3 hours
Product Management & Strategy
Learn the essential skills of product management and strategic thinking for building successful products.
Learning Objectives
- Master product management fundamentals
- Develop product strategy and roadmaps
- Prioritize features and manage backlogs
- Work effectively with cross-functional teams
Topics Covered
- Product Management Essentials
- Product Strategy Development
- Roadmap Planning
- Prioritization Frameworks
- Stakeholder Management
- Metrics & Success Measurement
Hands-On Activities
Product Strategy Canvas
30 mins
Develop a product strategy using a structured canvas connecting vision, goals, and initiatives.
Instructions
- Define your product vision (aspirational, future state)
- Set 3-5 strategic goals that support the vision
- Identify key metrics for each goal
- Map initiatives to goals
- Prioritise using the RICE framework
Roadmap Building Workshop
25 min
Create a Now-Next-Later roadmap for your product or service.
Instructions
- List all potential features and initiatives
- Categorise into Now (this quarter), Next (next quarter), Later (future)
- Validate: do the 'Now' items align with strategic goals?
- Add outcomes (not just features) to each time horizon
- Present and defend your roadmap to stakeholders
Exercises
group · 25 min
Prioritisation Framework Showdown
Apply three different prioritisation frameworks to the same feature backlog and compare results.
- Review the provided feature backlog (15 items)
- Team A: Prioritise using RICE scoring
- Team B: Prioritise using MoSCoW method
- Team C: Prioritise using Value vs Effort matrix
- Compare results — where do frameworks agree/disagree?
- Discuss: which framework works best for which context?
pair · 20 min
Stakeholder Alignment Exercise
Practice managing conflicting stakeholder priorities through a role-play scenario.
- Read the stakeholder conflict scenario
- One person plays the PM, the other the executive stakeholder
- The PM must present data-driven reasoning for their priorities
- The stakeholder pushes back with business pressure
- Find a resolution that satisfies both parties
- Debrief: what techniques worked?
Practical Examples
E-commerce SaaS
Shopify's Product-Led Growth
Shopify's product strategy focused on reducing time-to-value for merchants, measuring success by 'time from signup to first sale.'
OUTCOME: Grew from startup to $7B+ revenue by relentlessly reducing friction, powering 10% of all US e-commerce.
Productivity Software
Notion's Community-Driven Roadmap
Notion used community feedback and usage data to prioritise their roadmap, focusing on the features most requested by power users.
OUTCOME: Reached $10B valuation with a small team by building exactly what users wanted, growing largely through word-of-mouth.
Industry Success Stories
Music Streaming
Spotify
Challenge
Scaling product development across 300+ squads while maintaining strategic alignment.
Approach
Developed the Spotify Model — autonomous squads aligned to missions, using outcome-based roadmaps rather than feature-based ones.
Result
Scaled to 600M+ users while shipping features faster than competitors, becoming the industry standard for agile product management.
Useful Resources
Inspired — Marty Cagan
BOOK
RICE Scoring Model — Intercom
FRAMEWORK
ProductPlan — Roadmap Tool
TOOL
Good Product Strategy (Video)
VIDEO
Product Metrics That Matter
ARTICLE
Key Takeaways
Strategic product thinking
Roadmap creation skills
Cross-functional leadership
