What do you report on to build early internal confidence with the product strategy? And how often do you report on this?

This really depends on the maturity stage for your product.

For 0-1 work in startups (new products, not-yet-released), I recommend the models explained by Steve Blank (e.g. customer development process, business model canvas). There are so many unknowns and intertwined hypotheses for brand new product ideas that all need to be validated, iterated on, and improved until the whole product concept and its acquisition and retention funnels are working. The business model canvas helps clarify the scope of all this and the risk in each area. You generally want to report on new information as soon as it's available, but frequency will vary (e.g. maybe daily for marketing funnel performance, and once a week for learnings from sales calls).

For live products that have active users, I'd recommend:

1. focusing on engaging and retaining users first,

2. tracking these metrics daily, and

3. evaluating your product improvement hypotheses based on whether they improve engagement and retention.

When retention is in a good place, then shift to growth - first by finding more users like your current users, and then by expanding to adjacent and new audiences. Continue monitoring and reporting on engagement and retention, and now also track daily growth metrics.

Your high level product strategy should make it clear which maturity phase you're in and what markers you're aiming for in order to "graduate" to your next phase. E.g. "Stage 1 out of 5 for our product strategy is building consumer retention. When we achieve XYZ in terms of retention, we'll be ready to transition to Stage 2/growth."

You likely also have a strategy for succeeding at the current phase (e.g. "here's how we will out-compete product alternatives to earn people's engagement and retention in Stage 1").

Building internal confidence in a product strategy is crucial for securing the support and alignment of various stakeholders within the company. Here’s how we approach reporting on our product strategy at Barracuda to build and maintain this confidence:

What to Report

1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): We track and report specific metrics that directly reflect the success of our product strategy. These KPIs might include user acquisition rates, retention rates, customer satisfaction scores, and revenue growth. These metrics provide a tangible measure of whether our strategy is working.

2. Market Feedback: We gather and share feedback from customers and market research. This includes insights from user testing, surveys, and feedback from customer support. Reporting on this feedback helps stakeholders understand how the market is responding to our product and where adjustments might be necessary.

3. Progress Against Roadmap: We regularly update on the progress of our development against the strategic roadmap. This includes milestones reached, features developed, and any pivots in direction. It’s crucial to show how the work aligns with the overall strategic goals.

4. Competitive Benchmarking: Reporting on how our products stack up against competitors and industry standards can also build confidence. This includes updates on market share changes, competitor product launches, and how our innovations are being received in the market.

5. Innovation and Learning: Insights from ongoing experiments, such as A/B tests or new feature rollouts, are shared. These reports demonstrate our commitment to continuous improvement and adapting based on empirical data.

Frequency of Reporting

• Regular Interval Reporting: We typically report on these aspects in a structured format during regular intervals—often monthly or quarterly. This schedule keeps everyone informed and engaged with the product’s progress and challenges.

• Ad-Hoc Updates: In addition to scheduled reports, ad-hoc updates are crucial when there are significant developments or shifts in the market or strategy. These updates might happen through emails, special meetings, or even through real-time dashboards that stakeholders can access any time.

• Strategic Reviews: Annually or biannually, we conduct in-depth strategic reviews that not only cover performance and progress but also re-evaluate our long-term strategy based on the latest market conditions and company objectives.

Building internal confidence in the product strategy is all about clear, consistent communication and demonstrating progress through tangible metrics. You need to bring people along with you on the journey, not just ask them to trust you. This goes for everyone from executives to engineers. It's important to build confidence with everyone involved in the product, not just the people at the top of the hierarchy. The engineers who are actually doing the work to execute on the strategy are some of the most important people to build confidence with! So, with that being said, some things that can help with engendering trust and confidence in your strategy are:

• Vision and alignment: Start by ensuring everyone understands the overarching vision and how the product strategy aligns with the company’s goals. This involves regularly communicating the "why" behind your strategy. Share this vision in kickoff meetings, strategy sessions, and updates.

• Roadmap progress: Regularly update your team and stakeholders on roadmap progress. Highlight what’s been accomplished, what’s in progress, and what’s coming next. Full transparency in this area helps everyone see that the strategy is moving forward and achieving milestones.

• Customer feedback: Share insights from customer feedback frequently. Whether it’s from surveys, interviews, or usability studies, showing that you’re listening to customers and incorporating their feedback into the strategy can build a lot of confidence. Make sure that you highlight constructive criticism that’s being addressed, as well as positive feedback, so that everyone knows you are taking everything to heart.

• Usage metrics: If you have key usage metrics available, report on them to demonstrate early traction. Metrics like user engagement, feature adoption rates, churn rates, and active user counts are critical things to show that you have created a great strategy.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Identify and regularly report on KPIs that are tied to your strategy. This could include metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), churn rates, or customer acquisition costs. Regular updates on these KPIs show whether the strategy is hitting its targets.

• Milestones and deliverables: Similar to roadmap progress above. Highlight key milestones and deliverables that have been met. This could be feature releases, successful pilots, or significant project completions. Celebrating these wins builds momentum and confidence.

• Market and competitive analysis: Separate from customer feedback, share insights from market and competitive analyses. Showing that you’re aware of market trends and positioning your product effectively against competitors can reassure stakeholders that the strategy is well-informed.

• Financial projections: If possible, report on early financial performance or projections. This might include initial sales figures, ARR growth, or new customer acquisitions. Financial indicators are powerful in demonstrating that the strategy is on the right track.

As for the frequency of reporting, it depends on who your audience is and what you are communicating.

• Weekly (or even daily, depending on the company and product): For immediate team updates and to address any blockers or quick wins. This keeps everyone aligned and aware of day-to-day progress.

• Bi-weekly or monthly: For broader updates to stakeholders, including detailed progress reports, customer feedback summaries, and KPI tracking. This interval allows enough time to show meaningful progress without overwhelming with too frequent updates.

• Quarterly: For comprehensive reviews that include strategic adjustments, long-term planning, and detailed financial analysis. These reviews provide a big-picture perspective and help in aligning the next quarter’s priorities with the overall strategy.

Like I said before, building early internal confidence in your product strategy involves clear communication, regular updates on progress, and demonstrating alignment with both customer needs and business goals. By consistently reporting on vision alignment, roadmap progress, customer feedback, usage metrics, KPIs, milestones, market analysis, and financial projections, you create a transparent and compelling narrative that builds trust and confidence across the organization.

I typically use a multi-tiered reporting approach:

1. Weekly: Brief updates to immediate team and key stakeholders

   • Format: Short email or Slack update

   • Content: High-level progress, blockers, and wins

2. Bi-weekly: More detailed report to cross functional leads

   • Format: Presentation or detailed dashboard

   • Content: Deep dive into metrics, progress on key initiatives

3. Monthly: Comprehensive report to executive leadership

   • Format: Formal presentation with Q&A session

   • Content: All key areas, with emphasis on strategic alignment and financial impact

4. Quarterly: In-depth strategy review, product reviews etc

   • Format: 30-45 mins sessions

   • Content: Comprehensive review of all areas, including long-term planning and major pivots if needed.

   
   Tips: provide pre-read 24 hours before the meetings, set clear agenda, if it a decision meeting then make sure decision are made before the meeting ends. Do not meeting to come up 3 other meeting. Prep well and provide recommendation and POV

I start confidence building with a product strategy before I even write the strategy. You want people to be bought into the process of developing the strategy - this will help them have high trust in the results of the process. Once they are aligned on the process, make sure to include them through the development process, and then through the socialization of the product strategy itself. 

If you have done this process well, you should be aligned at the start of your product strategy execution journey. From there, I would switch from reporting on the progress of the strategy, and would take the reporting down one level. Most strategies have different strategic focus areas or initiatives - focus your reporting and execution on these areas. I would report on these focus areas on a weekly or monthly basis depending on the cadences of your business. Focus on the success or learnings from these initiatives - rather than questioning the product strategy on a short term basis. 

I would revisit your product strategy every 6-12 months to ensure that it is continuing to serve you. Sometimes there are major market shifts or customer shifts that require shifts in strategy. Other times, you realize the strategic focus areas of the product strategy are not having the impact you would like. However, product strategy needs some time to be realized, so make sure in the short term to be focusing confidence building and reporting on the focus areas vs. the strategy itself. 

Product strategy is broad, so I like to break this down into pieces. At Pendo, at least twice a year the product leadership team completes a written update of the strategy, investment allocation suggestions, and goals for the year to the C Suite. This typically involves a few options, where the C suite weighs in with their thoughts as well. At our Company Kick Off, we provide the entire company with an update of the product strategy and vision, and the output gets incorporated into sales materials. But that is just the broad strategy, because each of our products also has a strategy, which is in alignment with company goals and customer and market needs. The strategy of each product is presented quarterly at a review for all executives at the company along with the measurable goals (usage, PMF score, ARR, competitive win rate). While we use the quarterly update meeting as a chance to align, the status of goals are visable in dashboards for anyone at the company to see and status of product launches is also visible for anyone to see.