app, but they reinvented themselves as a camera company when they actually introduced spectacles. And this is the vision. So they actually are trying to grasp the core part of the sharing and messaging experiences. So this is an experience-driven vision statement primarily. We can talk about that later. So that's what is my point. So your vision statement actually tries to provide details to everyone who is working on the product. So it is important for us to define and articulate a clear product vision. So how do we come up with a strategy? So it's not like there is a framework. I mean, there are definitely so many frameworks. And it doesn't mean that you need to follow a specific framework to come up with a strategy. There are a few things which you need to check into and probably create some guidelines in order to arrive at a strategy. So that's what I want to explain here. So the first thing is on focus area. So it's actually huge. Like every domain is actually huge. Like fintech is huge. You need to have like a specific focus area. If you're talking about renewable energy, for example, it's a lot, right? I mean, renewable energy is a lot. Like you want to make earth greener. That's a Tesla statement. But the product which came up is like cars, right? So that's one way to achieve your mission statement. So there are like different focus areas even in a single domain. Fintech, like you have payments, you have BNPL, Binopilator, or Visa, so many things, right? So it's better to focus on a particular area where you want to actually take it to the next level. And the next one is problem. So there are problems in each and every area. Or you can actually consider it as improvements. So every stakeholder involved in a journey actually has some problems. So we need to come up with some issues and understand like how we should take it forward. That's something which we'll discuss again in detail. Value prop, like what's our value prop? Like what should we, does it make sense to business? Does it make sense to market? Like we should also think in data perspective, like everything we should have some data. Like if not, let's try to do some UXR, some studies and those kinds of things. How do you get data as a completely different part? So as product vision, we spoke about this now. It's a long-term vision. Sometimes you don't have enough details right away to come up with a product vision. So you actually think in your focus area, try to understand your problems and you're trying to provide some solutions. And that's when you probably come up with a product vision. So that's why it's like two different things. If you're building a startup, you might actually come up with a product vision only when you understand like where you wanna focus on. Whereas established companies and established products, you know where you wanna take it and then you actually define all the strategy and roadmap towards it. Situation and challenges, this is also another important point where we need to really understand the challenges. I think we need to have the holistic picture. Doesn't mean that you need to go back, like go back on your decisions or anything like that. It's basically saying this is our situation. These are all the challenges. It might be like environmental challenges or business challenges or so many other different challenges. But understanding the holistic picture of a segment is really, really important here. And the last one, core principles and values. I'm combining these into one. So every product has some principles that actually articulate different stakeholders for participating in the product development to align in a direction. So your principle can be like, you know, simple, simplified design for example. So that can be a core principle. So you don't want to make it complicated anywhere. Values and ethics are a different part altogether. So we should also consider from an ethical standpoint all the time, which is what I guess it's better to start right from the beginning. Like privacy can be a value that you wanna focus on all the time. Let's go into details. So focus areas. How do you come up with a focus area? As we spoke earlier, target area, like there are so many areas within the domain itself. Vendable energy we spoke about or payments we spoke about. Entertainment, like entertainment can be anything, right? So Netflix is one type, like which is over the top mountain. Or live TV is another, gaming is another. So every area has different. So have some focus. Like your entertainment Xbox, for example, they're only focusing on gaming. And they also have some focus on video, video streaming. Audience is nothing but your customer segments. Who is our target audience? Like it's not just seeing like who are using our product. It can be many, like other stakeholders. We can take Airbnb as an example. Their audience are both hosts and guests. We will discuss in detail on how do we achieve customer segments and how do we find which are relevant. Then what's your market? Like, you know, which market are you really focusing on? The reason why we need to have a focus on market as well is because there are different regulations in different markets, right? And also the way customers or users use a product is actually different in different markets. Like people, how they use in China is probably different than how they use in India. Payments is an example. Like how payment is a QR code in India is pretty common, but not in the US. So how do you determine, like even for Google Pay, like if they want to make it simple, the market is actually really important. So the features actually tie up to that market and whether the product can launch in that market or not is something important. Another thing which I want to say, like LinkedIn as an example, right? So it came out of China right now. Like some products only exist in various other markets, but not in other regions because of different regulations or anything else. So I think it's important to understand market. Last one, strengths. Even though I mentioned only strengths, I think it's important to focus on SWAT. Like you need to understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats in that area. Yes, it's a framework, but I think it's a clear framework that actually gives us how to understand the market and the focus area as well. And also think about why should we focus in this area? Like if you're talking about payments, why should we focus only on payments and also in the specific target area? Like why should we focus only on buy now, pay later? Like FOM, for example. So why do we need to focus only on that? So those are the things. China, a neobanking. Why do we focus on neobanking? Like we do have banks everywhere. Why do we need a new banking system that actually focuses on new users? Snap, for example. Why do we need to focus on a particular segment which is camera technology? Like why do we need to focus on imaging and so on? So there are different things. Let's actually think about strengths, weaknesses, and also why do we need to focus on this? So problem is something which we really need to think about. I think the product exists for two various reasons. One is improving a certain user journey or probably there is a problem where we want to come up with a solution. Right? Like EVs, for example. The problem, it's more an improvement than a problem. But they also tied up problems in order to come up with a holistic product. So the improvements are, you do have this gas-based cars right now, which EVs are also the same thing. Right now we have market for both. For a gas-based car, the improvement from a gas-based car to an EV is primarily focusing on renewable energy, right? Like using your renewable energy or probably less emissions. Those are the improvements. Those are the focus areas there. At the same time, if you see an experience in Tesla, it's the full-screen experience like the entertainment and all those things. They're all improvements. So the reason why I'm saying is we identify the problem which is emissions here in the case of EV and improvements, for example, the in-car entertainment system. So there are improvements and there are problems. Focus on those. How do you get those? By understanding the customer journey, which I'll actually discuss in the next slide. Also going through each and every part of the customer journey and actually be in their shoes and trying to understand it. Next is assessing the journey, getting all the stakeholders involved. Like think in every possible situation. And the last one is listing down all the problems as what we see and priorities accordingly. Like, okay, this is an important problem. Like for Tesla, for example, emissions is a big thing in a car industry, auto industry. So that's the first problem. Then entertainment will be the second part if you consider us the priority. So this is how we wanna actually prioritize. So let's come up with some metrics as well. Identify the parameters that are important for prioritization and do the exercise on prioritization and come up with that experience, I would say. This is an example customer journey. I want to go over at a high level because this is something important in defining the whole strategy in general. So if you see the customer journey here, it's not about booking. So let's say I want to go on a holiday. Of course, booking flights is part of it. But if I'm going on a holiday, there are a lot of things that I need to consider as a customer or as a user. Like, where should I go? Like, what am I inspired about? Like, should I go to Hawaii? Like, what am I inspired about? Like, is it like water sports or something else there? I do my research, then I book my flights and we are not ending there, right? So you are on the property. Like, you also need to think about hotels, for example. Like, what's your stay in the hotel? Like, how is it? And post day, like how do you communicate? Airbnb does this in a fashion where it is very, very helpful. Like, Airbnb considers booking research on property as well. Like, how do you get your access? How is the cleanliness within your home stay? And post day, like leaving a review to your host, for example, or probably to the guest. So there are like different things Airbnb focuses on. So it actually, Airbnb considered every part of the customer journey and they wanted to improve every section there. Kayak, for example, they started it as a booking site where it's like an aggregator because they understood the problem that, you know, booking different booking and flight from different websites is actually hard. So I need an aggregated site where actually I get details of pricing around or across different websites or different providers. So that's how they actually pivoted into flight booking. And then they actually added all other things like experiences later. So this is how it is. So they identified a problem and they tried to be in the customer shoes at that point. Like here it is the traveler shoes and they tried to improve it, whether it is Airbnb or Kayak or anyone. So create a customer journey roadmap, like what our goals, what are our activities? What are the various touch points in the whole customer journey? Also identify what are the KPIs, right? This is also another thing which is important. Sometimes, like at least not now, earlier, when you want to book certain things, like there are like multiple steps that needs to happen in order to book a flight, like 10 steps to get that. Now it's so simple, so straight forward. See another example for a KPI, like easy access or, you know, the time to book or the number of steps that actually needed to book something. Amazon did that in a right way, like one click purchase, right? So you don't want to go through all the steps because you are doing the repetitive acts. So KPIs are also another important part which we need to consider here. The next is value prop. I think that's another important part. Not going into details. We already spoke about customer right now. So identifying the customer is important. Same as the case with business. Does it make business sense? How does it actually help our business? So let's say, if you're coming up with a hardware product, the solution for a customer problem is a hardware product. Does it really make sense to your business? That's a question which we need to answer. Then the product market fit, like is it really good to focus on the market right now? Like does the product really need, is needed by this particular segment or particular market, all those kinds of things. And the last one is differentiation. How is it different? So it doesn't need to be different all the time, but having a differentiation is actually a good value prop because your differentiation helps you to be different from other partners or other competitors. And it also gives you a cutting edge. Sometimes you just improve some things where you don't really need to be different. And it actually comes with different stuff like reach, marketing and all those kinds of things. Like Apple does it in a better way. Apple makes everything easy. If you compare with the differentiation aspect, it may not be, like your AirPods may not be that different compared to other Bluetooth headphones. But the way they reach is in terms of marketing and reach, they do a different approach to gain the value prop. They actually focus on the experiences. Yeah, let's actually discuss in detail again. So as we are speaking about experiences, I think that's where it is important. And we were speaking about Apple, I think it's a good example as well. So yes, I want a earphones or iPod for example, was a great story. Yes, I want an MP3 player, but what I really want is not an MP3 player. I want something to listen to music. That's a good example where iPod was really, really taken the market because of good marketing and good outreach because they focused on experiences. If I listen to the iPod, I actually have an amazing experience. That's how they actually consider it. Same as the case with the skateboard, right? So yeah, I want a skateboard, but it's not like I want a skateboard. I want an experience with the skateboard. Same as the case with shoes, for example, right? If you are defined designing shoes, Nike does it the right way. They're not just designing shoes. They're designing shoes for different experiences like basketball shoes or golf shoes or something because the experience actually demands a different shoe for different things. So it's important to focus on experiences. Like what experiences will help customers make progress they are seeking? What obstacles might be removed and what are the social, emotional and functional dimensions of the job? So I think this is another thing which is important. We need to think in all aspects. Like is there a social aspect to it? Is there an emotional aspect to it? Is there a functional aspect to it? Another example which I want to bring up here is Snap again. Why is Snap a camera company? Because they're actually focusing on experiences. They're not really focusing on just building another messaging app. There have been already so many messaging apps earlier. They came up with a differentiation with messages only lasting temporarily. Later they realized it's not just messages. So people started sharing images since the evolution of messaging apps. So now the important part is how do you share a particular image? Like what are the parameters that are important in image sharing? And that's why they transform themselves into a camera company. Instagram is the same thing. So they focus on filters and so on. So because they're actually focusing on experiences. The experience is like how a particular situation is actually shared among friends or family or anyone. Like a social life. And how do you feel emotionally after you shared something? How is it functioned? So this is something which is also another important one to consider. Whenever you are defining a value prop or your experiences, you need to consider experiences all the time. Yes, coming up with a product vision. As I said earlier, analyze all the things what you have done. Like spot customers in this value prop, JTBD, jobs to be done. So like think like what should be our product vision? Like what should be our product be like in five years down the line? As I said, like the experience from Instagram or Snap. You want to be like a photo sharing and photos as the key value prop in those. So five years down the line, I want to be a camera company. So that's why the vision actually changed. Another thing which I want to bring up here is we spoke earlier, product vision can be right in the beginning like where you know exactly what needs to be built. Or you're actually focusing on certain improvements and that's why you come in up with the product vision at a later. So identify the value prop, identify the problems, identify your strengths and then coming up with the product vision. Google Chromecast also the same thing. Like it's a different example. The latest Chromecast with Google TV has a Google TV which is a value prop for it. Anyways, so what would you like to achieve long term is a question which you need to ask and does it tie up to your company's mission? Does this mission make sense three, five years from now? And sometimes in case longer as well, right? Like Facebook for example, building communities. It's a long term vision payment as well. PayPal like whatever people has done like a few years ago when they started is still now relevant because the vision of pay me paying securely is something that makes sense even now. I think we spoke about challenges as well. So understanding a situation is key. We need to determine like what's our current situation? What's our focus area? Like how is the current situation in the focus area? Like if you're taking about FinTech like what is the FinTech? How does the landscape look like today? What is the problem there? Who are the players? All those things we need to ask. Obviously there is a framework for this as well but instead like just ask the basic questions. What are the challenges faced by users or customers? And we were speaking about this as well. And again, users or customers are not just people who are using the product like an end customer. Like Airbnb is an example, right? So your stakeholders are both hosts and guests and there can be many more but thinking in both the angles is actually really important. Amazon is another example where your stakeholders are, it's a marketplace. So there are sellers and buyers. So what are the challenges faced by both? Like you cannot just solve the buyer's experience and if the seller's experience lag then the ecosystem actually fails. Then the other challenges, what you anticipate like environmental challenges or political challenges or like there is no tech today, driverless cars and they started LIDAR and all were not really existing in a fashion where you wanted it in the way for driverless cars. So there might not be tech solutions to exist. Yeah, like even when the initial like nineties if you see there are some product ideas where the chips and chips do not exist. They actually defined and designed chips for that particular purpose. ML chips is another example now. So there are many things. So it might not be technical solutions today. So that can be a challenge. So depending on where you want to be and what's your mission, you need to come up with, you need to understand the challenges and come up with the proposal. And if there is no solution, why doesn't exist a solution? Think in that aspect as well. Maybe it's not what market actually needed. GPUs for example, it was only used for gaming. Now it is used in various other scenarios as well. Yeah, think in other aspect. Again Airbnb software example. So there was no solution for renting your home in a fashion where it can reach to so many people. Why didn't we have them at that point? And I'm not saying like just think about challenges and you shouldn't step back. The reason why I'm saying to have challenges listed is to understand that these are the problems. Like Uber already was aware that there are environmental and political challenges when they enter into different cities, but they laid out a plan to solve that problem and that's the reason why you have seen, it's all like in many cities. Of course there are some problems in certain cities, but that's how it happened. So how should your product strategy blueprint be? It can be like many things, but I'm actually focusing on four different ideas. What's your problem statement you're trying to solve or probably how, what are the improvements you're making? Get data wherever you can. Defend your problem statement. Why it is very important and why it is focused and all those kind of questions. The second part is principles and values which we spoke earlier. What are our core principles? Every product needs to have core principles because the product development abides by the principles. Once you go to the execution stage where you question everything, like if there is a new feature that comes, why should we do it in this certain way? You question about that. And that point I guess principles are the key things which actually drive you to a decision. What should be the ethical values of the product as well? Privacy, for example, is an ethical value. Green is an ethical value. Like you want to use your energy only renewable. So that's a value, like of course you use servers but the servers need to go through renewable energy. That's another example. So your core principles and values are critical and important for a product. Then the target audience which we spoke, like who are the target segments? I'm not saying like they don't exist a product without any specific target segment. Or probably there can be products that exist with considering all target segments. It can be like different to base but in general to have this particular segment focus is really helpful. Like SNAP or they're focusing on end audiences. Same as the case. But there can be like products which are used by everyone, right? Like laptops, for example. It's used by everyone. But having a focus area is important in order to determine the fashion where it is needed for a certain segment. Then the core CUJs. CUJs are core user journeys, basically customer user journeys. So the core CUJs, let's list down the core CUJs what the product should achieve. Come up with a ranking system to determine the important ones. Like identify the parameters that are important. This will be helpful for the roadmap. So there are like so many ideas and features. Now you have a focus area, now you have a product vision, now you know what exactly are the problems. This is just an example like where you have so many ideas, so many things. You can come up with so many product ideas. Focus, again, focus on something. Come up with that prioritization mechanism. You cannot build everything at the same time or you cannot build multiple products. Focus on the product which you are aiming at. That would help you to come up with a roadmap. So what's your five year vision? Like what do you want to achieve in year one? What's your MVP? Like when will you come up with an MVP? What's the minimum viable product in order to help you get into that direction where you want? You cannot build everything in year one, right? But you need an MVP focus and then focus on other things, like getting added year by year or probably whatever timeline you're actually focusing on. So that's where your roadmap comes into picture. So converting your strategy into roadmap will get you to execution. I think just to recap, so what we have seen, what we have discussed is how do we achieve with a product vision and defining a strategy to come up with a product roadmap finally. So there are things which I actually explained about how do you focus on customers and roadmaps and journeys and all those things. I think that would be helpful in order to determine a roadmap. There can be various frameworks, but these are certain things which we need to focus on. And yeah, thanks for your time. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or probably pick me on LinkedIn. So if you have any questions or anything, you can leave a message anytime. Thank you.