Strategic context

In order for our product teams to be empowered and make the right decisions, we need to make sure they have the necessary context to make these decisions.

Our strategic context consists of the following:

1. Mission
2. Metrics
3. Vision (company) & Product Vision
4. /wiki/spaces/AH/pages/3501129862
5. Yearly targets
6. /wiki/spaces/AH/pages/3499196448 (company) & Product Strategy

Top-down vs bottom-up

While the strategic context is defined by leadership and is top-down, the product team(s) defines the “how” to contribute to reaching the company’s mission, vision, and yearly targets (in line with the strategy). However, this does not happen in isolation but rather is a continuous back-and-forth with leadership and the rest of the company.

There are a couple of frameworks that make this bottom-up input & continuous back-and-forth possible:

1. Our Quarterly Objectives & Key Results.
2. Our product development methodology, Shape Up, with concepts like “Shaping” (which is a team-driven effort) and the “Betting Table”.
3. Insight-driven decision-making processes where insights can come from any team in the company (not only product).

Translating strategic context into Actions

In the end, we are a technology/product company - so we need to translate our strategic context into concrete actions. This is where ‣ (how) and ‣ (doing it, execution) comes in.

At this point, we focused on a limited number of critical problems - defined by our product strategy - so now it’s time to leverage insights into actions.

Problems, not features