Key takeaways

Launching successful products that create significant customer and business value and realize strategic business outcomes is a challenge that requires a value-focused and multiple-stakeholder approach to product strategy development.

This four-step approach optimizes value delivery, ensures alignment between the different product stakeholders, and guides decision making throughout the product-development process:

• Start with why – Collaboratively develop a clear product vision that answers the most critical questions of why to invest in and develop the product. Focus the product vision on the intended customer and business value.

• Define success metrics – Define three or more measurable success metrics to integrate effective value-realization mechanisms into the product roadmap. Focus on quantifiable value drivers that link the product performance to the intended strategic business outcomes.

• Develop the business case – Use the identified value drivers to build a solid, realistic, and defensible business case. Use the product vision to estimate the costs and investments required, and consider the possible different scenarios for value realization.

• Prioritize and plan delivery – Prioritize the product features, and develop the initial roadmap guided by the key value levers and the choices made during development of the product vision and business case.