product-strategy

name	product-strategy
description	Develop or critique a product strategy by diagnosing the central obstacle, choosing a guiding policy, and defining coherent actions and non-goals. Use when priorities compete, a roadmap lacks rationale, a team has goals but no choices, or a strategy reads like aspirations or a feature list.

Product Strategy

Turn evidence about a consequential obstacle into a focused approach and a reinforcing set of product choices.

Required context

• Product, market, and target customer
• Business objective and time horizon
• Current performance and evidence
• Capabilities, constraints, and asymmetric advantages
• Active initiatives and commitments

Workflow

1. Define the outcome and identify what currently prevents it.
2. Separate symptoms, causes, constraints, and uncertainties.
3. Write a diagnosis that explains the situation and narrows the problem.
4. Identify leverage: a change, capability, position, or concentration of effort that could multiply impact.
5. Choose a guiding policy: the general approach for overcoming the diagnosed obstacle.
6. Specify explicit non-goals and trade-offs.
7. Define coherent actions whose effects reinforce one another.
8. Translate the strategy into near-term product bets and decision rules, not a fixed feature inventory.
9. Name evidence that would invalidate the diagnosis or policy and set a review trigger.

Output contract

Return:

• Strategic outcome
• Diagnosis and supporting evidence
• Central obstacle
• Guiding policy
• Coherent actions and owners
• Non-goals and trade-offs
• Advantages or leverage used
• Risks, measures, invalidation evidence, and review date

Bad-strategy audit

Reject or revise strategies dominated by:

• Fluff or undefined language
• Goals mistaken for strategy
• Failure to face the central obstacle
• A long list of unrelated priorities
• Actions that compete for the same scarce resource
• Claims of advantage without a mechanism

Quality gate

• The diagnosis could be wrong and can be tested.
• The policy makes a real choice.
• Actions implement the policy and reinforce one another.
• Non-goals protect focus.
• Measures indicate whether the obstacle is changing.

Source grounding

Operational synthesis informed by Rumelt's strategy kernel, leverage, and proximate-objective concepts in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, plus product-strategy and outcome principles from Inspired and Escaping the Build Trap.