A Product Strategy is NOT a Vision and Roadmap

You have a strategy AND a roadmap, they’re two different things.

Ant Murphy
Product Coalition
Published in
11 min readJun 22, 2021

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Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

Often I hear that roadmaps are part of your strategy layer. I’ve for many years struggled with this notion. Rather to me, they are a translation layer that sits between your strategy and your day to day work.

One google of the term ‘Product Strategy’ and you’ll find a dozen articles all stating that your Product Strategy is your “Product Vision and Roadmap” — this is both incorrect and misleading.

It’s, therefore, no surprise that so few companies and Product Managers have actual strategies defined — this leads to all kinds of finger-pointing, such as the common “prioritisation problem”.

Rather a strategy is something different entirely.

A roadmap is more akin to a plan. It details how you intend to achieve your strategy and/or goals — but it cannot replace having a strategy.

Strategy is a more elusive thing, and even more so in the Product Management space when you’re told you need to come up with a Product Strategy or be more strategic… but what exactly does that mean?

I recently jumped on a Linkedin live with Lisa Mo Wagner and the first question she asked me was to define strategy.

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