How to Plan Vision, Strategy, and Roadmap as a Product Manager

Jessie Chang
5 min readApr 30, 2023

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Credit: Michal Cohen

As a product manager, it’s essential to clearly understand your product's vision, Strategy, and Roadmap of your product. These three elements are the foundation of product management and are crucial in guiding your team toward achieving your product goals.

This blog post will explore how to plan Vision, Strategy, and Roadmap as a product manager, including tips on breaking down tasks when your boss assigns you a project.

This blog post will explore how to plan Vision, Strategy, 
and Roadmap as a product manager, including tips on breaking
down tasks when your boss assigns you a project.
The expanded product strategy pyramid, Credit from Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

Section 1: Vision Subheading #NorthStar #StableForYears

Defining Your Product Vision Your product Vision is the driving force behind everything you do as a product manager. To define your product Vision, you need to ask yourself a few key questions, such as: What problem does our product want to solve? What goals do we want to achieve with our product? What value does our product want to bring to users? For example, let’s say you are a product manager for a grocery delivery app. Your product Vision could be like “To provide seamless, affordable, and convenient grocery delivery to customers.”

Section 2: Strategy Subheading #FoucusOnValuseOfUser #HowToWin

Developing Your Product Strategy Once you have a clear product Vision, it’s time to develop your product Strategy. Your Strategy should describe how you will achieve your product Vision. To develop a sound product Strategy, you need to identify the key areas you need to focus on and leverage your strengths. For example, if your product Vision is to provide seamless grocery delivery, your Strategy could include focusing on partnerships with local grocery stores, leveraging your technology to optimize delivery routes, and prioritizing customer experience.

Section 3: Roadmap Subheading #WhatIsTheTask #Schedule

Building Your Product Roadmap The final piece of the puzzle is building your product. Your Roadmap should provide a detailed plan of how you will execute your product Strategy. It should outline the specific features, functionalities, and milestones you need to achieve to bring your product to life. For example, if your product Vision is to provide seamless grocery delivery, your Roadmap could include features like real-time tracking, personalized recommendations, and integration with popular payment methods.

Credit from Peter Su

Peter Su organize the tool and methodology for making product strategy and roadmap. It is OMG helpful for all Product Managers!

Here's an example of how a product manager might approach the task of increasing Google ad revenue by 20%:

Example: Increasing Google Ad Revenue by 20% Let's say your boss 
has given you the task of increasing Google Ad revenue by 20% within
the next quarter. As a product manager, you would first need to break
down the task into three key components: Vision, Strategy, and Roadmap.

By breaking down the task of increasing Google ad revenue by 20% into Vision, Strategy, and Roadmap components, you can create a clear plan of action that will help you achieve your goal within the given timeframe. With a solid plan in place, you can lead your team toward success and deliver value to your customers.

Vision: Your Vision in this case would be to increase Google ad revenue by 20% within the next quarter.

  • To achieve this, you need to have a clear understanding of your current Google ad revenue, your target revenue, and the timeframe in which you need to achieve your goal. Your Vision should be specific, measurable, and time-bound.

Strategy: Your Strategy should describe how you plan to achieve your Vision. In this case, your Strategy could include the following:

  • Increasing ad spend: One way to increase Google ad revenue is to increase your ad spend. You could consider increasing your budget for high-performing campaigns, targeting new keywords, or expanding your target audience.
  • Improving ad quality: Another way to increase revenue is to improve the quality of your ads. You could test different ad formats, ad copy, and images to find what resonates best with your target audience.
  • Optimizing landing pages: Finally, you could optimize your landing pages to improve conversion rates. This could involve testing different headlines, images, and calls to action to improve the user experience and increase conversions.

Roadmap: Your Roadmap should outline the specific actions you will take to implement your Strategy and achieve your Vision. This could include the following:

  • Conducting a thorough analysis of your current Google ad performance to identify areas for improvement.
  • Defining and testing different ad formats, ad copy, and images to improve ad quality.
  • Identifying and targeting new keywords and audiences to expand your reach.
  • Building and testing new landing pages to improve conversion rates.
  • Monitoring and adjusting your campaigns regularly to ensure optimal performance.

OKRs: Let’s extend the OKR to all the corresponding teams!

Objective: Increase Google Ad Revenue by 20% Key Results:

Product Manager

  1. Analyze current Google ad performance and identify areas for improvement (Completed by the end of Week 1).
  2. Develop and implement a strategy to increase ad spend, improve ad quality, and optimize landing pages (Completed by the end of Week 3).
  3. Increase Google ad revenue by 10% by the end of Month 1.
  4. Increase Google ad revenue by 20% by the end of Month 3.

Objective: Improve Landing Page Conversion Rates Key Results:

Developer

  1. Analyze current landing page performance and identify areas for improvement (Completed by the end of Week 1).
  2. Develop and implement an A/B testing strategy to improve headline, image, and CTA (Completed by the end of Week 2).
  3. Increase landing page conversion rate by 5% by the end of Month 1.
  4. Increase landing page conversion rate by 10% by the end of Month 3.

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Jessie Chang

Product manager/project manager/scrum master/agile fanatic/travel lover. Experience in Synology, RealD, Klook, and Ubiquiti.