Product Strategy Questions You Must Answer

By Michael Chase. This page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License

Product Strategy Product Strategy Questions You Must Answer

Introduction

Product strategy is like a jigsaw puzzle. You cannot see the big picture until all the little pieces are in place.

During product strategy development, you must answer three big-picture questions:

What is our market environment?
Where do we stand versus that environment and our competitors?
How will we compete?

To thoroughly answer these big-picture questions, you need to first assemble the details. Otherwise, you risk arriving at the wrong conclusions and embarking on a strategy destined for failure. To give your strategy the best chance for success, fill it with detailed answers to the questions in this chapter.

Phase I Questions

Market Analysis

What is the definition of your overall market?
How will you segment your market?
What segments are of interest?

Segments of Interest Analysis

What is your definition of the buyer?
Who are the most important buyers in the segment?
What are their roadmaps?
What are the trends and potential disruptions in their business?
Who are their customers?
What is the current and future total available market for the products made by segment members?
What is the customer problem that you seek to solve?
What impact does this problem and its solution have on the customer’s business?
What are the application requirements you must meet, now and over time, to solve that problem?

Opportunity Analysis for Your Business

What factors will drive or retard growth?
What is the current state of these factors?
How have these factors changed over time?
What is the outlook for these factors?
Will there be different factors in the future?
What are the key trends?
What are the potential disruptions?
Who is driving these trends or disruptions?
What impact will these trends or disruptions have on your business and when?
What is the total available market for your solution now and over time?

Most Important Opportunities and Threats

Based on the environmental analysis, what are your most important opportunities and threats?
What are the implications of these for your business?

Data and Validation Gaps

What critical information and data are you missing?
What data and assertions do you need to validate?

Phase II Questions

Historical Financials

What is your historical revenue and profit in the segments of interest?
What are the important trends?
What accounts for changes in historical revenue and profit?
Which trends do you expect to continue? Why?
Which trends do you expect to change? Why?

Position versus Application Requirements

How does your current product’s capability compare to the current market requirements?
What will happen to your current product’s ability to address market requirements in the future if you do not make any improvements?
What attributes of your product are over-designed for the application?

Who are the competitors seeking to solve the same customer problems?
What are the historical market shares among competitors?
What accounts for changes in historical market shares?
What are the important trends?
Which trends do you expect to continue? Why?
Which trends do you expect to change? Why?
Where do you stand versus your competitors at each of the most important customers?
What conclusions can you draw from historical win-loss data?

Competitor Analysis

What are the competitors’ products?
Who are their key customers?
What are your competitors’ value propositions and positioning?
What are your competitors’ strategies to beat you?
What are the key advantages of their products?
What are their key competitive issues or disadvantages?
How do their current products stack up to your product?
What are your competitors’ product roadmaps?
Do they have fundamental advantages or disadvantages because of product architecture choices?
What intellectual property do your competitors have that helps them compete?

Buying Decision Drivers

What are the buying decision drivers for customers in your target market?
What is the value model that shows the relationship between your and your competitors’ buying decision driver performance and prices?

Strategic Issues

Based on the environmental and situation analysis, what are the strategic issues you must address in your product strategy?

Data and Validation Gaps

What critical information and data are you missing?
What data and assertions do you need to validate?

Phase III Questions

Objectives

What are your revenue, profit, and market share objectives?
Are there any financial boundary conditions or constraints?
Are there any non-financial, strategic objectives?

Market Strategy

What are your target market segments?
Do the segments that you are targeting change over the strategy period?
What market segments are you deliberately not targeting?

Market Penetration Strategy

Who are the most important customers to acquire in your target market?
Who serves them now?
What are the key requirements to penetrate?
What is your strategy to penetrate?
What is the timing for penetration?

Competitive Strategy

What is your value proposition?
What market positions will you take?
What are the competitive advantages that make your value proposition and positions true?
What factors are critical to the success of your competitive strategy?
Why is your strategy better than your competitors’?