What is the difference between Vision, Product Strategy, and Product Tactics?

Many people are saying things like?

"Wow, this a product strategy.helpful" Maybe others would say: "No, this is pure product tactic."

Suddenly someone says: "Wait, wait, wait, this a vision." Do you understand the difference between them?

• The text below will help you understand better the difference between a Vision, Product Strategy, and Product Tactics.

Graph from Roman Pichler's Website

The Three Planning Levels

Firstly, I need to explain that Agile Product Planning is defined by Three Planning Levels: the vision, the Product Strategy, and the Product Tactics.

The vision (long-term outcomes and benefits you'd like to see in the future)

The vision is the overreaching goal you imagine for your company's future. It predicts where your company fits into that future and how. The main goal of the vision is to guide everyone on focusing all efforts on what matters for the company; in other words, a well-defined vision allows you to work backward, understand which goals you need to achieve to get there, and it will enable everyone in your team/company to make the right decisions autonomously. Note that the visions below don't mention a specific product or a service. It instead states the business goals of each company. Below you can see some examples of companies' vision:

• Amazon ➞ To be earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.

• Facebook ➞ People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

• Linkedin ➞ Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

• Tesla ➞ Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.

• Nike ➞ To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.

I should say that we can also have another perspective of vision and divide it into three pillars:

• Global Vision ➞ How do you think the world will look in the far future?

• Company Vision (CEO) ➞ How your company will look like or what your company will do in the future. A company vision is usually something you establish as a CEO or founder.

• Product Vision (PM) ➞ How your product will look like or what your product will do in the future. A product vision is what you establish as a product manager.

One framework that you can use to build a product vision is Geoffrey Moore's product vision template:

Image from Roadmunk's website

There are two other good frameworks that I should mention as well, they are:

• Roman Pichler's product strategy canvas ➞ A step-by-step guide to help Product Managers define their Product Strategy. This framework is beneficial because it focuses on essential product perspectives that need to be worked on to create a successful strategy that will understand the customer journey, the related design experience, and the motivation for creating a product that should stand out through its differentiation (something that will solve a customer pain or create a new habit).

Image from Roadmunk's website

• Melissa Perri's version ➞ It's a more informal framework if we compare it with Roman Pichler's product strategy canvas. Still, it is an excellent exercise world where your team members and stakeholders stand regarding the product strategy.

Image from RoadmunkRoadmunk's

Product Strategy (Actions to reach the goal/vision)

A series of good movies you make to reach a goal; in other words, strategy is something you do to achieve a goal of some kind or the paths/initiatives that will guide you to follow your company'company's It helps you to get from point A to point B, and it is also the link between your roadmap and your product vision—the strategy turns the vision into actions you can take to achieve those long-term goals. You can see below the Tenets of a good Strategy:

• Show ways to achieve your goals;

• Consider factors that affect your success;

• Explains your competitive advantage;

• Helps you make decisions/guidance;

• It enables you to decide what to do and what not to do;

• Measure your progress along the way (Create simple metrics, KPIs);

• Promote the alignment between stakeholders.

Why is Product Strategy important?

• A product strategy provides clarity for your company ➞ Your team will be in a better position to deliver their best work when you draft and communicate a clear and well-thought-out strategy for your organization. Your developers will understand how the parts of the product they’re they're on contribute to the larger companywide strategic goals. Developers can sometimes feel caught amongst all the details and lose sight of the overarching purpose behind their work. A product strategy clarifies that for them. Your marketing and sales teams will be able to articulate the product’product'ss and unique selling proposition. However, generating anticipation and sales becomes difficult without a defined strategy behind a product. Additionally, your customer success team will better understand your product’product'ses and provide better support for your users’ fusers'tions.

• It helps you prioritize your product roadmap ➞ After you have the stakeholders' agreement for your proposal, it will be time to translate that strategy into a high-level action plan and then build a compelling product roadmap. Unfortunately, many product teams skip the strategy-drafting stage and jump right into listing themes and epics on their roadmap. Without a product strategy to guide these decisions, the team may prioritize the wrong items and misuse its limited time and resources. When you start with a strategy, you have a clearer picture of what you hope to accomplish with your product and translate it into a more strategically sound product roadmap.

• A product strategy improves your team’s team's decisions ➞ No organization delivers a product to the market following the exact plan drafted in the initial roadmap. Things change along the way, and product managers must be prepared to adjust their plans and priorities to deal with those changes. When you and your team have a clear product strategy as a reference point, you can make smarter strategic decisions about adjusting your plans, especially if you lose resources or change your estimated timetables.

Image from Product Plan's WPlan's

What are the Key Components of a Product Strategy?

• Product Vision ➞ It describes the long-term mission of your product. These are typically written as concise, aspirational statements to articulate what the company hopes the product will achieve. For this reason, a product vision should remain static. For example, Google’sGoogle'sision statement for its search engine was “Organizdetermining" the world’s information and making it universally accessible. "

• Goals ➞ A product vision should lead to high-level strategic goals. These goals will, in turn, influence what the team prioritizes on its product roadmap. Examples of product goals include: ▪ Increase free-trial downloads by 50% in the next six months ▪ Improve our average customer rating by one star on major product-review sites ▪ Generate $3MM in revenue within 12 months Using SMART goals is the best approach to utilize when setting goals for your product strategy. Like product roadmaps, goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

• Initiatives ➞ Initiatives are the strategic themes you derive from your product goals and then place on your roadmap. They are significant, complex objectives your team must break down into actionable tasks. (The product roadmap is, after all, only the high-level blueprint.) Examples of product initiatives include: ▪ Improve customer satisfaction ▪ Increase lifetime customer value ▪ Upsell new services ▪ Reduce churn ▪ Add customer delight ▪ Break into new industries or geographical areas ▪ Sustain product features ▪ Increase mobile adoption

How should your product roadmap reflect your vision and strategy?

Your product roadmap doesn't exist in a vacuum. However, suppose your vision is the long-term aspiration for the product, and the product strategy explains how you'll achieve it. In that case, your product roadmap is the visual tool that will visually communicate how to anyone who's invested in the product (your team, your stakeholders, and, in some cases, your customers).

We like to think of the roadmap as a statement of intent rather than an unchangeable map—it should depict how the product will evolve over each phase by mapping the tactical work sequentially. This means you have to be able to forecast how the product might grow, yet also be prepared for the inevitable changes that arise as your product evolves and you learn more about your market and your customers.

An excellent strategic product roadmap reflects your vision and strategy and guides the execution of the strategy; it aligns internal stakeholders, communicates short and long-term progress of development, and seamlessly shares the product strategy with external stakeholders.

Image from Roadmunk's website

If you're building a feature-based roadmap, using a prioritization framework is the best bet for ensuring everything is aligned with the product strategy. The product team can use prioritization exercises to ensure that every one of their efforts is aligned with the product strategy. These exercises can help the product manager ensure that everyone truly understands the strategy and, when someone is missing the mark, make changes where necessary.

Below you can see some examples of famous companies' product development strategies:

• Amazon ➞ Example of a customer-oriented approach to product development strategy. Their product strategy is focused entirely on customer needs. Amazon likes to work backward from the target market. They write the press release for the product first and hone it until its language is simple enough for anyone to understand. The press release has no technical jargon about technologies or UIs. They then work backward from the press release to the product. This product development strategy focuses on Amazon's internal process, engaging with customers to create a specific product that meets an identified need.

• Apple ➞ Example of a platform/derivative strategy that connects their top-level strategy to their product development process. The tech giant tends to be product-driven. Apple creates products and then finds the market for them later. Steve Jobs famously suggested that customers do not always know what they want. Apple bets that customers will pay a premium for superb products and tends to focus on optimizing existing offerings. It relies on brand loyalty and is happy to allow competitors to control the market in lower-priced products that compete with Apple's.

• Google ➞ Product development strategies tend to be technology driven. Google bets on technology "to solve a big problem in a big way." This is a market-oriented approach since Google favors growing the market for everyone, which serves Google as the market leader. Google also optimizes growth, not revenue. Google's product development strategy takes a long view, typical of a company with a consistent market leader.

• Netflix ➞ Strategy to maximize adoption and retention. Netflix is the largest streaming service in the world. Netflix's core offer is a subscription, including unlimited access to content. Its product strategy emphasizes margin growth. Monthly retention is a key metric. It has increasingly focused on providing high-quality original content to pin eyeballs to screens. Netflix relies on a robust and trustable brand promising "movie enjoyment made easy." Its strong brand, ease of use, and personalization are difficult for competitors to duplicate.

• Ikea ➞ Strategy to focus on low cost at a consistent level of quality. The high volume of interchangeable parts requires an extensive, worldwide supply chain. Initially, the company leased out equipment to suppliers and provided training to ensure quality. Later, as it became an international brand, it reorganized its supply chain to manage its suppliers' large volume and geographic dispersion. With its core competency in supply chain management, Ikea can pursue a product differentiation strategy offering furnishings for any home. Ikea also commits to sustainable design principles. Its product strategy relies on intelligent design driven by its unmatched supply chain.

Product Tactics (Daily Activities)

The details of the strategy will answer precisely how things will happen. Tactics are the activities that make your goals, strategy, and vision come to life. Good examples of tactics are:

• Product backlogs;

• Epics;

• User Stories;

• Scenarios;

• Design sketches;

• Mock-ups.