product management business plan

Advisory boards aren’t only for executives. Join the LogRocket Content Advisory Board today →

• Product Management
• Solve User-Reported Issues
• Find Issues Faster
• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

What is a product plan and how to create one in 6 steps

Whenever I read about the next hot, new start-up with unicorn potential, I can’t help but think of Pinky and the Brain .

Both titular characters in the mid-90s animated TV series are genetically modified laboratory mice. Brain is hyper-intelligent; Pinky, not so much.

Brain’s primary objective? World domination:

Pinky : Gee, Brain. What are we going to do tonight? Brain : The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.

In each episode, Brain devises a diabolical yet half-baked plan — for example, manipulating the world’s biggest magnet to form discarded satellites to spell “Brain is your ruler” — that invariably ends up foiled.

What does this have to do with product management?

Devise a product plan to take over the world

If you want to make an impact with your product and solve all your customers’ problems, don’t be like Brain; take the time to devise a product plan before you make your first move on your quest for market domination.

Creating roadmaps and backlogs is a great start, but product planning covers a much wider scope.

In this guide, we’ll define what product planning means, why it’s important, and the components and steps involved in creating a product plan.

What is a product plan?

Product planning covers all the steps, activities, and decisions a company must perform and make to develop a successful product.

A product can be defined as an input-outcome device. The input is the customer value proposition and the outcome is the company’s profit. Product planning includes everything you need to do internally to get from input to outcome.

It starts with a recognized customer need — after all, customers don’t just buy a product, they buy what the product will do for them to solve a problem they are having. It ends when the product has reached the end of its usefulness from a business perspective.

What is the purpose of product planning?

Product planning encompasses the actions and components that contribute to achieving a specific outcome. Product management is all about realizing outcomes.

Before jumping into the how and what, let’s first understand why product planning is important by outlining its six objectives:

• Company survival
• Meet customer needs
• Increase sales
• Understand and manage strengths and weaknesses
• Better manage capacity
• Plan effectively

1. Company survival

The eye of the tiger, survival of the fittest — or as P. Diddy said, it’s all about the Benjamins .

Product planning allows you to focus, remain viable, and understand your ability to innovate. It also helps you clarify how to introduce, grow, and sunset products in highly competitive markets.

2. Meet customer needs

The customer is at the heart of any product. Thorough product planning will set you up to understand and meet your customers’ needs. This, in turn, helps you quickly move customers from evaluators to champions through the product-led growth flywheel .

3. Increase sales

Your product can be lightyears ahead with brilliant solutions to customer problems, yet if they are not interested in the solution and don’t buy the product, your product fails.

For example, virtual reality seems to have finally found product-market fit . VR technology though, is not new.

In the 90s, VR was on the rise and forecasted sales potential was off the charts. Unfortunately, VR systems such as the Virtual Boy failed to deliver; its poor ergonomics and underwhelming stereoscopic effect gave users terrible headaches.

With better product planning, Nintendo might’ve been able to craft a more sophisticated product that satisfied customer expectations and, as a result, increased sales.

Over 200k developers and product managers use LogRocket to create better digital experiences

4. Understand and manage strengths and weaknesses

Product planning allows you to look introspectively and analyze your strengths and weaknesses in light of market requirements. What does your product do really well? What qualities distinguish it from competitors? What does your product lack and what do competitors do better?

By asking and answering questions like these, you’ll gain a better understanding of what you can take advantage of and what you need to improve in your product.

5. Better manage capacity

What’s one thing every company has in common? Limited resources in terms of capital, material, and human resources. Product planning enables you to plan these optimally and get the most out of them.

6. Plan effectively

When you’re building products, you have many competing priorities . Will you invest in new features, enhance and improve existing ones, reduce technical debt , or spend more time on improving discovery and delivery processes ? Product planning allows you to meet your long-term strategic plans.

6 considerations for product planning

Now that we understand why product planning is essential, how do you go about doing it?

Creating a successful product plan involves the following considerations:

• Research before development
• Choose a delivery method
• Coordinate activities
• Set a price
• Commercialize the product
• Abandon unprofitable products

1. Research before development

Energy to get going: Check. Confidence it will work out: Check.

Validation that the idea will deliver what customers need? [Buzzer sounds].

Before jumping into the deep end of product development, start with extendive market and user research. The insights gathered therein will help you establish what characteristics and requirements your product must fulfil to meet customers’ needs.

2. Choose a delivery method

All roads lead to Rome. The question is, which is the most efficient?

This is even more applicable when it comes to product delivery. Which delivery method will enable you to develop your product or feature exact how the customer needs it to be?

3. Coordinate activities

Product planning aims to coordinate all the initiatives and activities around the product and its investments. Doing so allows you to improve your competitive position and strive for market leadership. It also helps you quickly respond to changing market conditions.

4. Set a price

Product planning helps you determine the ideal price point for your product.

More great articles from LogRocket:

• How to implement issue management to improve your product
• 8 ways to reduce cycle time and build a better product
• What is a PERT chart and how to make one
• Discover how to use behavioral analytics to create a great product experience
• Explore six tried and true product management frameworks you should know
• Advisory boards aren’t just for executives. Join LogRocket’s Content Advisory Board. You’ll help inform the type of content we create and get access to exclusive meetups, social accreditation, and swag.

The insights gathered during product planning can help you determine the best pricing strategy. For example, is your product most suitable for value-based, competitive, price skimming, cust-plus, penetration, economy, or dynamic pricing?

5. Commercialize the product

Product planning helps you uncover and validate the viability, feasibility, and desirability of your product.

Desirability speaks to satisfaction of customer needs and the commercialization of the product. This measure helps you ensure viability and, hopefully, rake in profits.

Product planning also considers how to best introduce the product to the market and continuously measure success post-launch .

6. Abandon unprofitable products

All good things eventually come to an end. Every decision in a product is a business decision, and there will come a time that further investment in a product or product feature becomes unprofitable.

At that point, a decision has to be made whether or not to sunset the product or feature.

Good product planning throughout the product lifecycle helps you recognize when it is time to abandon the product and sunset it in a structured way with minimal impact on customers.

How to create a product plan in 6 steps

OK, enough small talk. It’s time to deep-dive into the product planning process.

Product planning involves six steps:

• Market and user research
• Concept ideation
• Screening and testing
• Introduction and launch
• Product lifecycle

1. Market and user research

Before you start to build, it’s crucial to understand the problem you’re trying to solve, the market drivers, competitors, and customer needs. You can generate insights on all of the above through market research.

Competitive analysis , a subset of market research, is a structured approach to identifying and analyzing competitors.

Both are conducted to identify markets, investigate market positioning , and analyze the business’s success.

Through customer segmentation research, which is especially important to new businesses, larger customer groups are divided into different groups with personas.

The personas form the basis of user research, which is aimed at understanding potential customers’ problems, habits, interests, motivations, and more.

2. Concept ideation

A great product starts with a great concept and initial validation of that concept. This step is arguably the most fun and creative step.

During the concept development stage, you define what you are trying to build by figuring out how well it solves the identified problem, how easy it is to use, what it will cost the customer, the look and feel of the application, and so on.

A key step in this process step is product discovery and a continuation of user research, which enables you to uncover the problems the persona faces and the solution to aim for.

Concept ideation sources can be both external and internal. Externally, market and user research influence concept ideation. Internally, concept ideas originate from sales, customer support, marketing, engineering, designers, user research, executives, and investors.

3. Screening and testing

During screening and testing, the ideas generated during the concept ideation phase are critically evaluated.

The goal is to groom out ideas that are either inconsistent with the product vision , undesirable, and/or impractical.

After evaluation, the next step is to rigorously prioritize ideas . As the Highlander said, “ There can only be one .” This is not to say you should only test one idea; it just means you should pursue the most promising tests first.

There are plenty of prioritization frameworks to choose from with some of the most commonly used include:

• Value vs. effort
• MoSCoW method
• Opportunity scoring

Once you have a prioritized list, you should devise a hypothesis and experiment to verify or disprove it.

In product testing, customers are given an opportunity to try a prototype. This helps you understand whether customers understand the product idea, what they like or dislike about it, and whether they would ultimately buy and use it.

The concept ideation, screening, and testing as a whole are often covered in the Double Diamond approach, which is a design process to help you discover, define, develop and deliver solutions.

4. Introduction and launch

After a few iterations of screening and testing, the new features and usability improvements deemed ready to pursue and develop trickle through and are ready for development and launch.

In this step, the idea is converted into a product. It’s the PM’s job to schedule activities to ensure a successful product launch with a high adoption rate .

When ready, the product is launched and commercialized. If your product planning is sound, it should be poised to compete with existing products and maximize market share and profits.

5. Product lifecycle

After the product is launched, the real fun begins. Now it’s time to measure and analyze usage to gather new insights about whether or not your product launch was successful.

Using these insights, you can modify and enhance the product, introduce new features, improve usability, and help the product move from introduction to growth.

At a certain point, you’ll reach product maturity. The number of customers and sales will stabilize. Eventually, new investments in the product will have a harder time generating additional revenue. It will become increasingly challenging to compete.

Eventually, the product will decline, and the number of customers and sales along with it. This might be due to existing competition or the introduction of new products that are more advanced and better serve the customer’s needs.

Think about how the Walkman was surpassed by the Discman, which was overtaken by the mp3 player, and, eventually, an app on your phone.

6. Sunsetting

When a product is in decline, it’s time to sunset it. Sunsetting is also known as the end of life and usually involves deprecating the product.

Though it might feel difficult to say goodbye to a product that you birthed, nurtured, and watched grow, sunsetting a product is a perfectly natural part of the product lifecycle.

During the sunsetting phase, it is important to be diligent. You should devise a playbook or checklist to ensure all activities, such as communication, code clean-ups, and so on are covered during the end-of-life period.

Featured image source: IconScout

LogRocket generates product insights that lead to meaningful action

Get your teams on the same page — try LogRocket today.

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• #product strategy

Stop guessing about your digital experience with LogRocket

Recent posts:.

How to choose between an MVP vs. MBI strategy

Minimums allow for lower costs, increased agility, and the ability to collect feedback before too much investment has been made.

Leader Spotlight: Helping growing startups adjust and evolve, with Tim Martin

Tim Martin talks about how he structures teams as they scale and transition through the various phases of being a startup.

An overview of the development process for launching a new product

A successful launch creates a compelling narrative that highlights an unmet need in the market and then builds hype around the product.

Leader Spotlight: Decoding product-led growth, with Maria Thomas

Maria Thomas, CPO at Rebrandly, dives into how organizations can incorporate an effective product-led growth (PLG) strategy.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Product Strategy: What It Is, How To Build One, and Examples

Updated: June 01, 2023

Published: November 19, 2019

To create innovative and beloved products, companies have to understand their buyers, identify the problems they want to solve, and then develop and launch the solution successfully.

What Is Product Strategy?

Product strategy is the overarching plan explaining what your business aims to achieve with a product or feature. It includes how you plan to create the product, how it will impact buyers, and how it helps achieve your business goals.

It guides the ideation, creation, and launch of your product. Though some products — such as the microwave and super glue — happen accidentally, the majority of successful products have an underlying, high-level product strategy to back it up.

Having a cohesive strategy helps different teams stay on track, and they will refer to it when they have questions or need to make decisions. Once you have a solid strategy set, you can then build out a product roadmap and, eventually, the actual product.

Free Product Go-to-Market Kit

Free templates to ensure that your whole team is aligned for your next product launch.

• Product Launch Template
• Product Roadmap Template
• Sales Plan Template

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Product Strategy Framework Components

A product strategy often includes three core components: your market vision, product goals, and product initiatives.

Market Vision

Your market vision includes two aspects: the target audience and the business opportunity. It highlights how you plan to position the product and how it compares to competitors. Your vision should also explain how you plan to deliver a competitive offer that solves customers’ problems.

For example, a software company that creates a product management tool, similar to Asana or Trello, might include the following in their market vision:

• Audience: executive-level product managers
• Product positioning: an intuitive, easy-to-use interface for less technologically savvy users
• Competition: existing products are unspecialized, clunky, and hard to use

Product Goals

When measuring the success of a strategy, you need time-bound, measurable goals. For example, you could set a goal of having a customer retention rate of 97% or driving $50m+ in revenue in three years.

A goal addresses a specific problem you aim to solve, usually with a tangible way of measuring progress.

Product Initiatives

Alongside specific goals, your product strategy should have a complementary big-picture component. An initiative should explain your company’s focus and areas of investment. For example, you might set an initiative to improve the responsiveness of an app.

Unlike a goal, an initiative involves complex planning that brings together multiple stakeholders to achieve long-term success, often spanning the entire product life cycle.

Many use goals as the foundation for their initiatives. For example, you might set a goal of reducing the churn rate by 15% in one year. An initiative, then, might be improving the performance and responsiveness of the app.

Product Strategy Examples

Consider a company that creates time management software. When crafting their product strategy, they might include:

• Market vision: Create time management tools for senior managers in the software-as-a-service industry by providing an intuitive, easy-to-use interface — unlike competitors with clunkier software
• Product goal: Maintain a retention rate of 98% in the first year
• Product initiative: Improve the product's user experience and interface

Their market vision explains their target audience (senior management) alongside their competitive offering (an easy-to-use, UX-friendly interface).

Their product goal has a time constraint and a specific, measurable objective. The initiative — which has a more high-level aspect — complements the product goal, as improving user experience will likely increase retention rate.

Using another example, an artificial intelligence writing startup might have the following components in their product strategy:

• Market vision: Create an easy-to-use AI writing tool for small-business owners looking to save money on SEO and content creation — unlike competitors with unfocused writing tools
• Product goal: Acquire 500 users in the first three months
• Product initiative: Measure and optimize marketing campaigns promoting the AI tool

The company’s market vision explains both their audience and their differentiating factor. Similarly, their goal of acquiring a certain number of users goes hand in hand with their initiative — optimizing their product’s marketing.

The Importance of Having a Product Strategy

A product strategy gives teams direction — 35% of product teams reported wishing they had a clearer vision and purpose. It can also help your company increase collaboration, improve communication, and create better products.

Communicates Organizational Goals

A product strategy centers different stakeholders — including customer service, marketers, salespeople, and engineers — on one goal.

Although product managers , engineers, and developers may handle the day-to-day aspects of executing a product strategy, other departments need to know the product’s direction. For example, marketing and sales need to understand the most valuable features to create targeted promotions and advertisements.

Given that almost nine in 10 professionals blame a lack of communication for workplace failure, a product strategy can keep everyone aligned.

Defines Your Product’s Place in the Market

It’s near impossible to serve everyone in a market — and many startups fail because they misread market demand.

A product strategy helps set you apart from competitors because it answers the why behind your product. Creating a detailed plan forces you to spend time thinking about how to differentiate it from your rivals.

Enables the Creation of a Product Roadmap

As a result of creating a product strategy, you’ll set goals — both big-picture and specific ones. You can then use them as the basis for a detailed product roadmap . Since organizations waste 12% of resources due to ineffective product management , a solid product strategy optimizes that process.

Types of Product Strategies

Cost Strategy: Creating the best product for the lowest possible cost. This strategy works well in industries where customers put little thought into purchases, such as household cleaning products or toothbrushes.

Differentiation Strategy: Creating a product with a unique, standout feature. This can include a never-before-seen feature on a product or creating a product with whacky branding.

Focus Strategy: Creating a product that targets one specific buyer persona. This means focusing all your energy on a small set of people. You end up creating highly personalized products that gain significant brand loyalty .

Quality Strategy: Creating a product only using high-quality materials. This strategy naturally targets customers who have limited concern for price. To them, the quality or prestige justifies the high price — such as a luxury handbag.

Service Strategy: Creating a product complemented by high-quality customer service . Though the product still has to meet customer needs, this strategy leverages effective customer service to help build brand loyalty.

How To Create a Product Strategy

Creating a product strategy comes down to figuring out your market vision, product goals, and product initiatives.

Create Your Market Vision

Your market vision is a high-level overview of your company, competitors, your buyers, and your concept. To create it, consider jotting down bullet points for the following:

• Competitors : What companies currently dominate the market?
• Company weaknesses: Where does your company struggle?
• Company strengths: Where does your company excel?
• Buyer personas : Who is your target audience?
• Marketspace: What does the industry look like?
• Go-to-market plan : How will you promote your solution?

Set Product Goals

Next, set product goals for your strategy. Make them both time-bound and numbers-oriented, so you can measure progress and success throughout the process. To start, write down a few notes for the following:

• Timeline: Is it flexible or rigid? How volatile is the market?
• Metrics: What metrics does your business care the most about? What does your business hope to achieve with the product?
• Teams: What internal stakeholders should be in the know? How can you best keep them informed?

Create Product Initiatives

Product initiatives require less specificity than product goals — but they complement each other. You want to understand your company’s big picture. So, look through your goals and see how they relate to more high-level aspirations.

To help you get started, try these different methods:

• Collaborate with stakeholders: Ask others in the organization. What areas do they want to prioritize? Where do they see the company investing its time and resources in?
• Look at buyer personas: What do they care about most? Where do you foresee them having problems using your product?
• Analyze your company: What does your company need the most? Money? Users? Publicity?

Don't forget to share this post!

Free planning and communication templates align your team for your next product launch.

Powerful and easy-to-use sales software that drives productivity, enables customer connection, and supports growing sales orgs

New ebook : 10 Best Practices to Optimize Your Product Org

A Comprehensive Product Business Plan Template for Success

In today's competitive business landscape, having a well-thought-out product business plan is crucial for success. A product business plan serves as a roadmap that outlines your goals, strategies, and financial projections, ensuring that you stay focused and on track towards achieving your objectives. In this article, we will delve into the importance of a product business plan and explore the key components necessary for crafting an effective plan. We will also provide valuable tips for implementing and monitoring your plan to maximize its effectiveness.

Understanding the Importance of a Product Business Plan

Before we dive into the intricacies of crafting a product business plan, let's first understand why it is so important. A product business plan serves as a blueprint for success, providing a clear and concise overview of your business and its objectives. It acts as a guide to not only attract potential investors but also to align your team's efforts towards a common goal. Additionally, a well-defined plan helps mitigate risks and makes it easier to measure progress and make necessary adjustments along the way.

When it comes to starting a new business or launching a new product, having a solid plan in place is crucial. A product business plan serves as a roadmap, outlining the steps you need to take to achieve your goals. It helps you stay focused and organized, ensuring that you don't lose sight of your vision amidst the chaos of running a business.

Defining a Product Business Plan

So, what exactly is a product business plan? Essentially, it is a document that outlines your product, target market, business strategy, financial projections, and the steps you will take to achieve your goals. It encompasses various elements that work together to give your business direction and purpose. With a clear plan in place, you increase your chances of success by having a roadmap to follow throughout your journey.

When crafting a product business plan, it's important to consider all aspects of your product and its market. Start by defining your product and its unique selling proposition. What problem does it solve? How is it different from existing solutions? By clearly identifying what sets your product apart from the competition, you can effectively position yourself in the market and attract customers.

Another crucial component of a product business plan is conducting thorough market research and analysis. This involves understanding your target market, identifying customer needs and preferences, and evaluating the competitive landscape. By gaining insights into your target market, you can tailor your product and marketing strategies accordingly, increasing your chances of success.

Why a Product Business Plan is Crucial for Success

There are several reasons why having a product business plan is crucial for success. Firstly, it helps you define your product and its value proposition. By clearly identifying what sets your product apart from the competition, you can effectively position yourself in the market and attract customers. A well-defined value proposition helps create a strong brand identity and builds trust with your target audience.

Secondly, a product business plan provides valuable insights into your target market through extensive market analysis. This allows you to understand customer needs and preferences, enabling you to tailor your product and marketing strategies accordingly. By aligning your offerings with customer demands, you increase the likelihood of attracting and retaining customers.

Furthermore, a well-crafted product business plan outlines your operations and management plan, helping you streamline your processes and ensure efficient execution. It provides a clear overview of your organizational structure, roles and responsibilities, and key operational processes. This helps you identify areas for improvement and optimize your operations for maximum efficiency.

In addition to operations, a product business plan also includes financial projections and funding requirements. This gives investors a comprehensive understanding of your business's financial viability and growth potential. By showcasing your financial projections, you demonstrate that you have carefully considered the financial aspects of your business and have a plan in place to achieve profitability.

In conclusion, a product business plan is a crucial tool for success. It provides a roadmap for your business, helps you define your product and target market, and ensures efficient execution through streamlined operations and financial projections. By investing time and effort into crafting a well-defined plan, you increase your chances of achieving your business goals and attracting investors.

Key Components of a Product Business Plan

A successful product business plan comprises several key components that work together to form a cohesive and comprehensive document. Let's explore these components in more detail.

Product Description and Value Proposition

The first component of a product business plan is a clear and detailed description of your product or service. This includes its features, benefits, and how it solves customer pain points. Additionally, you need to define your unique value proposition - the compelling reason why customers should choose your product over competitors.

For example, if you are developing a new smartphone, your product description would include details about its design, specifications, and user interface. You would highlight how your smartphone offers innovative features, such as a longer battery life or a more intuitive user experience, that set it apart from other smartphones in the market. This value proposition would appeal to customers who are looking for a high-quality, user-friendly device that enhances their daily lives.

Market Analysis and Strategy

Next, conduct a thorough market analysis to gain a deep understanding of your target market, industry trends, and competitive landscape. This will help you identify market gaps and opportunities, allowing you to develop a winning marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy should outline how you will reach your target audience, the channels you will utilize, and the tactics you will employ to increase brand awareness and drive sales.

Continuing with the smartphone example, your market analysis would involve researching the current smartphone market, including the size of the market, key players, and consumer preferences. By analyzing this data, you can identify potential niches or untapped segments that your product can target. Your marketing strategy would then outline how you plan to position your smartphone as the go-to choice for tech-savvy individuals who value cutting-edge technology and sleek design.

Operations and Management Plan

The operations and management plan details how your business will run on a day-to-day basis. It covers areas such as production processes, supply chain management, inventory management, and quality control. Additionally, it outlines the organizational structure of your company, including key roles and responsibilities.

In the case of a smartphone business, your operations and management plan would include information on the manufacturing process, from sourcing components to assembling the final product. It would also outline your supply chain management strategy, ensuring a smooth flow of materials and timely delivery to meet customer demand. Furthermore, you would detail your quality control measures to ensure that every smartphone meets the highest standards of performance and reliability.

Financial Projections and Funding

A crucial aspect of any product business plan is the financial projections and funding requirements. This section should provide a clear overview of your expected revenue and expenses, allowing you to assess the financial feasibility of your business. Furthermore, it should outline your funding requirements, including how much money you need to start or scale your business and how you plan to secure it.

For the smartphone business, your financial projections would include estimated sales volumes, pricing, and production costs. This would give you an understanding of your potential revenue and profitability. Additionally, you would outline your funding requirements, such as the amount needed to set up manufacturing facilities and marketing campaigns. You might explore options like seeking investment from venture capitalists or securing a business loan from a financial institution.

By including these key components in your product business plan, you can create a comprehensive and compelling document that showcases the potential of your product and sets a clear roadmap for success.

Crafting an Effective Product Business Plan

Now that we understand the importance of a product business plan and its key components, let's discuss how to craft an effective plan that sets you up for success.

Setting Clear Objectives

The first step in creating an effective product business plan is setting clear and measurable objectives. Clearly define your short-term and long-term goals, ensuring they are specific, realistic, and aligned with your overall business vision.

Conducting Thorough Market Research

A comprehensive market research is vital to understand customer needs, market trends, and the competitive landscape. Gather relevant data, analyze it, and use the insights to inform your product development, marketing strategy, and pricing decisions.

Developing a Strong Marketing Strategy

Your marketing strategy should outline how you will position your product in the market, target your ideal customers, and communicate your value proposition effectively. Utilize various marketing channels such as social media, content marketing, and search engine optimization to maximize your reach and impact.

Preparing Realistic Financial Forecasts

Accurate financial forecasts play a crucial role in determining the financial viability of your business. Consider factors such as production costs, pricing, sales projections, and operating expenses to create realistic financial forecasts. Regularly review and update these forecasts to ensure they remain aligned with your actual financial performance.

Tips for Implementing Your Product Business Plan

To maximize the effectiveness of your product business plan, follow these tips for successful implementation.

Regularly Review and Update Your Plan

A product business plan is not a static document. It should evolve and adapt as your business grows and market conditions change. Regularly review and update your plan to ensure it remains relevant and aligned with your business objectives.

Communicate Your Plan to Your Team

Your entire team should be aware of the product business plan and understand their role in its execution. Regularly communicate the plan and its updates to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

Monitor Your Progress and Adjust as Necessary

Continuously monitor your progress against the objectives and milestones set in your plan. Identify areas of improvement and make necessary adjustments to keep your business on track and ensure long-term success.

By following these guidelines and creating a comprehensive product business plan, you will set yourself up for success in the competitive business landscape. Remember, a well-crafted plan acts as a roadmap, guiding your business towards its goals and helping you adapt and thrive in an ever-changing market.

Additional Resources

You might also like

The Essential Elements of a Product Strategy

Unlocking True Product Value: A Comprehensive Guide

Key Design Decisions for Product Management: A Comprehensive Guide

• Integrations
• Learning Center

The Main Stages of the Product Management Process

Just because it’s a great idea doesn’t mean it will automatically turn into a great product. Not all ideas are all that great to begin with. With these truisms in mind, product management plays an integral role in bringing order to chaos and, eventually, products to market.

There is no universal playbook for the product management process. However, the basic order of operations for most organizations is fairly similar. It’s a lengthy path, with stakeholder participation throughout and contributions from multiple departments. But the product management process shepherds things along.

This piece will define the seven main stages of the product management process. And while the names and details may vary from one workplace to the next, nearly every product follows a similar journey.

Idea Management

Coming up with new ideas isn’t particularly difficult. Inspiration can strike anyone at any moment. Plus there are plenty of mechanisms for teasing them out, from brainstorming sessions to customer interviews to keeping tabs on your competitors.

But since you can’t implement them all, product management must separate the wheat from the chaff and figure out which ones move to the front of the queue. To sort through them all, product management must manage idea generation and organization .

Ideas come up on an ongoing basis via many channels. It’s essential to capture and manage them centrally, preferably with some useful organization and tagging for when you eventually evaluate them. In many organizations, this means they’ll end up in the product backlog, which is periodically refined to clean out what’s become irrelevant or redundant while validating the “keepers” that remain viable for future consideration.

Maintaining a transparent system for collecting, aggregating, and storing these ideas falls on product management. Because the team hasn’t yet passed judgment on these possible features and enhancements, they must keep those who offer up suggestions—be they internal stakeholders, customers, or even board members and investors—in the loop regarding the status of their ideas.

Education and visibility into the process are key to maintaining strong relationships and open channels. It helps stakeholders realize their idea isn’t the only one in the running for possible implementation.

Specifications

Once you capture and categorize an idea, it’s time to figure out some of the details. This will accomplish a few things that will prove vital further along in the product management process.

Product specifications should be short and not overly technical documents that answer three important questions:

• What are we building, and why?
• What should this new product achieve?
• How do we measure success?

Teams should answer these questions collaboratively with input from a range of stakeholders to consider all angles and ensure that there’s agreement going forward on what exactly everyone has in mind. By removing as many vagaries as possible, it will be clear what’s under consideration when you prioritize and implement things later on.

Exactly how much level of detail should be included in these product specs depends on the product development style employed in your organization. This can range from waterfall environments where engineering expects down-to-the-pixel levels of detail to Agile workplaces where figuring out the implementation details is the responsibility of the development team.

Roadmapping

It might surprise you to see roadmapping fall earlier in the product management process than prioritization. How can you decide which features and enhancements to put on there when you haven’t prioritized them yet?

By roadmapping before the prioritization stage, product management can steer the conversation away from Feature X versus Feature Y debates and shift it to the higher-level goals, objectives, and themes that advance the product vision. This breaks the cycle of concentrating on individual enhancements and emphasizes meaningful outcomes that influence North Star metrics , KPIs, and strategic goals.

Selecting which high-level themes should be worked on during different time periods also lets the product team decide exactly which specific items will have the biggest impact and best ROI closer to the time of actual implementation, versus getting locked into very specific commitments months or even years in advance.

There’s still a coherent strategy and stakeholders can see which strategic areas are being addressed without making promises the company can’t or no longer wants to keep. It also provides some flexibility as you gather more information and make more technological advances.

Prioritization

Next, it’s time to decide which of those backlog items are worthy of making the cut and advances out of the idea stage. This is where one of the many available prioritization frameworks comes in handy.

Whether it’s using the fan-favorite product tree or a scoring model like RICE , this exercise determines which items should be worked on first, based on how they’ll impact the product’s vision, strategy, and KPIs. Any prioritization exercise should always include broad stakeholder participation, taking multiple viewpoints and opinions into account.

Regardless of the technique used, prioritization must balance the urgent, burning issues stakeholders are complaining about or clamoring for with the must-have items critical to executing against the medium-to-long term strategy for the product and company.

Unfortunately, not everyone always gets what they want. These decisions will be the most scrutinized part of the process (and your job as a product manager). But to do the right thing for the product, product managers will often have to say “no” to customers, salespeople, and even executives.

With a roadmap and set of prioritized items, it’s time to start building and shipping. This is often where product management takes a step back, serving in a more advisory or consulting role as engineers and project managers take the reigns.

How products get delivered can vary quite a bit from one organization to the next. At one extreme there’s the waterfall model, with tightly scripted, detailed project plans and releases are few and far between, only shipping when large chunks of functionality are completed and tested.

Agile organizations break their work up into much smaller chunks and complete as much as possible in sprints. This means there are iterative improvements to the product being made more frequently. However, it also makes things a little more unpredictable in terms of knowing exactly when a specific item will ship.

Some companies take this even further with continuous delivery , where new functionality, bug fixes, and other changes ship as soon as they’re completed and tested. In practice, this might result in multiple releases per day in some cases.

While some loyal fans of these various delivery models are ardent evangelists, there are good cases for any of them depending on the nature of the product and the team building it. Regardless of the particular delivery approach, product management’s role is to ensure what’s being built meets the requirements and expectations of the market and stakeholders. They must be available to define, clarify, and validate that the work being done will achieve the intended goals of the project.

Analytics and experiments

Once the product is released into the wild (or even as a controlled beta), product analytics offer a new opportunity for learning thanks to the flood of user data available when products are properly instrumented to capture it. Connections, causations, and correlations can all be deduced using this information, which can be incredibly illuminating.

Product management can do a few important things at this stage. First, they can see which behaviors drive key metrics the company values. For example, if conversion is paramount, they can see what most users do before they buy. If adoption and frequent usage is the goal, they can also look for what those cohorts have in common.

Based on this intelligence, the team can then prioritize initiatives lowering the barriers. They can then nudge users toward completing those tasks that turn them from dabblers to loyalists, be that changing the software and user experience itself or via education, onboarding, and in-app messaging.

Identifying the traits of successful/profitable customers can also inform which niches to invest in from both a product functionality perspective as well as on the sales and marketing side of the house. Product teams can build out or hone their target personas with this information to go after like-minded prospects.

Customer feedback

A shipped product also (hopefully) means a cadre of customers to collect and solicit feedback from. This is both exciting and terrifying. Helpful suggestions and insights are often accompanied by complaints, outlandish requests, and realizations that the product has fallen short of customer expectations.

Beyond swallowing your pride and remaining open to outside viewpoints, product management must institute a well-defined process for capturing and organizing this feedback that closes the loop with customers who take the time to offer their opinions. This brings things full circle with the start of this process—idea management—and that’s no coincidence. After “version 1.0” product management will get as many ideas from customers as anywhere else.

There are many methods for gathering this feedback. Some are more passive, such as offering in-app opportunities to provide suggestions from customer service and sales team interactions. But product management can—and should—be proactive about soliciting this input as well.

Customer feedback opportunities include surveys, customer advisory boards, focus groups, customer interviews, and usability tests. But there are plenty of other less-obvious methods for learning what’s on customers’ minds .

And don’t forget about ex-customer feedback. Analyzing what’s causing users to abandon the product might even be more useful than finding out why people stick around.

Your mileage may vary

The product management process laid out above may be the ideal. However, there are plenty of good reasons to wander off this particular proscribed path. You might need to prioritize things before you feel confident in your ability to roadmap or spend the time creating product specs. Or perhaps the team is confident to move forward on delivering finished products without some initial experimentation.

But even when teams complete them in a different order, each stage must be given its due. They’re all essential ingredients to bringing products to market that both delight customers and adhere to the product strategy.

Product Management for Higher Education

The product management function in higher education empowers institutions to align their offerings with overarching institutional goals.

How to Write Effective OKRs

This piece explores the role of objectives and key results and provides best practices for creating your own OKRs

In Product Management the Most Painful Lessons Are Those Found First

Product managers face a steady stream of situations they must learn to deal with that are outside their direct control....

Continue exploring

You can search or explore specific categories.

Product Updates

Company news and updates, templates and workbooks, remote product management, product metrics and analytics, product strategy example, product managers, prioritization and backlog, tools and resources, customer-centricity, product leadership, product management, roadmap and roadmap management, product strategy, agile & product development, career and interviews, schedule your enterprise demo, share on mastodon.