Weekend Reading – Creating Product Strategies (w/o a Company Strategy)

Dear all,

A very late ‚weekend reading‘ this time. Lots of work and then some problems with our heating system during the weekend. Do I need to tell you more?

We are currently working on some ‚Product Oriented IT‘ projects that reframe „Products“ from the rather different internal IT perspective.

Products to my mind need to provide a solution to an understood and validated user and/or customer problem while pursuing an overall business goal (think profit or other benefits for key stakeholders).

While this is difficult enough to work out for commercial products, it is even harder for ‚internal‘ IT projects, as there is usually no hard and fast market feedback like increasing activations, referrals, or revenue. Without a clear business direction from upper management, IT teams therefore are often left to their own devices when it comes to developing their product strategies.

For that reason I would like to double down on last week’s reading suggestion and add three more posts to provide a broader perspective on the topic. None of them provides a „just-add-water-and-stir“ type solution. But strategies are never done quickly and need to be revised constantly to address „real world“ feedback and learnings. (If you still feel lost after reading: book a ‘Practical Strategy’ workshop with us, we’re here to help.)

Here are the links:

How to Create a Product Strategy Without a Clear Company Strategy – 

by Liam Smith. A real life example for dealing with a typical situation (i.e. having no strategy inputs from „above“).

Click to view!

Hope you’ll find the time to have a look during the work week.

All the best,
Godehard