A guide to creating an effective strategic plan

Imagine setting off on a prospecting adventure with nothing but a backpack. In the distance are expansive, snow-capped mountains, perhaps full of gold, solitude, or other treasures. It looks promising!

But you realize you have no map. How far away are those mountains? What barriers exist between here and there? Are you prepared to survive in extreme weather conditions?

Oh, and by the way, you’re leading a group of people. They want to know where you’re headed, why you’ve set your sights there, what’s required from them, and how you all plan to get there. Soon enough they’ll turn a critical eye your way when something goes wrong.

Being an effective leader is not easy, but it’s possible if you arm yourself with a strategic plan. Taking the time to develop a strategic plan shows you’re serious about pursuing a common goal, you’ve thought about what you’ll need to overcome, and you’ve brought the right people to the table who have a stake in your combined success.

In this article, you will learn what a strategic plan is, why it’s important, and what should go into one.

What is a strategic plan?

Strategic plans can take many forms, but their common goal is to provide a north star, inspiring your team and intriguing investors. Not only do they communicate where you’re going, they break down how you’ll get there.

Strategic plans are needed at different levels of an organization, including:

Corporate level (long-term outlooks, 5-10+ years)
Business line or program level (mid-term outlooks, 2-3 years)
Product or functional level (shorter-term outlooks, quarterly to 18 months)

What are the components of a strategic plan?

There is no single authority defining the absolute components of a strategic plan, so think of it as another tool in your product management toolbox. Understand its purpose, then tune it to meet your team’s specific needs. Some plans might manifest as a five-page presentation; others might be a large, formal document. Either way, strategic plans at all levels generally consist of:

Vision and mission
Objective
Operational plan

Vision and mission

Defines your high-level purpose
Answers questions such as:
- Where are we going and why?
- Where do we see ourselves in a few years?
- How does our product strategy align with the organization strategy?
Tools you can use to define a thoughtful vision and mission:
- Organization-level vision and mission (for reference and alignment)
- Organization and/or team cultural document citing core values (what do you believe as a team, and why?)
- SWOT analysis (what are your product’s and/or organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats?)
- Market intelligence (what market opportunities exist now and in the future for your product domain, and what are your customers indicating they want and will pay for?)
- Competitive intelligence (what makes your product or service different from the rest?)
- McKenzie Horizons Model (typically reserved for corporate strategy, you can also use this to show the short-, mid-, and long-term strategy for your product)

Objective

Defines your specific goals
Answers questions such as:
- What kinds of customer problems are we trying to solve?
- What kinds of solutions can/ should our team deliver?
- What does success look like?
Tools you can use to define objectives:
- Your vision and mission definitions (so you’re always pointing to the north star)
- Customer personas (defining your target customers, and why)
- OKRs (objectives and key results, which break the vision into measurable targets that can later be measured with KPIs — key performance indicators)
- Balanced scorecard (define your objectives in four key pillars: customers, financial, internal process, and learning and growth)

Operational plan

Defines how you will achieve your specific goals and turn your vision into a reality
Answers questions such as:
- How will we get there?
- How will we allocate resources and talent?
- How will we prioritize and coordinate our efforts cross-functionally?
- When might we deliver certain components, and in what order?
- What dependencies exist?
- How will we react to new information that may influence the plan?
- How will we monitor progress and evaluate iterative goals?
Tools you can use to define operational plans:
- Short-, mid-, and long-range roadmaps
- Staffing and resource plans
- Release plans showing tasks, dependencies, and milestones (these may be depicted as sprint plans and/or program increment (PI) plans)
- Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) (a way to prioritize features and development activities for your release plans based on cost of delay)

Steps for creating a strategic plan

Before creating a strategic plan, consider why you need one, who else needs it, and what’s in it for them. Your strategic plan is, effectively, a product. Create it the same way you would create a product — bring the right people around the table, including representatives from each of those core areas we just discussed above:

Define your audience for the strategic plan. In this case, it’s likely your immediate team, your stakeholders, and your executives
Understand each of those teams’ problems, and how your strategic plan will help solve them:
1. For your team, it’s feeling a connection to the vision. That will motivate them to return to work each day, and find ways to collaborate through conflict
2. For your stakeholders, it’s understanding where you’re focusing your resources — time, money, and people — so everyone is aware of your team’s priorities and better understands what to expect, when, and how to work with you to achieve their goals
3. For your executives, it’s knowing about key milestones, and how the plans align with others across the organization
Study your org and business-level plans to understand where the organization is headed and how your line of business will contribute to that vision
Define a vision and mission for your team and/or product that aligns everyone to a north star
Know your customers and how your product will help them solve their problems
Set objectives that empower your cross-functional team to:
1. Work collaboratively to deliver against the org’s broader vision and your product vision
2. Find the best solutions (via a rapid build-measure-learn process)
3. Hold themselves accountable for measurable results
Develop a roadmap showing high-level themes each team will pursue towards those common objectives
Pause and reflect. If you show a cross-functional group how to work through these steps to achieve your first common objective, they’ll be more prepared to repeat this process in defining the operational components

But your job isn’t done. Next you’ll support the development of the operational plan, including prioritizing features and non-functional requirements, managing and coaching your team, and helping them remove blockers. In turn, they’ll self organize, define the key elements of a release plan, and together, you’ll make incremental progress towards those objectives.

There’s one final element of a strategic plan that shouldn’t be overlooked: communication. Part of your strategic plan should be defining how you’ll communicate frequently with all your stakeholders.

Strategic plan template

You can use the following template to help you get started:

[Product name] strategic plan

Vision	Craft a simple statement defining who / what you want to be Prompts: Where are we going and why? Where do we see ourselves in a few years? How can we make those goals inspirational?Example:IKEA: “To create a better everyday life for the many people”
Mission	Craft a simple statement defining your purpose Prompts: What are we empowering others to do? How does our product strategy align with the organization strategy?Example:IKEA: “To offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them”
Objectives	Define 2-5 specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound (SMART) goals Prompts: What kinds of customer problems are we trying to solve? What kinds of solutions can/ should our team deliver? What does success look like?Example: Onboard 20 percent more customers before the end of Q4 than during the same time last year Achieve customer satisfaction ratings of at least 4/5 with at least 90 percent of new customers completing a survey within their first 30 days
Operational plan	Create a short, mid, and/or long-range roadmaps Prompts: How will we get there? How will we prioritize and coordinate our efforts cross-functionally? What dependencies exist?Example:Research a theme-based roadmap for visual examples
	Work with Program Management and HR to add staffing and resource plans Prompts: How will we allocate resources and talent? How will we monitor progress and evaluate iterative goals?Example:A staffing plan can include a table of names, roles, contact info, percentage alignment, etc. You can depict this on a chart or roadmap showing who is aligned, to what areas, at what times
	Release plans showing tasks, dependencies, and milestones Prompts: When might we deliver certain components, and in what order? How will we react to new information that may influence the plan?Example:A sprint plan in Jira, a Gantt chart for fewer digital projects, a 3-month PI plan for teams working in the Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise (SAFe) framework
Communication plan*	How will you communicate updates to everyone as the strategic plan evolves?

*This part may be mental, but is nonetheless a commitment that you make to yourself and your stakeholders to keep everyone informed.

Key takeaways

Developing a strategic plan for your product(s) will help you:

Communicate your product vision and mission to internal and external stakeholders
Motivate your immediate and cross-functional teams to unite toward common objectives
Empower those teams and individuals to achieve key results aligned to those common objectives

Communicate. Motivate. Empower. That is, in essence, the purpose of your strategic plan.

Featured image source: IconScout

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