Timeless Product Management is a product management approach that aligns market and product development to one strategy. It’s not about developing a great product; it’s about developing an intentional product that meets the market’s needs and continues to do so time and time again.

Formulating your Product 3P is the first step in the Timeless Product Management Framework. This is Part 2, for Part 1 read the Overview.

Timeless Product Management // Mikal Lewis © 2024

---

Overview

The first step of the Timeless Product Management framework is to have a concise Problem, Policy, and Plan for where you’re going. If developing a strategy seems intimidating, you’re not alone—few organizations embrace strategy development as a competency, and fewer have the patience for it.

However, every organization has a strategy—it’s just the strategy of doing more of the existing activities, doing them better, and doing them faster—and expecting different results. This is called the default strategy. But what is strategy? A strategy outlines the Problem facing a Product Unit or Business in the market and the Policies and Plans concerning that problem, documented in a way the market and product development team can align with.

Defining the Product Strategy 3P

If your company has a strategy—that’s great. In large organizations like many big tech companies, this company strategy is an input to your 3P (a roughly three-page—problem, policy, and plan paper). This strategy might be narrow enough to serve as your 3P strategy in smaller organizations.

There are three components:

• Alignment
• Inputs and Analysis
• Documentation

Alignment

A strategy is only a strategy if it has an alignment; this is where many teams trip up. Each of the four activities Market Development, Product Development, Customer Development and Continuous Measurement involve partner organizations, so consider alignment a continuous activity, not a check box following strategy work. 

1. Communication. Because strategy work is disruptive, much of the organization will want to be involved, even as a bystander. The impact of strategy has a direct impact on many teams, so while it’s not prudent to have everyone involved, it is reasonable that teams will want to be aware. Up front, decide when you will communicate that strategy formation is in progress and what legwork you’ll need or want from partner teams.
2. Collaboration. Next, define how you will collaborate—are you looking for input, data, or artifacts to your strategy work from partner organizations? Also, you’ll need to define how the review, feedback, and editing will occur.
3. Clarity. The most crucial step is to give your team clarity; in this step, you communicate what a 3P is, the lead author (for example, a Director or VP of Product), the scope (a 3P is for complete products, not components or features, a product is distinct when you sell it, or customers use it independently of other product offerings), and what actions are to come out of the product strategy development. 

Inputs and Analysis

In this step, you bring together all inputs that will inform your Product 3P, including the company strategy, industry trends, competitive positions, customer preferences, and an assessment of the five powers across your competitors (see the five powers framework). Pull together critical insights from finance, engineering, support, and marketing and distill them into key insights that will inform your point of view on strategy. 

In this step, you’re also forming your judgment about the Problem, which will aid you in the documentation phase.

Documentation

A Product 3P is your product leadership judgment in artifact form. Share your 3P widely with all business decision-makers and partner team leaders. While it’s essential for your company to have a strategy, your team still needs a 3P for your Product if you don’t have one.

The document we use is called a Product Strategy 3P which outlines the Product Strategy Problem, Policy, and Plan¹. 

• Problem. The “problem” is a market-oriented challenge, such as stagnating growth due to market saturation. For example, Blockbuster faced digital disruption as a problem, hindering its market service. 
• Policy. The “policy” is a company’s strategic overarching response, like Netflix’s shift to streaming. 
• Plan. Lastly, the “plan” details the execution steps over the next 18 months to address the strategy.

What’s notable here is that the document doesn’t try to capture all of the encompassing proof that this is the right strategy—that level of certainty isn’t possible.

While your problem section should include supporting data or insights, ultimately, the quality of your 3P comes down to your product leader’s judgment¹ and capturing it all on page in a way the organization can align to. When it’s complete, the 3P comes in at about three pages and is breezy enough to be understood and disseminated and used across the product team and partner organizations.

Hard decisions.

If your plan doesn’t point at a hard decision due to the strategy, your strategy is incomplete—or you are using the default strategy. The hard choices aren’t about “what to stop”—those conversations tend to be circular about why certain activities and products are too valuable to stop.

Instead, the proper conversation is about the next step to align resources to the plan. And finally, what no longer has the necessary alignment, focus, or resources to succeed? These areas need to be intentionally de-invested to free up resources truly. You should capture not the products or areas you will stop funding but the change in activities to support this new plan. 

Next: Step 2. Product Value Proposition and Positioning (coming soon)

---

1. Adapted from Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy; see: Product Strategy Kernel ↩︎
2. The CPO is responsible for ensuring each product 3P is grounded in the same universe, the same perspective. ↩︎