For any enterprise to succeed, it’s essential to make the correct strategic decisions. To attain this, you’ll profit from utilizing 4 several types of methods: enterprise, portfolio, product, and expertise technique. However that’s not sufficient. You’ll additionally must efficiently align the plans. That will help you deal with these challenges, I’ve developed a brand new framework, the Technique Stack, which I introduce on this article.
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Introduction
My first product administration job wasn’t precisely what you name successful story: I used to be a part of a crew that was referred to as in to assist with a brand new product growth effort, and I ended up working with the lead product supervisor. Whereas I learnt quite a bit within the course of, the ensuing product sadly failed. However this taught me an necessary lesson: There is no such thing as a level in worrying concerning the product particulars if a sound product technique is lacking.
With out the technique, it’s just about unimaginable to find out the correct options and consumer expertise: If we don’t perceive who the customers are and which drawback the product ought to resolve, how can we then determine the correct performance and seize the correct consumer tales?
As useful as a product technique is, it’s not sufficient. Most firms provide greater than a single product. As an alternative, they supply a product portfolio, consider Microsoft Workplace/365 for instance. To maximise the worth a portfolio creates and to align the methods of its member merchandise—for example, Phrase, PowerPoint, and Excel—it’s vital to make use of a product portfolio technique.
In the event you stopped right here, nevertheless, your strategic choices would nonetheless be incomplete. To make sure that the portfolio and its merchandise assist your complete firm transfer in the correct path, you want a enterprise technique that clearly articulates how the corporate desires to attain its general aspiration and create worth for its customers, staff, and shareholders.
However that’s nonetheless not sufficient. To make sure that the correct applied sciences are utilized, you’ll profit from utilizing a expertise technique. Let’s take Microsoft for instance once more. The corporate took the strategic choice to closely spend money on synthetic intelligence and now makes use of AI to assist Workplace customers be extra productive.[1]
Whereas I hope that this is smart to you, I discover that in follow, the totally different methods are typically confused. I’ve seen firms use a combination of portfolio and product methods as a substitute of separate plans. Generally, this hybrid technique even comprises enterprise technique components. This doesn’t solely result in confusion and misunderstandings. It additionally makes it onerous to handle and adapt the plan.
To obviously distinguish, seize, and align the totally different methods, you’ll profit from utilizing a framework. That is the place my Technique Stack is available in.
Understanding the Technique Stack
The Technique Stack is an end-to-end framework that provides three key advantages. First, it helps you perceive which methods a enterprise wants. Second, it affords a technique structure: It places the plans into context and exhibits how they are often aligned. Final however not least, the Technique Stack helps you make clear who’s chargeable for the totally different methods and assign clear possession.
Let’s take a more in-depth take a look at the framework, which is proven in Determine 1. Click on on the image to obtain the stack.
The Technique Stack consists of 5 layers and 7 components. These are the enterprise technique, which can also be known as company technique, the product portfolio technique, the expertise technique, and the product technique, in addition to the product roadmap, the expertise roadmap, and the product backlog. The backlog will not be a strategic plan, however I’ve added it to the stack to point out how strategic choices are translated into tactical ones.
There are two elements of the framework in Determine 1 I’d like to attract your consideration to. First, I’ve ordered the weather in line with their significance with an important on the prime. As a consequence, the enterprise technique guides the portfolio technique, which directs the product technique. The latter, in flip, drives the product roadmap, which directs the product backlog. This manner, the selections captured within the backlog are finally aligned with the enterprise technique.
Equally, the expertise technique is directed by the enterprise technique. Because it occupies the identical ranges because the portfolio and product technique, it influences them and, on the identical time, is affected by them. Lastly, the expertise technique guides the expertise roadmap, which, in flip, impacts the product roadmap and conversely is impacted by the plan.[2]
Second, the framework in Determine 1 doesn’t prescribe which strategies and instruments it’s best to use to seize your choices and create the artefacts it comprises. Apply those that work finest for you so long as you’ll be able to successfully reply the query related to every factor.
To seize the enterprise technique, I discover Roger Martin’s method helpful, which I summarise within the article Why Product Individuals Ought to Care About Enterprise Technique. To seize the portfolio and product technique, I choose to work with the Portfolio Imaginative and prescient Board and Product Imaginative and prescient Board. To formulate an outcome-based product roadmap, I like to make use of the GO Product Roadmap.
Observe the hyperlinks above to search out out extra concerning the three instruments, and watch the video under to know how one can join product technique, product roadmap, and product backlog.
Making use of the Technique Stack
Whenever you apply the Technique Stack to your corporation, you’ll find yourself with a tree construction, as Determine 2 illustrates.
Determine 2 is an instance of how the Technique Stack is likely to be utilized at Microsoft on the time of writing.[3] For simplicity’s sake, I contemplate solely two of the corporate’s portfolios—Workplace and Xbox, I state the methods, roadmaps, and backlogs for 2 Workplace merchandise—Phrase and PowerPoint, and I exploit one expertise technique, AI-First. Word that I’ve colour-coded the nodes in Determine 2 to point which layer they belong to.
Whereas the construction in Determine 2 doesn’t look so simple as the one in Determine 1, it categorises the totally different methods and product administration artefacts and it exhibits how they relate. I discover that this may be massively useful. It helps you describe the way you’ve structured your product administration system and discover if the construction is efficient.
Clarifying Possession
I typically observe in my consumer work that it’s not clear who owns what. This may trigger confusion and misalignment. It might additionally imply {that a} senior supervisor has to make all strategic choices, which could be overwhelming for the person and result in suboptimal choices. It’s due to this fact necessary to obviously assign possession and state who decides what.
With the Technique Stack in place, you’ll be able to decide which roles ought to create and handle the methods and be empowered to make the corresponding choices. Whereas there isn’t any one proper technique to assign possession, Determine 3 illustrates my most popular setup.
In Determine 5, the enterprise technique is owned by the CEO and the C-suite, the corporate’s executives. This doesn’t indicate, nevertheless, that solely the management crew determines this technique. The other is true: I discover a collaborative method like Technique Deployment cannot solely assist create a greater enterprise technique but additionally enhance its acceptance amongst the workers.
Transferring right down to the subsequent degree, the product portfolio technique is created and managed by a product portfolio supervisor along with the portfolio crew, as I clarify in additional element within the article The whole lot You Must Find out about Product Portfolio Technique. Word that in small to mid-sized firms, the pinnacle of product would possibly tackle the portfolio supervisor position along with their individuals administration duties.
Stepping down one other degree in Determine 3, the product technique along with the product roadmap and product backlog is owned by a product supervisor (or Scrum product proprietor) and the product crew. This ensures that strategic product choices successfully information discovery and supply and that insights from the event work assist evolve the product technique and roadmap.
The expertise technique and roadmap, lastly, are owned by the CTO along with senior architects. This assumes the architects additionally implement and that they perceive the capabilities and wishes of the event crew members.
Tailoring the Stack
Whenever you apply the stack to your organization, it’s possible you’ll discover that you need to tailor it to fit your particular wants. In the event you work for a startup, for instance, and also you at present provide a single product, you then gained’t want a product portfolio technique at current. Equally, it’s possible you’ll discover that you simply don’t want a devoted expertise roadmap. Consequently, you’d initially work with a simplified model of the stack—just like the one proven in Determine 4—and lengthen it as the corporate grows.
The other can be true. Say that you simply work for a conglomerate—a big firm with a variety of enterprise teams, like Siemens and Normal Electrical. It’s possible you’ll then require a enterprise group technique along with the general enterprise technique. Equally, if your organization affords a number of ecosystems, it’s possible you’ll profit from including an ecosystem technique layer, as Determine 5 exhibits.
Earlier than you now rush to customize the Technique Stack proven in Determine 1, I like to recommend making use of it to a single ecosystem or portfolio even when you work for a big company. Then contemplate if that you must add new layers and when you select to take action, who ought to personal them. This avoids the chance of beginning with a framework that’s extra difficult than vital.
Notes
[1] The corporate does this by providing Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is built-in into Workplace/365, makes use of massive language fashions (LLMs), and is ready to cite sources, create poems, and write songs, see https://blogs.microsoft.com/weblog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Copilot.
[2] Whereas I’ve described the connections between the layers top-down, modifications in a decrease layer can set off diversifications in a better one. Say that the portfolio technique seems to be unsuitable, then this may increasingly require altering the enterprise technique. To place it otherwise, the relations between the layers are bidirectional.
[3] The pattern stack in Determine 2 is solely for illustration functions. It’s based mostly on my analysis, however I don’t declare in any approach that it appropriately represents how Microsoft manages its enterprise.
