Before Tom Evans even clicked to slide 2 of his recent webinar, the chat lit up with one universal pain: “My roadmap is packed, but nobody knows why we’re building any of it.” Sound familiar? That disconnect (between what ships and why it should matter) is the direct result of skipping the hard work of a good product strategy and rushing straight to feature sequencing.
In other words, it’s the classic product strategy vs roadmap blunder. Strategy is supposed to be the sharp, defensible decision set; the roadmap merely the execution playlist. Get the strategy wrong (or skip it altogether) and your playlist is just noise, no matter how many sprints you cram into the quarter. Tom’s session unpacked exactly how to fix that. Let’s break it down.
Early in Strategic Planning for PMs (Part 1): Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, Tom Evans asked a blunt question:
“How many of you have watched eyes glaze by slide ten of a ‘strategic’ deck?”
Hands (and Zoom emojis) went up everywhere. According to Tom’s transcript notes, most of those decks died for three predictable reasons:
-
Vague aspiration: lofty mission, zero measurable objective.
-
Laundry-list initiatives: unrelated tasks glued together with jargon.
-
Resource denial: a wish that six engineers will do the work of sixty.
The prescription? Stop calling a to-do list a plan and start crafting a good product strategy anchored in real choices.
Good Product Strategy = Diagnosis → Guiding Policy → Coherent Actions
Tom borrowed directly from Richard Rumelt’s classic framework then translated it into product language we can run with tomorrow:
|
Component |
Webinar Definition |
Practical Check |
|---|---|---|
|
Diagnosis |
A frank statement of the core problem or opportunity. |
“Why are we losing or poised to win right now?” |
|
Guiding Policy |
The big lever we’ll pull to solve that problem. |
“Double down on self-serve,” “Own the integration layer,” etc. |
|
Coherent Actions |
A set of initiatives that all reinforce the policy. |
Every feature, metric, and head-count decision maps back to the lever. |
Tom drilled the point home: Good product strategy is less about vision statements and more about decisions you’re willing to defend.
Product Strategy vs Roadmap: Same Band, Different Jobs
“Your roadmap is the playlist; your strategy is the vibe of the party.”
That single sentence nails the product strategy vs roadmap confusion. Strategy (the vibe) is why you’re gathering people and what mood you want. The roadmap (the playlist) is what tracks play and when. Get the vibe wrong and no one dances no matter how perfectly sequenced the songs.
So before you reshuffle backlog items into Q3 and Q4, ask: does the overall “party vibe” even make sense?
Four Transcript-Driven Red Flags of Bad Strategy
Tom rattled off four quick tests. Tape them on your monitor:
-
Outcome Math: Can you connect each initiative to churn, ARR, or NPS?
-
Focus Test: Remove one epic; does the strategy collapse? If not, that epic was fluff.
-
Resource Reality: Do people, dollars, and timeline match the ambition?
-
Competitor Punch-Back: If you succeed, what does the market do? If the answer is “nothing,” you aimed too low.
Run these four and you’ll slice “nice-to-have” ideas before sprint planning even starts.
Tom Evans’ Quick-Start Toolkit
Tom didn’t leave us hanging—he showed four worksheets live on screen:
|
Tool |
Why It Exists |
How to Put It to Work |
|---|---|---|
|
Outcome Canvas |
Forces the link between bet → KPI → business value. |
Use before any story hits Jira. |
|
Strategy One-Pager |
Condenses 40 slides into human English. |
Test with an exec: can they recite it after 60 seconds? |
|
Hypothesis Backlog |
Swaps “feature” for “experiment with success metric.” |
Keeps the roadmap honest. |
|
Narrative Frame |
Context → Challenge → Response scaffold. |
Lead every roadmap review with this three-bullet story. |
(Get the templates when you join Part 2 and Part 3 in this webinar series)
Build Decisions You Can Defend
Tom closed the session with a mic-drop worth repeating:
“If you’re not willing to defend each trade-off out loud, it’s not strategy. It’s theatre.”
A good product strategy lets you defend those trade-offs in a single breath. The roadmap then becomes evidence, not persuasion. So before your next all-hands, lock the diagnosis, pick the guiding policy, and line up coherent actions. Only then cue the playlist.
Move from Slides to Real Strategy
- Watch the replay of Part 1 to see the diagnosis → guiding-policy → action framework dissected live.
- Save your seat for Part 2 (13 Aug) and Part 3 (20 Aug) to bolt product outcomes to CFO-level KPIs.
- Enroll in Optimal Product Management: our six-day, cohort-based course that pressure-tests your strategy, hands you 20+ plug-and-play templates, and leaves you AIPMM-certified.
Ready? Kill the stuff that doesn’t matter, lock the decisions, and let your roadmap sing backup to a good product strategy your execs will actually fund. Drop questions (or your favorite strategy horror stories) by tagging us on LinkedIn.