the guiding principles of the product planning process

The Guiding Principles of the Product Planning ProcessTake your product from idea to launch, to market success

THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF THE PRODUCT PLANNING PROCESS 2

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Why Do Product Managers Need a Product Planning Process? . . . . . . . . . . . 5

7 Strategic Phases of the Product Planning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Building Your Product Roadmap Planning Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

How to Actively Involve Stakeholders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

A Product Planning Workbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Conclusion: You’re Always in the Strategic Planning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF THE PRODUCT PLANNING PROCESS

Imagine you’re about to start a product planning process from scratch . As

you stare at a blank whiteboard, a dozen thoughts flash through your mind .

How will I figure out if our customer wants the product idea we developed?

Which stakeholders will I need to involve?

Will we all agree on what goes into the Minimum Viable Product?

Will I be granted the resources and support to build it?

Even under the best circumstances, the journey from product concept

to market launch can feel overwhelming . And if you lack a transparent

planning process, you’ll never operate under the best circumstances . At

any point, you could find yourself frozen, unsure of what to do next, and

that’s the last place you want to be . Product management success defines

whether or not a product professional knows what to do next .

Introduction


Product managers face these challenges every day . In our Product

Managers’ Survey, 41% rated their happiness with their current planning

processes a 3 out of 5—not miserable, but not thrilled with it, either . Worse,

another 29% described themselves as either unhappy or very unhappy with

their product planning . Think about that: 7 out of 10 product managers

don’t find value in their strategic planning process . Is that an effective way

to develop products? Probably not, and that’s why we wrote this guide

The Struggle Is Real

We know that product managers everywhere, even at many of the world’s

leading companies, struggle with strategic planning . This short book will

help demystify the process . We’ll walk you step by step through planning

your product’s journey from concept to launch to maturity, solving problems

for your customers .

The Solution Is Real, Too

https://go.productplan.com/2020-product-management-report/

https://go.productplan.com/2020-product-management-report/


Think of a team of filmmakers . They start with nothing but an idea . A rogue

group of former astronauts plans the space-based robbery of a gold-mining

operation on an asteroid. Eighteen months later, millions of moviegoers

walk into theaters to see Space Heist .

Between the one-sentence concept and releasing their two-hour movie,

those filmmakers had to take thousands of small steps to move the project

forward . But one of their first steps, almost certainly, was to formulate a

strategic planning process . Write the script . Secure investment money .

Hire a director . Cast the actors—scout locations . There’s no way they

could’ve gone from idea to the film premiere without a plan outlining

strategic milestones .

Why Do Product Managers Need a Product Planning Process?

The same is true for you . As a product manager, you’ll find it difficult enough

to create a successful product even if you follow your strategic plan to the

letter . But imagine how unlikely you are to find market success if you start

developing a product with no plan at all .

Let’s review a few key reasons product professionals should always build

their work around a product planning process .


Without proper planning at each stage of the process, your team faces a

greater chance of making misaligned strategic mistakes with your product .

Undoing those mistakes will mean more development work, more resources

spent, and more time that your product isn’t on the market earning revenue

and serving customers .

Product Planning Gets You to Market Faster (and Less Expensively)

What if the filmmakers behind Space Heist were in such a hurry to start

shooting their movie that they skipped a strategic step? What if they

decided it was a waste of time to research the market for space-based

films and instead relied on their intuition that the movie would find a

huge audience?

The team might miss learning that another studio was also working on a

space-robbery movie with a bigger-named cast by skipping the research

phase . Maybe they’d fail to uncover industry surveys and box-office stats

suggesting audiences were losing interest in space movies . Or—perhaps

worst of all—they’d fail to learn that a director they all admired had just quit

another space movie due to a fight with the studio and was looking for a

similar project .

When you build and execute the right product planning process, you

increase the chances that you can take advantage of opportunities that

appear in your product’s path while avoiding the many pitfalls that could

take it down at each stage of your product development .

Product Planning Improves Your Chances of Success

Product planning leads to more efficient and successful product development .

Here’s another way to think about this: Product planning leads to more

efficient and successful product development . When you take the right

planning steps upfront, your developers will be able to spend more of

their time working on the right things and helping you bring your product

to market sooner .

7THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF THE PRODUCT PLANNING PROCESS

Product Planning Enhances Your Credibility and Leadership

There are no lone-wolf product managers . Product management is a team

sport . To bring a successful product to market, you will need people’s help,

trust, and hard work in development, sales, marketing, customer success,

senior management, etc .

But to turn these people from across the company into a well-coordinated

team, you’ll need a plan . You’ll need to show them that you’ve thought

through the strategic steps the group will need to take—from brainstorming

ideas, learning important details about your personas, building a product

roadmap, and determining what goes into the Minimum Viable Product .

The more you can show that you’ve thought through this process and

developed a plan for success, the more willing, even enthusiastic your

product team will be about helping you bring the product to reality .

Enhances Your Credibility and Leadership

PRODUCT PL ANNING

Gets You to Market Faster (and Less Expensively)

Improves Your Chances of Success


Okay, we’ve convinced you that it’s not a good idea to start working on

a product without a strategic plan . Now let’s discuss how to employ an

effective product planning process .

7 Strategic Phases of the Product Planning Process

Note: By the time you begin the first phase below—brainstorming

product ideas—you should have a strong understanding of your

target user or buyer personas . You and your team will deepen your

knowledge of these personas throughout the product planning and

development process . But before you can begin thinking of product

concepts, you’ll need to know the problems your personas are

facing so you can help solve them . Think of this as Phase 0 .


The product concept phase can and should be fun . One benefit of making

this the initial stage of your product planning is that it’ll be a great first

exercise for the strategic team you’re building . The phase can help you

quickly build chemistry and trust among the team .

During this phase, you and your team will discuss what you know about your

key personas . You’ll answer questions such as:

• What challenges does our persona face completing desired tasks?

• What things frustrate or upset our persona regularly?

• What other products does our persona use but find lacking

essential capabilities?

• What solutions would our persona (or their company) find valuable

enough to purchase?

Phase 1: Product Concept Development

These discussions should lead to product and feature ideas . And if you’ve

created an atmosphere where people feel comfortable and valued,

those ideas might start flying rapidly as the astronauts in Space Heist .

As a product manager, that’s your responsibility—establishing a trusting,

welcoming environment in your product brainstorming sessions that will

encourage people to unlock and share their creativity .

Tip: For product concept meetings, create an environment where

everyone feels comfortable and valued . That can unleash creativity

and great ideas .


Finding the best product concept to pursue

After a lot of brainstorming, with some debates, and almost certainly a

lot of laughter, you’ll have a list of viable product ideas . Your next step is

to narrow that list to the most promising concept . You can do this using a

couple of strategies .

ASK YOUR PERSONAS

You can also use quick market validation methods to learn whether your

product concept has a real user base . Here are a few fast, low-cost ways to

run your ideas by your target market:

• Send out a short survey .

• Hold a few in-depth interviews with personas in your network,

customers of your existing products, or other relevant people

whose opinions you value .

• Publish inexpensive digital ads for your concept to gauge

industry interest .

DECIDE AS A TEAM

Have your team rank each idea and work together to come up with a

winner . You can use the weighted-scoring approach, for example . You’ll

create a consistent set of cost and benefit criteria and then score each

idea against these costs and benefits . The product concept with the best

overall score wins .

When you have completed this phase, you could have a product concept

that the evidence suggests has merit . If so, keep going . But if either your

team can’t agree on a clear winner, or your prospective users don’t show

interest in the concept your team chose, you might need to revisit Phase 1 .

Tip: Use both methods . You want buy-in from your team . But

nothing beats hearing directly from your potential customers .


If you’ve advanced to this step, you and your team have a product concept

and built up enthusiasm around it . That’s great . But before you invest more

time or resources, you need to examine the competitive landscape:

• Have other companies already released similar solutions?

• Do many of your target customers use a different type of

product to solve their problems?

• Have the majority gotten used to a clunky workaround,

even though they’re not thrilled with it?

But it’s also worth noting that if your analysis reveals that competitors are

already succeeding with a similar solution, that might mean you need to go

back to Phase 1—and start over with another high-scoring product concept

from your list .

Phase 2: Competitive Analysis

Note: If you discover that many of your target customers have

found a workaround to the challenge your product would solve, that

doesn’t necessarily mean your concept isn’t viable . It might mean

that your goal will be to educate your market on how using your

product will make their lives easier, save them time, or otherwise

make them better off than if they continue to use their workaround .


Let’s say that after your competitive analysis, you concluded there is a

big, untapped market for your product concept . Now it’s time for some

market research .

This phase should include gathering and analyzing two types of data .

01 QUANTITATIVE

What’s the total addressable market for your product? What is the average

customer lifetime value of similar products? How much do businesses

making these types of products spend on development, advertising,

and other overhead? What percentage of the potential users you survey

indicate they’re likely to buy your product?

Your quantitative research should give you an estimate of the potential

upside of moving forward with this product .

Phase 3: Market Research

02 QUALITATIVE

Are your potential customers simply curious about your product, or are they

counting the days until you release it? Is this the type of product your users

would share with their friends, family, and coworkers? How often would

users engage with the product, and would they view it as a must-have part

of their lives?

Analyzing qualitative research from in-depth interviews or focus groups can

give you a better sense of how committed your market will be to buying your

product . It can also help you shape the product to make it more valuable—

even indispensable—to your customers .


If your market research indicates that your product concept could find a

customer base, your next step will be to build a Minimum Viable Product .

The MVP should include, at most, a few core features . Maybe only one . You

want just enough functionality to let your team learn if the product can

attract early adopters .

The critical strategic step here is to figure out what those core features

should be . When you spoke with your friendly prospects, you learned about

their challenges, frustrations, and goals . Those insights, combined with what

you learned studying the competitive landscape, should give you an idea

about what feature or two would create the most significant impact in your

bare-bones product .

Remember, you won’t have the time or resources to build a complete

product with all bells, whistles, and cool designs . Your team needs to

address this question: If we could build a product that let our early

customers complete just one desired task, what would that task be?

Phase 4: Minimum Viable Product Development

Addressing that question might be the most significant step in the early

phases of the product planning process . The difference between choosing

the right or wrong problem to solve with your MVP could make the

difference between finding a ready market of early adopters—or having to

start over again with a new idea .

Tip: Key question when designing your MVP: If we could build a

product that lets users complete just one valuable task, what would

that task be?


You’re about to take your product from theory to reality . Soon after you’ve

released your MVP to the market, you’ll begin compiling your first real-

world data to gauge your early product’s strengths and shortcomings . If it’s

a digital product, for example, you’ll learn things such as:

• How many people have downloaded the app or visited the

website to use it?

• How many new people are signing up each day?

• What’s the average length of time users interact with our

product per session?

• Are users coming back to the app multiple times per day?

• Are users completing their tasks with our product in the

way we anticipated?

• Do users seem to be getting stuck or abandoning the app

at the same point?

Phase 5: Product Launch

You want to make sure your MVP launch generates buzz in the right places,

reaches the right personas, and has sufficient numbers that give the

product a real chance to find an audience . You don’t want your first market

release to fall flat simply because your team didn’t get the word out .

Note: To this point, we haven’t discussed your coordination with

the other people in your cross-functional team . But it’s important

to understand that before this stage, you should have been working

with your product marketing team to devise an MVP launch

campaign . You will have been helping your marketing co-workers

develop messaging and plan the rollout schedule for ads, press

releases, and other media opportunities .


01 INTRODUCTION

Technically, you already introduced your product, in its MVP form, to

early adopters . But now, with a full product ready for prime time, you’ll be

presenting it to a much broader market . You might even be marketing the

product to user personas or industries you didn’t realize viable markets until

you put your MVP out there .

But you’ll want to treat this launch—product version 1 .0—as its market

introduction . During this stage, you’ll be experimenting with messaging,

pricing, your sales strategies, and finding the most compelling value

propositions for various personas .

Phase 6: Product Lifecycle Maintenance

02 GROWTH

At this point, your team has identified successful strategies for marketing,

sales, and pricing . Now the product itself is gaining new customers at a

rapid pace .

Because your team is forward-thinking, you will also use this time to listen to

your growing base of users and turn their feedback into new ideas and goals

on the product roadmap .

Now, here’s where the movie goes into fast-forward, and we quickly cover a

lot of ground . When you’ve built out a full-featured product, your team will

be ready to begin the product’s lifecycle, which consists of four stages:

Assuming your MVP enjoyed some success with early users, you’ll gain a

great deal of valuable feedback and usage data to help you build out and

improve the product over time .


03 MATURITY

Your product has proven itself over time and earned loyal customers, but

the market for new users is no longer massive . The good news is that’s

because many of those users are already your customers .

But as your product enters the maturity stage, your team will spend less

energy coming up with excellent new functionality and more time making

sure everything still works, and your existing customers are still happy .

04 DECLINE

No product lasts forever, well, maybe the fax machine .

No matter how successful it has been, the market for your product will fade

at some point . Tastes change, and newer technologies replace older ones .

People find new ways of getting things done .

But that’s okay . It’s a natural part of the evolution of all products in all

industries . Apple stopped making the iPod Shuffle . And they’re still

doing alright .

Besides, by the time your product transitioned from the growth stage to

maturity, we’re guessing you started shifting some of your team’s attention

and creative energy into developing exciting new products .


Product Sunsetting will be a bittersweet moment . It’s time for you and your

team to throw your aging product a wild retirement party and send it off to a

condo in Florida .

Phase 7: Product Sunsetting

You might decide to sunset your product because your team has developed

a newer, better one . Or it might just be the case that the product’s

existing revenue is no longer sufficient to justify the continued costs of

development, support, security, etc .

Think of this final phase as freeing up some resources and creative energy to work on something new .

You don’t need to limit your use of this strategic product planning

process only to those times your team is ready to build a new product

from scratch . You can also use portions of the process for more minor

strategic decisions—such as deciding which feature to include next on

your product roadmap .

If your team remains torn between several viable feature ideas, run through

the first phases of the process, just as you would with an entirely new

product . Review your competing feature ideas . Run through a prioritization

exercise to score each one . Identify the winner . Then start your competitive

and market research . This process can work for any strategic decision

regarding your product .

After all, what is a strategic product planning process, if not a step-by-step

approach to making informed decisions about making your product better?


Now you have a big-picture view of the product planning

journey, from coming up with a great product concept to

retiring your product after years of success on the market .

Let’s zoom in on one of the most critical steps in the

strategic product planning process: building your product

roadmap planning team .

Building Your Product Roadmap Planning Team

Why is this step so vital to your product planning? Because building

a roadmap team consisting of the right people, and tapping their

knowledge and skills, will help you make the best strategic decisions

possible about where to spend your team’s limited resources .

The goal of your product roadmap planning team will be to vet and

confirm your product strategy . Through a series of strategic product

planning sessions, your team will answer questions such as:

• What product functionality should we build first?

• Do we have the resources, skills, and budget to complete the

work in the necessary timeframe?

• What will success look like?

• Have we done sufficient research to determine there is a

profitable market for this product and that our competitors

aren’t going to beat us to it?

• Do we have the data, a compelling story, and other elements

we need to earn executive approval to move forward?

Why Do You Need a Roadmap Planning Team?


Who Should Be on Your Product Roadmap Planning Team, and Why?

PRODUCT MANAGER

We’ll assume this is you . Your role on the roadmap planning team will be

twofold . First, you bring a lot of industry research, knowledge about your

personas, and experience working with customers . You will use these

learnings to help the team shape the product’s strategy .

Your second role will be to lead the team itself . You will host and guide

the team’s roadmap planning sessions, for example, and administer the

exercises to help the team prioritize themes and goals . You’ll also be

responsible for encouraging the team’s enthusiasm for the work they’re

doing . That’s a key goal here . The more enthusiastic your planning

team is, the more engaged they’ll be in these strategic sessions,

cultivating creativity .

PRODUCT OWNER

As a liaison between the product and development teams, your product

owner will play an essential role in your roadmap planning .

Hearing the early discussions about product strategy, customer needs,

and which functionality to prioritize will help the product owner better

understand the company’s vision and goals for the product . Productive

discussion sessions will help the product owner communicate these

concepts to the development team . Effective communication will improve

their workflows and reduce the chances of misunderstandings and re-work .

Short Answer

Your roadmap planning team should consist of the decision-makers who

can help you move your product planning and development forward .

Longer Answer


EXECUTIVE SPONSOR(S)

You don’t want to go through the effort to pull this team together and build

out a roadmap, only to have the entire concept shot down by your executive

staff . Having an executive sponsor on your team from the beginning will

help you clear this hurdle .

Also, a company executive can bring valuable insights the rest of your team

might not have . Executives have a broader view of the industry, current

business trends, and other factors that could affect the strategic decisions

you make for your product .

DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

Whatever themes, epics, and initiatives your team decides to

include on the product roadmap, your development team will have to

execute on them .

A development manager will bring a broader knowledge of the

development department’s resources, other commitments, skill sets,

tools, etc . You’ll want this person in the room for your product roadmap

planning to let you know whether your plans are feasible .

And ideally, but not necessarily:

PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER

Your product marketing team will glean a lot of helpful knowledge by joining

your roadmap planning meetings . For example, hearing your discussions

of product features and solving customer problems will help them with

product messaging .

You’ll also want a product marketing manager in the room to offer insights

about things like upcoming industry events, marketing’s budget, and how

quickly they can develop the materials needed for a go-to-market plan .

These things could affect your product development strategy .


While you’re working with the core roadmap planning team you’ve

assembled, you’ll also want to look for valuable strategic input across your

company . Maybe even some people outside the company .

How to Actively Involve Stakeholders

Here are some key stakeholders to seek out:

• Sales• Customer Success• Marketing• Executives• Prospects and Customers

And here are a few ideas to tap into their knowledge and insights .


Meet with Them One-on-One Show Them What You’ve Got

You’d be surprised how much you can learn from a coworker just by taking

them out for lunch or a drink .

Think about how many interactions your customer success representatives

have with real users of your company’s existing products . Do they hear a lot

of similar questions about some areas of your products? Do a lot of callers

offer compliments about some surprising feature that they love?

If you’re looking for guidance on how to begin developing a new product,

this could be a great place to start . Take a customer success rep out for a

beer . Or a sales or pre-sales rep . Or someone on the marketing team who

goes to industry trade shows and talks to a lot of your target customers .

You could uncover plenty of valuable information just by having a casual

meal with a coworker .

One great way to uncover the best thinking and ideas from your

stakeholders across the company is by first showing them your thinking .

Here, we recommend presenting your research, your roadmap team’s

most current thinking, and ideally, the product roadmap itself to your

stakeholders .

Your sales reps, marketing colleagues, customer success team, and others

across your organization want to contribute to your product . They have

knowledge, perspectives, and ideas that could add value to your strategic

product planning process .

Show them why you’re thinking about building the product, the market

problems it will solve, and the evidence that you’ve found an eager market

for it . Then, when you’ve told your strategy story about the product, invite

them to offer their input .

Benefits: New insights, different perspectives, validating product

ideas, teambuilding Benefits: Generating consensus, enhancing trust, creating

enthusiasm for your new product .


Use the Right Product Planning Tools

PRODUCT ROADMAP SOFTWARE

When you meet with your sales rep to discuss your product strategy, you

don’t want to force that person to stare at a spreadsheet-based roadmap .

That will only detract them from the product narrative you’re trying to tell .

Instead, use a visually beautiful, web-based tool designed just for

roadmaps—and just for moments like these . At ProductPlan, we’ve been

providing an award-winning roadmap app to product managers worldwide

for years . Hundreds of them have told us popping up their visual, easy-to-

understand roadmap in stakeholder meetings makes those conversations

much more productive .

The best way to jumpstart these discussions is to provide your stakeholder

a visual roadmap that outlines your narrative . Your product concept’s story

will be much more compelling if you offer an interesting visual to support

it . Here are a few examples of helpful product planning tools for your

stakeholder conversations .


WIREFRAMING SOFTWARE

Do you know another great way to generate enthusiasm from stakeholders

while you’re discussing your product concept? Show them the product

itself!

You can’t show the actual product, of course . It won’t exist yet . But with

an easy-to-use app for making wireframes of digital products, or mockups

of physical products, you can give your stakeholders the next-best thing .

Try a user-friendly app like Balsamiq, which allows you to design visually

compelling mockups for product ideas .

SURVEY SOFTWARE

If you’re going to host product brainstorming or strategy sessions with

stakeholders, you can help tell the story behind your concept by showing

them the data that led to your strategic thinking .

One great way to do this is with the visualization tools available from

survey apps like SurveyMonkey . These apps let you present your survey

results in beautiful, visual form—with pie charts, bar graphs, etc . They’re

great conversation starters, which help break the ice and encourage team

engagement .

These visual data points demonstrate to your stakeholders that you’ve

utilized real-world information as the foundation of your strategic thinking—

not hunches . Visual data points will enhance your credibility with your

stakeholders and make them more likely to offer their best insights .

Host a Customer Advisory Board

If your company already has products on the market, your team might

benefit from pulling together a handful of trusted customers whose

opinions you value .

You’ll then invite this group of customers, called a Customer Advisory Board

(CAB), to have an informal, in-depth discussion about your new product

idea, your existing products, their challenges, and other relevant topics .

You can have only your core roadmap team in these meetings . But we’d

recommend broadening the group and inviting representatives from the

other stakeholder departments we listed above—marketing, sales, customer

success, an executive, etc .

Benefits: Generating early champions for your product, validating

your ideas, gathering market intelligence

26A PRODUCT PLANNING TEMPLATE

Are you still feeling overwhelmed? Not sure where to start? Here’s an actual

product planning example . This workbook walks you through the broad

steps for the early phases of your product planning and gives you the key

questions to answer for each phase .

5 Stages of Product Planning:

01 Product Concept Development02 Competitive Analysis03 Market Research04 MVP Development05 Product Release

A Product Planning Workbook

Note: There will be a big jump, and a lot of work, between stages 4

(developing the MVP) and 5 (releasing the entire product). So, we’ ll take

this product planning workbook only to the MVP phase.

To help come up with ideas for a new product, I want my team to include:When our team has agreed on a product concept to pursue, we will

investigate the competitive landscape, looking for:

• Other companies already offering a similar product

• Other companies with a similar product in the works (but not

yet released)

• Different products or services my persona might use to solve

the problem

• Workarounds my persona might also use to solve the problem

For these research tasks, I will enlist the help of:

As we talk through our persona’s issues and brainstorm ideas, I’ll use the following method(s) to prioritize and rank each idea:

(For example, these might include weighted scoring, the Kano model, or value versus complexity .)

Stage 1: Concept Stage 2: Competition

27A PRODUCT PLANNING WORKBOOK

Next, my team will conduct market research to learn:

Quantitative Details

• How many user/buyer personas are there for our product concept?

• What is the average lifetime value of customers for similar products?

• How much do similar vendors spend on overhead for these products?

• What percentage of potential users we survey say they’d be

interested in our product?

Qualitative Details

• What level of enthusiasm do our potential users show in this product

concept?

• Do our survey respondents indicate they’d tell friends and family

about the product?

• How often do respondents suggest they’d engage with our product?

Stage 3: Market Research

For these research tasks, I will enlist the help of:


Notes:


We will now work with the development team to create a Minimum

Viable Product (MVP) . First, though, my product planning team will

use our research and strategic thinking to decide on one or two core

features to include in the MVP .

To figure out which core functionality to build, we will do the following:

Hold strategic sessions and discuss our competitive and market

research, and other learnings .

Conduct a prioritization exercise ( ; e .g ., weighted

scoring) to determine which feature or two to include in the MVP .

Work with product marketing on messaging, reaching out to early

adopters, and preparing materials and scheduling for the MVP

launch campaign .

Stage 4: The MVP

For these tasks, I will enlist the help of:

Notes:


As we hope this book has made clear, product planning is not a one-and-

done task, but instead an iterative process . It will remain an ongoing part of

product management—and a vital one . If you don’t have a process to take

you from one strategic step to the next in your product development, you’ll

always be guessing about what to do next .

Conclusion: You’re Always in the Strategic Product Planning Process

Product planning is not a one-and-done task, but instead an iterative process .

The strategic product planning process provides guardrails to keep you

on track as you take those thousand small steps from product concept to

launch and beyond .

We hope you find it a valuable addition to your product team’s toolbox!

ProductPlan makes it easy for teams of all sizes to build beautiful

roadmaps. Thousands of product managers worldwide–including teams

from Nike, Microsoft, and Spotify–trust ProductPlan to help them visualize

and share their strategies across their entire organization. With our

intuitive features, product managers spend less time building roadmaps

and more time shipping products.

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the guiding principles of the product planning process

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