There are three foundational questions underneath any product strategy that must be aligned on, or they’ll cause problems:
(1) **Who's it for?** This sets your customer segment.
(2) **What's it for?** This scopes the job, challenge, or problem the product is solving.
(3) **How will we know it's working?** We need a solution-agnostic way to measure progress.
If any of these change, your strategy will need significant rework because your customer, value prop, and/or measures will be different. I consider alignment on these to be prerequisites for creating & operationalizing strategy.
P.S.: a fourth question consideration here would be “how’s it different? why will they buy it? [compared to their existing alternatives]”
Want to be a beta reader and get early access to the product strategy book material? Register your interest here.
Nice, pithy summary of what really matters.