For any enterprise to succeed, it’s essential to make the appropriate strategic decisions. To attain this, you’ll profit from utilizing 4 several types of methods: enterprise, portfolio, product, and know-how technique. However that’s not sufficient. You’ll additionally must efficiently align the plans. That will help you handle these challenges, I’ve developed a brand new framework, the Technique Stack, which I introduce on this article.
Take heed to the audio model of this text:
Introduction
My first product administration job wasn’t precisely what you name a hit story: I used to be a part of a group that was known as in to assist with a brand new product growth effort, and I ended up working with the lead product supervisor. Whereas I learnt so much within the course of, the ensuing product sadly failed. However this taught me an necessary lesson: There isn’t a level in worrying in regards to the product particulars if a sound product technique is lacking.
With out the technique, it’s nearly not possible to find out the appropriate options and person expertise: If we don’t perceive who the customers are and which downside the product ought to clear up, how can we then establish the appropriate performance and seize the appropriate person tales?
As useful as a product technique is, it’s not sufficient. Most firms supply greater than a single product. As a substitute, they supply a product portfolio, consider Microsoft Workplace/365 for example. To maximise the worth a portfolio creates and to align the methods of its member merchandise—as an illustration, Phrase, PowerPoint, and Excel—it’s needed to make use of a product portfolio technique.
For those who stopped right here, nevertheless, your strategic selections would nonetheless be incomplete. To make sure that the portfolio and its merchandise assist all the firm transfer in the appropriate path, you want a enterprise technique that clearly articulates how the corporate desires to attain its total aspiration and create worth for its customers, workers, and shareholders.
However that’s nonetheless not sufficient. To make sure that the appropriate applied sciences are utilized, you’ll profit from utilizing a know-how technique. Let’s take Microsoft for example once more. The corporate took the strategic determination 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 observe, the totally different methods are generally confused. I’ve seen firms use a combination of portfolio and product methods as a substitute of separate plans. Generally, this hybrid technique even incorporates enterprise technique components. This doesn’t solely result in confusion and misunderstandings. It additionally makes it laborious 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 gives a method structure: It places the plans into context and reveals how they are often aligned. Final however not least, the Technique Stack helps you make clear who’s answerable for the totally different methods and assign clear possession.
Let’s take a better have 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 be known as company technique, the product portfolio technique, the know-how technique, and the product technique, in addition to the product roadmap, the know-how roadmap, and the product backlog. The backlog is just not a strategic plan, however I’ve added it to the stack to indicate how strategic selections are translated into tactical ones.
There are two points of the framework in Determine 1 I’d like to attract your consideration to. First, I’ve ordered the weather in keeping with their significance with an important on the high. 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 choices captured within the backlog are in the end aligned with the enterprise technique.
Equally, the know-how 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 similar time, is affected by them. Lastly, the know-how technique guides the know-how 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 you must use to seize your selections and create the artefacts it incorporates. Apply those that work finest for you so long as you may successfully reply the query related to every component.
To seize the enterprise technique, I discover Roger Martin’s strategy helpful, which I summarise within the article Why Product Folks 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.
Comply with the hyperlinks above to search out out extra in regards to the three instruments, and watch the video beneath to grasp how one can join product technique, product roadmap, and product backlog.
Making use of the Technique Stack
If you apply the Technique Stack to your small business, you’ll find yourself with a tree construction, as Determine 2 illustrates.
Determine 2 is an instance of how the Technique Stack could be utilized at Microsoft on the time of writing.[3] For simplicity’s sake, I think about 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 take advantage of one know-how technique, AI-First. Notice 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 reveals how they relate. I discover that this may be massively helpful. It helps you describe the way you’ve structured your product administration system and discover if the construction is efficient.
Clarifying Possession
I usually observe in my consumer work that it’s not clear who owns what. This could trigger confusion and misalignment. It could possibly additionally imply {that a} senior supervisor has to make all strategic selections, which might be overwhelming for the person and result in suboptimal selections. It’s due to this fact necessary to obviously assign possession and state who decides what.
With the Technique Stack in place, you may decide which roles ought to create and handle the methods and be empowered to make the corresponding selections. Whereas there isn’t a one proper strategy to assign possession, Determine 3 illustrates my most well-liked 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 group determines this technique. The alternative is true: I discover a collaborative strategy like Technique Deployment can’t solely assist create a greater enterprise technique but additionally enhance its acceptance amongst the staff.
Shifting right down to the subsequent degree, the product portfolio technique is created and managed by a product portfolio supervisor along with the portfolio group, as I clarify in additional element within the article Every little thing You Have to Learn about Product Portfolio Technique. Notice 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 group. This ensures that strategic product selections successfully information discovery and supply and that insights from the event work assist evolve the product technique and roadmap.
The know-how 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 group members.
Tailoring the Stack
If you apply the stack to your organization, you could discover that it’s important to tailor it to fit your particular wants. For those who work for a startup, for instance, and also you at present supply a single product, you then received’t want a product portfolio technique at current. Equally, you could discover that you simply don’t want a devoted know-how roadmap. Consequently, you’ll 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 alternative may also be true. Say that you simply work for a conglomerate—a big firm with a spread of enterprise teams, like Siemens and Common Electrical. Chances are you’ll then require a enterprise group technique along with the general enterprise technique. Equally, if your organization gives a number of ecosystems, you could profit from including an ecosystem technique layer, as Determine 5 reveals.
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 think about if it’s essential to 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 needed.
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, adjustments in a decrease layer can set off variations in a better one. Say that the portfolio technique seems to be mistaken, then this may increasingly require altering the enterprise technique. To place it in a different way, the relations between the layers are bidirectional.
[3] The pattern stack in Determine 2 is solely for illustration functions. It’s primarily based on my analysis, however I don’t declare in any approach that it accurately represents how Microsoft manages its enterprise.
