Three-Part Product Strategy
Unite an inspiring vision, a strategic framework, and a feasibility roadmap
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 98%
Bavaro defines a complete product strategy as three connected artifacts. The vision paints an inspiring picture of the future and gives people a destination worth building toward. The strategic framework names the market, defines success, and states the few big bets or pillars that explain what it will take to win. The roadmap then works backward from the vision to show the intermediate outcomes required over time. Unlike a delivery plan, this roadmap is a feasibility check: it exposes when the current pace, staffing, or project mix cannot plausibly reach the vision. The strategy becomes useful when it also connects the dots from a high-level business objective to specific product work. Communicating it repeatedly reveals missing assumptions, because other people's confusion shows where those links remain implicit.
Origin
Bavaro assembled the model after repeatedly being told to be more strategic at Google, learning from Asana's team-brain vision, and later having a platform plan rejected as not being a strategy. She concluded that vision, strategic framework, and roadmap together satisfy the different meanings leaders attach to strategy.
Core principles
- 01A complete strategy explains the future, the choices, and the path
- 02A numerical target is a goal, not a complete strategy
- 03Strategic pillars express a unique theory of how to win
- 04A strategic roadmap tests feasibility rather than promising delivery dates
- 05Missing assumptions appear as confusion when the strategy is communicated
How to run it
- 1
Write the vision
Describe the future state the product should create and why people should want to build it. Make the destination concrete enough to guide choices without reducing it to a metric.
Pro tip Use a vivid picture of how customers or teams will behave differently when the vision is real.
Watch out A revenue or growth target alone describes success numerically but does not explain the future product.
- 2
Build the strategic framework
Name the market you are pursuing, define what winning looks like, and state the major bets required to win. Organize those bets into a small set of pillars that expresses your distinctive view of the problem.
Pro tip For each pillar, explain why it matters to the chosen customer and why it is necessary for success.
Watch out A collection of desirable features is not a strategic framework unless the choices share a theory of how to win.
- 3
Work backward into a roadmap
Choose a plausible horizon for the vision, then identify what must be true in each intermediate period. Include product, staffing, marketing, business-model, or financing implications when they are necessary to make the path coherent.
Pro tip Treat the roadmap as a model you expect to revise, not as a promise to ship each item on a fixed date.
Watch out Do not hide an impossible timeline by labeling a wish list as a roadmap.
- 4
Run the feasibility check
Compare the backward plan with the team's current pace and capacity. If the vision is unreachable, identify the required change: start a major bet sooner, stop optional work, hire more capacity, or alter the timeframe.
Pro tip Use the gap to force explicit tradeoffs across the company rather than quietly accepting an implausible plan.
- 5
Connect goals to product choices
Trace the logic from the top-level business objective through customer and market assumptions to the product work. Compare alternative ways to achieve the goal instead of jumping directly from target to feature.
Pro tip Ask why at every transition until a skeptical teammate can follow the entire chain.
- 6
Communicate and repair the gaps
Share the strategy repeatedly with collaborators and watch for confusion or disagreement. Make implicit assumptions explicit, then revise the framework or roadmap when feedback exposes a missing link.
Pro tip People often conceal confusion, so listen for inconsistent interpretations rather than waiting for someone to say they do not understand.
In the wild
Asana imagined companies operating with the ambient coordination of two hands playing a guitar. Its team-brain strategy translated that vision into needs: the product had to be available everywhere through mobile and security, understand more kinds of work, and draw useful connections such as warning that too many tasks shared the same due date. The pillars connected an inspiring future to concrete product capabilities.
→ The vision and strategic framework gave teams a shared explanation for why seemingly different capabilities belonged together.
A CEO asks for 50 percent more revenue. The product team does not treat the number as the strategy. It compares expansion among current customers with acquisition in new markets, explains why one route may be more promising, identifies which customer problems support that route, and ranks product options against the resulting logic.
→ A bare financial goal becomes a sequence of defensible choices that tells the product team what to do and why.
Common mistakes
Calling a numerical goal the strategy
A target such as increasing revenue by 50 percent defines an outcome but leaves the causal choices unspecified. Product managers still need to connect that outcome to markets, customers, and product work.
Treating the roadmap as a commitment
The strategic roadmap exists to test whether the vision is feasible. Treating every intermediate item as a promise discourages the revision that the feasibility exercise is meant to provoke.
Leaving assumptions in your head
A strategy can feel obvious to its author while collaborators cannot connect its dots. Repeated communication is necessary to expose and explain those hidden assumptions.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product leaders who need to align executives and delivery teams around a durable direction without turning the strategy into a rigid commitment.
Not ideal for
Teams that lack basic customer and market knowledge, because the framework organizes strategic judgment but does not replace research.
From the episode
Jackie Bavaro on getting better at product strategy, what exactly is strategy, PM pitfalls to avoid, advancing your career, getting into management, and much more