How can you create a product vision and strategy? Defining a product vision and strategy is often the first thing that senior product leaders concern themselves with. In this session, Checkr CPO Denise Hemke meets with Guild Education SVP Kalyan Nanduru to discuss going beyond basic concepts to discuss best practices and practical tips for coming up with a compelling vision and strategy and driving its adoption and utility in everyday decisions.
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Webinar Notes:
- Creating a product vision and strategy is challenging due to long-term thinking, strategic solutions, and execution.
- Existing content on the topic lacks guidance on achieving the desired outcome.
- The webinar targets individuals familiar with product vision and strategy who want project success.
- Five key steps for a product vision and strategy project are setup, insights, strategy, socialization, and action.
- The setup phase includes defining scope, securing sponsorship, engaging key decision-makers, and clarifying roles.
- The insights phase is crucial, grounding the vision in the company’s mission and understanding the problem space.
- Leveraging internal subject matter experts provides valuable insights.
- Framing the vision statement requires identifying a worthwhile opportunity.
- Strategy development involves understanding and solving important problems.
- Strategy validation is important through prototyping and user feedback.
- Effective communication and socialization are crucial for alignment and buy-in.
- Building internal and external sponsors and considering feedback are important.
- Building a product roadmap based on strategy provides direction and influences expectations.
- Allowing individual stakeholder prioritization in a marketplace product undermines decision-making.
- Skills for effective visioning include curiosity, technology knowledge, passion, people skills, and a rebellious mindset.
- Balancing focus and prioritization requires setting clear metrics and empowering teams.
- Demand shaping and customer advisory boards can align customer demands with the vision.
- Socializing strategy among cross-functional stakeholders requires collaboration and involving key influencers.
- Involving founders/CEOs leverages their expertise at the right milestones.
- Refreshing vision and strategy can be triggered by fiscal year evaluations and market changes.
- Governance forums facilitate transparency and decision-making.
- Communication of vision and strategy should be tailored to the audience and purpose.
- Tailoring communication for company size involves proactive and face-to-face interactions.
About the speaker
Kalyan is a seasoned product leader with a track record of building breakthrough products and high performing teams. He currently serves as the SVP and head of Product at Guild Education where he oversees product management, design and operations teams. Prior to that he held several product leadership positions in companies like Google and Microsoft. Kalyan was recognized as one of the Top 25 Product Executives by the Software Report in 2022.
About the host
As Chief Product Officer at Checkr, Denise is responsible for leading the product vision, teams, and roadmap to deliver customer delight and innovation while advancing our mission of building a fairer future. Denise brings a relentless focus on customer success, adoption, and innovation to meet our customers’ needs. Prior to joining Checkr, she held a number of leadership positions, most recently as the GM for Analytics at Workday. At Workday, she was responsible for the entitled reporting used by all Workday customers. She also led the revenue-producing side of the Analytics business launching 3 new products and growing the business from $0 to over $200M in ARR and over one thousand enterprise customers. She’s been building enterprise products for the last 21 years in a variety of companies such as Platfora, Salesforce, HSBC & AT&T.