1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
🛠️ How to Stop Saying Yes to Everything in Your Product Strategy
How to Stop Saying Yes to Everything in Your Product Strategy​Dear Reader,​ Three weeks ago, I shared with you Why you don’t get Value from your Product Strategy. Today, we're going to talk about the How. Making your Product Strategy decisive means making choices that help answer "What does this allow us to say no to?" Imagine a b2b SaaS Analytics software called Analytico. If your Product Strategy says you target "Companies building Digital Products," every stakeholder conversation will go like this: "We need customizable dashboards to meet a company's branding." - "That sounds reasonable." "We need a data import from Shopify" - "I guess we could do that." "We need native Android and iOS SDKs" - "Sure, companies might need that." You don't have a basis for saying no to any of these. But if you break down your audience into comically narrow segments, you shift the conversation. You can break "Companies building Digital Products" down by many criteria: Business model, industry, revenue, number of employees, geography, technology used, etc. This might lead you to a segment like "European Web-first eCommerce companies making 10-50M€ per Year in Revenue." Nobody knows exactly if this is the right segment. It's an informed assumption. But at least this choice shifts the priorities: ​ "We need customizable dashboards to meet a company's branding." - "No, our customers are scrappy and don't represent their data to the outside." "We need a data import from Shopify" - "Yes, 75% of our target customers run on Shopify." "We need native Android and iOS SDKs." - "No, there are only 100 native eCommerce apps in the European App Store, and none of them fall within our target segment." Other possible tentpoles you can establish to make your Strategy conversation more decisive are:
Next week, we talk about how Analytico can ensure its Product Strategy is Layered. Did you enjoy this one or have feedback? Let me know and reply. Hearing from you is what motivates me whenever I sit down to write this newsletter. If this newsletter isn't for you anymore, you can unsubscribe here. Thank you for Practicing Product, ​Tim​ Good News!There are a few tickets available for my 1-day Product Strategy workshop in Cologne on November 14. Learn how to navigate the practices of Product Strategy with confidence.
What did you think of this week's newsletter? As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions. I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery. |
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
Product Practice #365 How bol.com kills ideasbased on Discovery Insights READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 30, 2025 READING TIME 5 min & 18 sec Dear Reader, This is the second part of my mini-series on how bol.com, one of Europe’s largest e-commerce companies, shapes its fintech products. Last week, we looked at how they combine regulatory compliance with customer value. This week, we'll look at how they adapt discovery practices to their unique context, leading to killed ideas and adapted...
Product Practice #364 How to shape Fintech Products inside a European €5.9B+ eCommerce Platform READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 23, 2025 READING TIME 4 min & 48 sec Dear Reader, Better product management practices can emerge anywhere. While Silicon Valley companies have long been considered the Standard for product practices, there is immense value in understanding how companies adapt and evolve these practices in different contexts, especially in Europe. This is why I'm starting a...
Product Practice #363 How to IdentifyHigh-Leverage Impacts READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 16, 2025 READING TIME 5 min & 13 sec Dear Reader, An Impact is a metric that describes the achievement of a company- or department-level priority. It's a lagging indicator that changes as a result of multiple compounding efforts, but is not linkable to one individual feature or activity. Most Impacts fall into one of five categories: Growth Engagement Monetization Satisfaction Process Quality From Vague...