What are the key skills and competencies for product strategy roles?

React to this comment if you agree that the product manager's role is much like an entrepreneurial one. During the market research phase, I highly recommend the lean canvas approach. It uses an iterative approach and is based on a customer/problem/solution paradigm. Keep laser-focused on the product mission and vision, and remind yourself that strategy shouldn't be rigid at this stage. There's no better time to iterate than now. 'Go on field trips.' Besides interviews, surveys, and other tools to conduct market research, the best is to experience yourself. If you work for company A, and your potential competitors are B and C, become a customer of B and C or research their customers' feedback and do a holistic comparative analysis.

Spot on! I also love the idea of carrying out a desktop research. Where you bring your competitors or existing products to primary users, and collect feedback on the existing products.

Research skills are definitely essential but being skeptical, curmudgeonly and have a stellar BS detector is even more critical. In today's environment, anyone can leverage socials to profligate opinions as research. It's so tough finding a unassailable source of truth. T

Market research is a very broad term. If we want to be specific from the perspective from a product strategy role. It is more of an exercise of finding the Product Market fit. We know the current capabilities and potential future of our product in current state. We go out in the market to study, if there are any existing players that are capturing the market, if so what are the user pain points they are addressing to achieve the product market fit. What are the pain points they are not able to address currently and could potentially become part of our features roadmap. What are the reasons that they are not able to address these pain points? Are there any other factors in market that drive a good product market fit.

The interlinking between product strategy and market research is dependent on the time, effort and most importantly the nature of the industry and stage of the product in the product life cycle. There are stages where deep analytical insights are needed to support there product through early and growth stages till maturity and sometimes to keep the maturity phase competitive. However when you want to renovate your product you must do the research before reinventing the strategy from a long term perspective. Sometimes you may just let the product decline planning on something different as need be.

Understanding the technological constraints and possibilities is paramount. This bridges the gap between user needs and feasible solutions. It's also essential to foster a culture of continuous learning, as the UX landscape is ever-evolving. Staying updated with industry trends ensures the product remains relevant and competitive. Collaboration across all departments is key to a holistic product strategy.

Beyond technical acumen, possessing strong user experience (UX) skills is indispensable for those in product strategy roles. These skills involve applying user-centric design principles like empathy, ideation, prototyping, testing, and iterative refinement. Collaborating closely with designers, developers, and testers ensures that products meet quality benchmarks and usability standards. Moreover, integrating data analytics and market research into the UX process allows for data-driven decision-making, leading to more effective product strategies and improved user satisfaction.

Robust UX skills are essential for creating products that resonate deeply with users.These skills focus on placing the user at the core of every decision, encompassing empathy mapping, prototyping, and iterative testing. During the launch of a wellness app, close collaboration with design and development teams enabled rapid iteration and alignment of features with user needs. Incorporating user feedback and data analytics ensured decisions were based on real-world behavior, resulting in a product that surpassed expectations, increased adoption, and improved user satisfaction.Effective UX skills help identify pain points early, prevent costly redesigns later, facilitate a smooth user journey, enhance engagement ,retention, long-term success.

I believe that ‘user experience skills’ embrace a set of tools, methods, and principles AND also ‘common sense’ about how clients are using/intend to use the product/service. There is no ‘one size fits all’ model as clients employ different things for different jobs & usage can change over time. For existing products- start with analysis of existing behaviours seen, and then layer-in added UX/design tools. For new things- start with hypotheses (gleaned from comparable alternatives) and then quick/lean user testing as a base for further UX/design tools. The end point for both existing or new products is actual client use, with rapid review/feedback post change launch. This settles into regular data driven review going forward…Repeat!

Business analysis skills within a product team serve as the bridge between conceptualizing a product and executing a successful strategy. Also provides clear requirements, fostering a deeper understanding of user needs and project goals. This alignment aids developers in crafting efficient solutions, minimizing rework, and enhancing collaboration across the development lifecycle.

When you have all the necessary materials in hand, how to connect the dots among them and create a harmonious plan that aligns stakeholders, company priorities, customers' expectations, market trends, resources, technology, design, compliance, etc.? Being a great product strategist requires the ability to be detail-oriented, and at the same time, to zoom out and paint the holistic picture to whomever you pitch the plan for. We all love an oldie but a goodie - If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Set goals using OKR framework. Be result-oriented and have a growth mindset meaning when things don't work well, pivot.

Business analysis is essential for aligning products with overall business goals. It begins with defining a clear product vision and roadmap, setting detailed requirements, and measuring success with metrics like revenue and customer satisfaction. This role bridges strategic objectives with practical plans for successful execution. To create a unified strategy, integrate stakeholder needs, company priorities, market trends, and available resources. Use the OKR framework to set and track measurable goals, ensuring alignment across all elements. Adopting a growth mindset allows for adjustments based on feedback and data,fostering continuous improvement and adaptability to real-world challenges,ensuring strategy remains dynamic and responsive.

Business analysis helps make informed decisions backed by the granular experiences leading to more mature handling of product vision, roadmaps and deliverables to keep it sticking. Product strategists have key decision making needs dependent upon nature of the product to deliver per organisation needs and to sustain the product through the various lifestyle stages. As there are fundamental observations that a business analyst makes while delivering value in terms of working closely with the product and manufacturing or Agile teams the fabric of the product is better known and understood. Set a business analyst in line with management of stakeholders and the long term thought process and you have a potential product owner.

Stakeholder management is an often overlooked skill for product managers. Especially in start ups, teams are quite small and stakeholders are very engaged. A good product manager should proactively involve the relevant stakeholders are the right time, while informing others. This makes stakeholder management a careful balancing act, because overinvolving or bombarding stakeholders with info can lead them to check out or become frustrated with the process, which is the opposite of what you want to achieve. Be sure to agree on an involvement level before the start of the project, and that you set clear expectations around frequency and level of involvement, so that they can plan and prepare accordingly.

Having a great product idea is a good start but it doesn't go smooth sailing from there. Great stakeholder manager skills help you get the support you need along the product cycle. Here are a few tips: 1. Build your personal branding. Are you reliable, approachable, and collaborative? Have you delivered anything impactful in the past? Have you been helpful and resourceful to your stakeholders and cross-functional teams? 2. Over-communicate rather than under-communicate, but be effective. Do not assume they all know. Assume they don't, identify the gap, and bridge it. 3. Political awareness. Understand inside out how your organization's structure, hierarchy, politics, and processes of getting things done.

Literally- one still should supersede all other; Listening. Don't talk much or first. Listen and then connect, support and advise.

A skill that can get you to sell like a hot cake in the market and launch you in the top board meeting rooms and sought out heroes. The art of wooing your stakeholders and getting them to see the potential in your proposal and getting that last nod is the key. Failures are common- there is a need for practice, for persistence and lot of determination and takes time to get to perfection. You get shot down many a times to try again and again and again. You ask yourself is there a point to it? Who am I trying to convince? And then the magic starts happening. You don’t realise it till and it becomes a streak. Some get to it early and some late but do it, learn other styles but do your own! Original is important!

A deep understanding of the product technological capabilities and constraints is crucial. This ensures that the product vision is not just aspirational but also feasible. Moreover, fostering a strong feedback loop with users can be a game-changer. It not only refines the product but also builds user trust and loyalty. Effective communication and alignment with marketing, sales, and support teams further ensure the product success in the market.

Outside-in strategy orientation,Business and financial understanding of the market in which the company deals. In addition, the combination of technical/product capabilities to a certain extent in order to understand the capabilities of your product and also a financial understanding of the market and of the other players. And finally - the ability to look objectively and critically at the current positioning of the company and the product in the relevant market.

It's essential to remember that people buy from people - a fundamental aspect of effective product strategy. Personally, I find that the most successful product strategy leaders are those proficient in data analysis, ideation, and influence, adept at aligning user satisfaction with business objectives.

What I feel is missing here is 2 skills: - Product Sense Ability to build and communicate strong vision for the product with the available information ( research, data) - Ownership Ability to fully own strategy and execution, have strong sense if ownership and hold decisions

Senti falta da Habilidade de gest?o de Projetos, todo gerente de produtos conduz um projeto, em diferentes estágios e propor??es. Realizar um lan?amento consiste em um projeto, melhorar resultados de um produto, demanda projeto. Ser capaz de coordenar diferentes pontas e garantir que as trabalhem em conjunto em prol de uma única entrega, é um dos pilares essenciais na gest?o do Produto.

Product Leadership roles that involve strategy require more than product centric domain skills. Unlike departments such as Accounting, Sales, and Marketing, the Product function plays a unique and pivotal role in steering the overall success of the business. Serving as a focal point for opinions from across the organization, not only from identified stakeholders but also from any internal source, requires a leader to possess qualities of resilience, boldness, patience, empathy, tenacity, and decisiveness, among others. Successful product strategy leadership demands a comprehensive skill set and the ability to navigate diverse perspectives within the organization.

Leverage lots of inputs- but put a bit more weight on consumers of your products ones that are maybe not fans of our org. Be open to criticism and learn from it.