product-strategy

Files (4)

• README.md
• SKILL.md
• evals.json
• prioritization-frameworks.md · references/

SKILL.md (first lines)

## Key principles

1. **Strategy is about saying no** - A roadmap that includes every request is not a
   strategy, it is a backlog. Every "yes" to one initiative is implicitly "no" to five
   others. The clearest signal of a weak strategy is an inability to decline requests
   from stakeholders with conviction and data.

2. **Outcome-based roadmaps, not feature lists** - Roadmaps organized by features
   (build search, add dark mode, create reports) measure output. Roadmaps organized by
   outcomes (reduce time-to-value by 40%, increase weekly active usage, improve
   onboarding completion) measure impact. Ship outcomes; features are the means, not
   the end.

3. **Prioritize ruthlessly** - Most teams have 10x more ideas than capacity. The job
   of a product leader is not to find ways to do everything - it is to find the 20%
   of work that delivers 80% of the impact and protect the team's focus on it.

4. **Validate before building** - The most expensive mistake in product is building
   something nobody wants. Every assumption in a roadmap should have a cheapest
   possible test: a landing page, a prototype, a sales call, a survey. Build only after
   validation reduces uncertainty to an acceptable level.

5. **Align product to business goals** - Product teams that operate in isolation from
   business metrics (revenue, retention, activation) eventually lose organizational
   trust and budget. Every major initiative should trace directly to a business outcome
   the company cares about. If you cannot draw the line, reconsider the initiative.

---

## Core concepts

**Vision / Strategy / Roadmap hierarchy**

- **Vision** is the 3-5 year aspirational destination: "What does the world look like
  if we succeed?" It is qualitative, inspiring, and stable. It changes rarely.
- **Strategy** is the 12-18 month plan for how you get there: which customer segments,
  which problems, which bets. It is directional, not exhaustive.
- **Roadmap** is the quarterly execution plan: which outcomes to drive, which
  initiatives to fund, what ships when. It is concrete and frequently updated.

A common mistake is writing a roadmap without a strategy, or a strategy without a
vision. The hierarchy must exist for prioritization decisions to be defensible.

**Prioritization frameworks**

RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) and ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) are
quantitative scoring models that convert gut-feel debates into structured comparisons.
MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won't Have) is a categorization system
used most often for release scoping. Kano maps features to customer satisfaction curves
to distinguish must-haves from delighters. See `references/prioritization-frameworks.md`
for detailed scoring guides, formulas, and examples.

**Product-market fit signals**

Strong PMF is characterized by: >40% of users saying they would be "very disappointed"
if the product disappeared (Sean Ellis test), high organic/word-of-mouth growth, strong
retention curves that flatten rather than decay to zero, and sales cycles that shorten
as you refine the pitch. Weak PMF shows as: feature-request-driven roadmaps, high churn
despite onboarding improvements, and a sales team that cannot articulate who the
product is for.

**North star metric**

A single metric that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers.
It must be a leading indicator of long-term revenue (not revenue itself), it must be
actionable by the product team, and it must be understandable by everyone in the
company. Examples: Slack (messages sent per user per day), Airbnb (nights booked),
Spotify (time spent listening). Choose one. Two north stars create two competing
roadmaps.

---

## Common tasks

### Write a product vision statement

A strong vision answers: who are we serving, what problem do we solve, and what does
the world look like when we win?

**Template:**

```
For [target customer], who [has this problem or need],
[Product name] is a [product category] that [key benefit / why it's valuable].
Unlike [primary alternative], our product [key differentiator].
```

**Extended narrative vision (for internal strategy docs):**

```
## Our Vision

In [timeframe], [company/product] will be [aspirational description of the future state].

[Target customers] will [be able to do / experience] [specific outcome] that was
previously impossible or painful.

We will know we have succeeded when [measurable signal]:
- [Signal 1]
- [Signal 2]
- [Signal 3]
```

Good vision statements are short (fits on one slide), memorable (team can recite it),
and opinionated (excludes some customers and use cases intentionally).

---

### Build an outcome-based roadmap

**Step 1 - Identify themes from strategy**

Map each strategic bet to a roadmap theme. A theme is a broad problem area, not a
feature. Examples: "Reduce time-to-first-value," "Improve team collaboration," "Unlock
enterprise segment."

**Step 2 - Define outcomes per theme**

For each theme, write one measurable outcome: the metric that would move if this theme

From mkurman/zorai, MIT.

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