AMA: GitLab Group Manager, Product Management, Melissa Ushakov on Product Strategy

When building a product strategy, you want to focus on identifying your target users and creating a plan to solve their biggest problems. You'll consider your product's unfair advantage and how you can lean into it. Many times, we, as product practitioners, overemphasize the need to differentiate. Don't get me wrong, you do need to have a clear why a user would choose you over your competitors, but it's okay to have boring solutions for the problems that are not core to your strategy. Let your users guide you to the problems that are worth spending the time and effort thinking of new and interesting ways to solve.

At GitLab, we revisit our product strategy once a month. During these reviews, we document our progress and what we've learned. It's important to align on what you're working on next to make progress against your direction. Monthly reviews ensure that you keep your high-level objectives in mind as you execute day-to-day work. Many times, these strategy updates will be pretty straightforward. Some cases warrant more extensive changes. Product Managers and leaders will maintain a pulse on the market to identify when these situations arise. To name a few examples: * Change in company strategy * Market trends change drastically (i.e. AI) * A competitor's product launch * User research uncovers new opportunities * Discovery of unforeseen technical challenges executing on the path charted out

To determine the root cause here, you will need to determine if the problems you are solving with your product are something that resonates with users. The best way to determine that is to talk to your target users. * If your product and roadmap do not align with your target users' pain points, then you'll need to re-think your strategy. * If your product and roadmap offer solutions to their pain points, then you will need to focus on go-to-market. * There's a possibility that while your product does solve the right problem for your target users, the market is not big enough for your growth goals. In that case, you may need to re-think your strategy and consider expanding the scope of target users or problems your problem is catering to.

The best way to learn these skills is to practice! Find a mentor who will coach you through the learning process. Key activities will be critical to creating a great product strategy. To name a few: * Spend time understanding your company strategy and how your product(s) fit(s) into the bigger picture. * Analyze sales data to know why you win and lose deals. * Talk to your users to understand what they enjoy about your product and their most significant pain points. * Complete a competitive analysis of your biggest competitors to understand why potential users pick their product instead of yours. * Develop opportunities and create a mechanism to pick the most valuable opportunities for your users. There are many books and classes that can help you learn PM fundamentals. I like anything by Marty Cagan and Teresa Torres.

Understanding your users is critical to building a product that will effectively solve their problems, and they will be excited to use. The JTBD framework is effective because it encourages product managers to focus on problems, not solutions. You can read more about how we use this framework at GitLab here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/ux/jobs-to-be-done/