Domain 1 of 6

What is a Product Strategy

The difference between a strategy and a list of goals. The kernel a strategy has to contain, the four marks of a bad one, where product strategy sits between company strategy and the roadmap, and who is actually allowed to write it.

Concepts

~17%

Of the exam

Practice questions

Concepts in this domain

01Product strategyThe set of choices a product makes about which customers it serves and how it wins them, the constraint that forces the choice, and what separates a strategy from a vision, a roadmap and a list of goals.02The strategy kernelRumelt's three part structure for a strategy, covering the diagnosis of the obstacle, the guiding policy chosen to deal with it and the coherent actions that carry the policy, and why the three have to chain.03Good strategy and bad strategyRumelt's four hallmarks of bad strategy, which are fluff, failure to face the challenge, mistaking goals for strategy and bad strategic objectives, each set against the part of the kernel it leaves out.04The product strategy stackThe five layers running from company mission to product goals, what a product strategy inherits from the layer above it, and why the stack is written downwards and debugged upwards.05Product strategy ownershipWho drafts a product strategy and who approves it, how ownership of each layer of the stack moves with company size, and what a product manager does when the company strategy above is unwritten.

Try a question from this domain

A veterinary software company with thirty engineers can fund either inventory tools for independent practices or referral management for hospital groups. Its board funds both at half strength so that neither market is abandoned. What has the board done to the strategy?

ARemoved the choice the strategy existed to make, leaving two efforts that each lose to a competitor who picked one.
BReduced the risk, by spreading the investment across two markets that are unlikely to fail at the same time.
CDeferred the decision until more evidence arrives, which is the sound move while the market is still unclear.
DLeft the strategy intact and changed only the way it is funded.

15 questions on this domain.

One per page, with a worked explanation.

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