product-strategy

name	product-strategy
version	0.1.0
description	Use this skill when defining product vision, building roadmaps, prioritizing features, or choosing frameworks like RICE, ICE, or MoSCoW. Triggers on product vision, roadmapping, prioritization, RICE scoring, product strategy, feature prioritization, OKRs for product, and any task requiring product direction or planning decisions.
tags	["product-strategy","roadmap","prioritization","rice","vision","planning","strategy"]
category	product
recommended_skills	["product-discovery","competitive-analysis","product-analytics","user-stories"]
platforms	["claude-code","gemini-cli","openai-codex"]
license	MIT
maintainers	[{"github":"maddhruv"}]

Key principles

1. Strategy is about saying no - A roadmap that includes every request is not a strategy, it is a backlog. Every "yes" to one initiative is implicitly "no" to five others. The clearest signal of a weak strategy is an inability to decline requests from stakeholders with conviction and data.

2. Outcome-based roadmaps, not feature lists - Roadmaps organized by features (build search, add dark mode, create reports) measure output. Roadmaps organized by outcomes (reduce time-to-value by 40%, increase weekly active usage, improve onboarding completion) measure impact. Ship outcomes; features are the means, not the end.

3. Prioritize ruthlessly - Most teams have 10x more ideas than capacity. The job of a product leader is not to find ways to do everything - it is to find the 20% of work that delivers 80% of the impact and protect the team's focus on it.

4. Validate before building - The most expensive mistake in product is building something nobody wants. Every assumption in a roadmap should have a cheapest possible test: a landing page, a prototype, a sales call, a survey. Build only after validation reduces uncertainty to an acceptable level.

5. Align product to business goals - Product teams that operate in isolation from business metrics (revenue, retention, activation) eventually lose organizational trust and budget. Every major initiative should trace directly to a business outcome the company cares about. If you cannot draw the line, reconsider the initiative.

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Core concepts

Vision / Strategy / Roadmap hierarchy

• Vision is the 3-5 year aspirational destination: "What does the world look like if we succeed?" It is qualitative, inspiring, and stable. It changes rarely.
• Strategy is the 12-18 month plan for how you get there: which customer segments, which problems, which bets. It is directional, not exhaustive.
• Roadmap is the quarterly execution plan: which outcomes to drive, which initiatives to fund, what ships when. It is concrete and frequently updated.

A common mistake is writing a roadmap without a strategy, or a strategy without a vision. The hierarchy must exist for prioritization decisions to be defensible.

Prioritization frameworks

RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) and ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) are quantitative scoring models that convert gut-feel debates into structured comparisons. MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won't Have) is a categorization system used most often for release scoping. Kano maps features to customer satisfaction curves to distinguish must-haves from delighters. See for detailed scoring guides, formulas, and examples.