📈Product Strategy Role

The product strategist explores the business problems and refines the vision, then helps deliver what's in scope for products and services.

Apprentice, Lead, and Observer Handbooks

📔pageTech Fleet Handbooks

Description

Product Strategy is a role at the center of success for product teams. The role owns the foundation of a strongly sound product. They are the voice of the user and the voice of the stakeholder, understanding the pain points of current state, and prioritize these in product decisions.

To use a term in product life, Product Strategists "herd the cats" in order to lead teams to success.

Common Job Titles

Product Owner

Product Manager

Product Analyst

Business Analyst

You might be a Product Strategist if

1. You like defining the "big picture"

2. You like getting into the technical details of how a product should be engineered

3. You feel comfortable working through uncertainty to create clarity

4. You like orchestrating work across teams

5. You like to facilitate discussions

Cross-functional aspects

1. With the Client - facilitate requirements discussions; gather insight and feedback about the solutions being delivered

2. With Research - drive the priorities of research based on the product roadmap / plans

3. With the Project Lead - facilitate meetings and discussions; pair up to work together on deliverables

4. With Design - drive the priorities and requirements of design based on the product roadmap / plans

5. With Development - drive the priorities and requirements of development based on the product roadmap / plans

Lead Responsibilities

• You contribute as you lead. You’ll mentor other team members and/or apprentice product owners while others mentor you in areas you want to focus on

• Explore the product vision with the client and work with the UX team to form objectives each week

• Manage the roadmap

• Manage the project backlog and weekly sprint activities on the kanban board

• Work with the team to carry out and adjust the project roadmap

• Work with the team to define and prioritize weekly tasks and sprint goals throughout the project

• Help the team cut or add scope, or change direction when necessary

• Facilitate the team’s planning, retros, standups, and working sessions to ensure meetings are successful

• Create user stories and acceptance criteria for tasks that are done in the project

• Be the voice of the customer along with the UX team for the client

Apprentice Responsibilities

• Work with the lead product owner to carry out daily and weekly tasks

• Explore the product vision with the client and work with the UX team to form objectives each week

• Manage the roadmap

• Manage the project backlog and weekly sprint activities on the kanban board

• Work with the team to carry out and adjust the project roadmap

• Work with the team to define and prioritize weekly tasks and sprint goals throughout the project

• Help the team cut or add scope, or change direction when necessary

• Facilitate the team’s planning, retros, standups, and working sessions to ensure meetings are successful

• Create user stories and acceptance criteria for tasks that are done in the project

• Be the voice of the customer along with the UX team for the client

Role Expectations

• Ability to work without direct guidance or micromanagement

• Take ownership of product ownership-related tasks

• Deep understanding of Agile methods and an ability to coach others in Agile. Prior experience with Kanban, Scrum, or another Agile method is helpful but not required.

• Ability to work with the team to prioritize the most important tasks each week

• Ability to create direction out of uncertainty and explore business problems

• Be the “voice of the customer” and “customer expert” for the group, the person who grows their subject matter expertise in the product industry and user groups involved; socialize and evangelize the voice of the customer to the project group and to the client when the group needs to make decisions

• Working directly with the other team leads to strategize activities and decisions

Common Deliverables

1. Roadmaps

2. User journey maps

3. Development annotations

4. Flow charts

5. Sprint plans

6. Backlog upkeep

7. Competitive analysis

8. Product-market fit plans

9. MVP and MMP scope

10. Product requirements specs

    1. User stories

    2. Acceptance criteria

    3. BDD scenarios

    4. Annotations