Guide

Product strategy, from diagnosis to decision.

The short answer

A product strategy is a set of choices: a diagnosis of the real problem, a guiding policy for dealing with it, and coherent actions that carry it out. It says where you will play, how you will win, and what you will not do, and it only works if the people who have to act on it adopt it.

This guide is the reading path I would give a product leader who has to make a strategy work. It is written by a practitioner with ten years across strategy consulting, market intelligence and product, including years advising the COO and leadership of a NYSE-listed company on product, pricing, expansion and M&A. Read the guides in order, or jump to the one that matches the decision in front of you.

Reading path

  1. 1 How to Write a Product Strategy That Actually Gets Implemented The method: diagnosis, stakes, choices, guiding policy, actions, pressure-testing and the adoption work most documents skip.
  2. 2 Product Strategy vs Roadmap vs Vision: What Each One Decides What each document decides, who owns it, how long it lasts, and a worked example of the three working together.
  3. 3 From Research to Recommendation: Writing Findings Leadership Acts On How to turn findings into a decision leadership acts on: answer first, options, confidence and pre-wiring.
  4. 4 How to Build a Business Case for a Product Bet How to size, model and stress-test a product bet, with a worked example and a calculator that matches it.
  5. 5 Build, Buy, or Partner: A Decision Framework for Product Teams Core versus context, three-year cost, control and dependency, and how to keep the decision reversible.
  6. 6 AI Product Strategy: Deciding Where LLMs Belong in Your Product Six decisions that decide where language models belong in your product, from autonomy to economics to risk.
  7. 7 Product Strategy Consulting: What a Consultant Does and When to Hire One What a consultant delivers, when one is worth hiring, and how to judge one before you sign.

Free tools that go with the guides

Product Strategy Scorecard Score a strategy document against twelve tests. Product Business Case Calculator NPV, payback and break-even for a product bet. Build, Buy, or Partner Scorecard Weight criteria, score options, test the result. AI Use-Case Scorecard Should this task use an LLM, and how autonomous? Market Sizing Calculator TAM, SAM and SOM in seconds. RICE Roadmap Prioritizer Rank roadmap items by score.

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About the author

I am Deepanshu Grover, a Senior Product Strategy Consultant in Paris. I take ambiguous, high-stakes product and business questions, run the analysis, and see the recommendation implemented. More about me, or get in touch if you have a decision on your desk.