Go from Hunches to Evidence-informed
Product Strategy Choices

Product Strategy Requires Evidence and Clarity 

Product teams that rush only to shipping the next idea from their never-ending backlog of “great” ideas will quickly lose sight of the results that matter. Features shouldn’t be built for the sake of it, but to create success for users and to drive business results.

And that's where Path to Product Strategy guides you the starting points of Product Strategy.

Key Outcomes of the Course

Course Curriculum

1. The Patterns of Product Strategy Framework Thinking

• What is and isn't Product Strategy
• The importance of Product Strategy Patterns over Strategy Templates
• The Stable Core and Dynamic Peripherals of Product Strategy
• Company Strategy vs. Product Strategy and Feature Strategy
• Useful vs. Useless Product Strategy

2. Creating the Strategic Narrative

• Your Product Vision and Long-term Strategic Goals define the WHY behind choosing your Playing Field and provide Orientation for making Winning Moves
• How to Clarify the Company Vision and Strategy you're contributing to
• Defining a user-centered Product Vision instead of listing Company Intentions
• Identifying measurements of strategic success by using KPI Trees and holistic goal-setting frameworks

3. Defining the Playing Field

• Your audience is one of the core parts that define your playing field. Instead of solving problems for "everyone," we'll look at tactical ways of thinking and framework to help you clarify your audience focus so it's in line with your vision and goals 
• We also cover how to understand the relevant jobs of your core audiences, so you can prioritize research and testing efforts later on.
• Products don't compete against competitors but against alternatives. By understanding who your audience is hiring today for their jobs, you understand the last puzzle piece of your playing field: Who you will be compared against

4. Identifying and Choose Winning Moves

• You don't just want to participate on the sidelines of a playing field, but be on it to win it. Therefore, we cover channels, value propositions, and differentiators.
• Channels don't follow the abilities of your product. That's why you have to understand the possible and best-possible channels to reach the users and buyers in your core audience.
• To make your audience choose you, over alternatives, you have to provide value propositions, high-level features, or services that match their proven jobs. We cover tactical structures for shaping this process.
• To sustainably get chosen by your audience, you have to know what differentiators you can rely on and which could easily be copied or attacked. We'll use moat scoring as a way to bring clarity to your positioning.

5. Strategy Synthesis and Strategy Implementation

• Can you say what your Product Strategy is? In this session, we'll make sure you can. By using the evidence-based building blocks of the previous sessions, we cover how to synthesize insights into a concise statement for each of your Strategy choices.
• Even a well-articulated explicit Product Strategy choice won’t automatically lead to results. We'll look at setting leading indicators for your Product Strategy choices and how to use these to define Product Discovery priorities.

Join an Upcoming Cohort

Course Procedures

• Kickoff Session
  • Introductions and goal setting for the course. Get to know your peers, learn more about how the course is structured, and ask Tim your questions.
• Course Duration
  • The course will run over the course of five weeks. You'll work both independently and in groups on your Product Strategy details.
• Live Group Sessions
  • We'll have 2-hour live group Zoom sessions on Thursdays to work through new concepts, your individual Strategy progress and  to clarify questions together. The live sessions will be recorded but attendance is recommended to get the most out of the cohort experience.
• Practical Implementation and Group Accountability
  • Each live session will end with specific tasks for the students to tackle until the next live session.
  • Students will share their commitment to action until we meet again and will have the chance to share their accomplishments in the student community to receive praise and guidance
• Ongoing asynchronous feedback
  • You can get asynchronous feedback on your progress and answers to your questions from other participants through a dedicated Circle community space.
  • You can get asynchronous feedback on your progress and ideas directly from Tim private through Loom videos or Voxer voice messages.

Who is this Course for?

• (Senior) Product Managers who want to shape the direction of their product without running circles around evergreen company KPIs
• Heads of Product and VPs of Product who are looking for a new perspective on providing guidance to their product teams.
• Product Ops Managers, Agile Coaches, and Scrum Masters who want to support product teams beyond Scrum rituals.

What Others Have to Say

Join an Upcoming Cohort

Meet your Instructor, Tim Herbig

As a Product Coach, Tim has helped dozens of teams to build better products through Product Discovery, Outcome Goals, and tangible Product Strategy.

Tim’s work is informed by more than 10 years of working as a Product Leader, helping develop a broad range of B2C and B2B products.

It is his mission to help product teams become the best version of themselves. He’s convinced that cross-functional teams’ real self-organization can be built only upon trust and given autonomy to democratize as many processes as possible around building products and organizations.