Last updated on Aug 12, 2024

How do you balance strategy and tactics as a product road mapper?

Product road mapping is a skill that requires both strategic vision and tactical execution. As a product road mapper, you need to align your product goals with your stakeholders' expectations, prioritize your features and tasks, and communicate your plan clearly and effectively. But how do you balance these different aspects of product road mapping without losing sight of your customers' needs and your product's value proposition? In this article, we'll explore some tips and best practices to help you achieve this balance and deliver successful products.

1 Understand your strategy

Your product strategy is the foundation of your product road map and serves to define your product's vision, mission, objectives, and target market. Additionally, it is essential for guiding your decision-making process and evaluating progress and performance. To gain a better understanding of your strategy, you should answer some key questions such as what problem you are solving for customers, what benefits and outcomes your product offers, who your competitors are and how you differentiate yourself, and what key metrics and success criteria you have set. Answering these questions will help you create a product strategy that is clear, compelling, and aligned with both business goals and customer needs.

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Priya Padmanabhan

Product Leader | Health Care I Data Insights & Strategy | Team Building | Digital Consumer Experience I Digital Transformation I Growth I Retention I Process Design I Operational Efficiency
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Balancing strategy and tactics as a product roadmapper requires a clear vision and meticulous planning. The strategy represents the long-term goals and vision of the product, which should govern the overall direction of the roadmap. On the other hand, tactics involve the day-to-day tasks and short-term initiatives that help achieve the strategic goals. It's important to ensure that these tactical decisions align with the broader strategy. Regular reviews and adjustments of the roadmap can help maintain this balance, ensuring that immediate actions contribute to long-term objectives.

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2 Prioritize your tactics

Your product tactics are the actions and activities that you take to implement your product strategy, such as features, tasks, experiments, and releases. When prioritizing these tactics, you should consider how valuable and feasible they are, how urgent and important they are for customers and stakeholders, if they are aligned with your product objectives and vision, and how risky and uncertain they are for your product and business. With this in mind, you can use a prioritization framework like RICE, MoSCoW or Kano to rank your tactics and decide what to work on first, next, or later.

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Berkay Vuran

Sr. PdA @SESTEK 🎯 B.Sc.Psy, M.Sc.Mgmt. | PMP® | PSPO™-I | PSM™-I | PAL™ | PSFS™ | PSU™-I | PSD™-I
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Balancing strategy and tactics in product road mapping, in my perspective, is like navigating a ship through changing seas. The strategy is your compass, guiding the long-term direction, while tactics are the sails adjusted for immediate winds. Prioritizing tactics involves weighing their value, feasibility, and alignment with your strategic vision. Utilizing frameworks like RICE, MoSCoW, or Kano is crucial. These are not just tools, but lenses to assess and order actions, always considering customer urgency and strategic fit. The real skill is in making tactical decisions that are not just reactive, but steps that strategically propel you towards your overarching goals. It's about every tactical move aligns with your strategic destination.

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3 Communicate your plan

Your product plan is the output of your product road map and communicates your product strategy and tactics to customers, stakeholders, and team members. To ensure that your plan is effective, you should be clear and concise in your language, visuals, and formats. Additionally, it’s important to be flexible and adaptable by regularly updating your plan to reflect changes and feedback. Furthermore, strive for transparency and collaboration by sharing the plan with your audience and inviting their input and feedback. Lastly, be realistic and honest by setting reasonable expectations and acknowledging your assumptions and limitations. By following these principles, you can create a product plan that builds trust, alignment, and engagement with your audience.

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4 Balance your feedback

Your product feedback is invaluable for validating product assumptions, learning from experiments, and improving quality. To get the most out of it, you need to hone your skills in listening and empathizing, asking and probing, analyzing and synthesizing, and acting and iterating. Doing so will help you to use feedback to inform product decisions, actions, and iterations, and ultimately deliver value to customers and stakeholders.

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5 Review your progress

Your product progress is the measure of how well you are executing your product strategy and tactics. To review your progress, you should track and monitor your product results and trends using metrics, indicators, and dashboards. Evaluate your product achievements and challenges using reviews, retrospectives, and reports. Celebrate your product successes and motivate your team with recognition, appreciation, and incentives. Additionally, use feedback, learnings, and experiments to adjust your product plan and improve your product quality. Adopting these habits will help you demonstrate your product value, learn from your product experience, and optimize your product delivery.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Supriya Rai

Co-founder & CPO @ Surf | Entrepreneur and AI Product Leader
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Balancing strategy and tactics in product road mapping is like navigating a dynamic landscape. Strategy sets the destination, guiding the journey's purpose, while tactics act as the compass, adapting to the terrain. It's about threading the needle, aligning long-term vision with short-term manoeuvres, ensuring every step contributes to the product's symphony of success.

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How do you balance strategy and tactics as a product road mapper?

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1 Understand your strategy

2 Prioritize your tactics

3 Communicate your plan

4 Balance your feedback

5 Review your progress

6 Here’s what else to consider

Product Road Mapping

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