Strategy Item guidance

• Problem to solve - Perhaps the most important factor of all. You could be solving a problem for a customer or your organisation. Where possible, quantify this to determine impact.

• Solution summary - A very simple overview of how to solve this. It is not a list of technical options.

• Investment period - How much time you expect to invest to achieve your expected benefits. 3 or 6 months is a typical starting point. This is not an estimate of work item size. At this stage, doing detailed design work to create an accurate estimate can create major waste if work isn’t taken forward. It will also force early design decisions that may be poorly thought through.

• KPI this impacts (optional) - KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. You may be reducing the churn rate or the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC rate). This helps you directly link to a metric and can be used where it is not obvious.

• Work purpose - This maps to a strategic direction. In the example, we can see a Strategy Item linked to Reduce sales loss & churn.

When they are selected, they will become either:

• Strategic Area - For incremental improvements to an existing product.

• New product - Including new chargeable features. For these you will use the New Product Generator Canvas.

Granularity of Strategy Items

When creating strategic items, consider:

1. Investment period - How much time you expect to invest to achieve your expected benefits.

2. Impact - Impact represents the size of the problem you are solving.

We have a strategy to make a large, measurable impact on the organisation. Making many small changes and assessing their individual impact makes this difficult to see. Also, with too many small items, we don’t get enough feedback on whether the overall strategy is working.

Below are examples to guide this:

Example 1 - Too granular

• I have a signup screen that is poorly designed. Fields don’t adhere to visual standards, and error-handling messages are unclear.

• Investment period = 1 week.

• Impact = Low.

This doesn’t mean you can’t just get on with fixes like these, but it is far too low-level to prioritise.

Example 2 - Too broad

• I have UX inconsistency across my whole product, leading to low customer satisfaction.

• Investment period = More than 1 year.

• Impact = High.

You should typically split up items like this. Look for key areas to target that give you the most impact. The issue and investment period indicate there is a problem with the size of this. Now, you could decide to proceed, but be aware of the cost. Most importantly, you would want to release incrementally, avoid waiting a year for a release! You may still require a significant investment for new complex features.

Example 3 - About right

• An idea for a better way of querying data using AI.

• Investment period = Potentially a large change. Three months of initial investment is recommended.

• Impact = High.

This high-impact strategy item carries significant risk and requires testing and development time. An initial investment of 3 months is provided. However, this work can be stopped if the technology doesn’t work well.

Pre-filtering Strategy Items

This step is very important to avoid flooding your prioritisation discussions.

Initial assessment

You shouldn’t filter out high-risk items with potentially great rewards. We don’t want to remove all our innovation opportunities. When deciding on whether or not to add a strategic item, consider the following questions:

• Desirability considerations - Evidence that customers want this:

  • Do we have evidence that this solves a big enough problem for customers? (Ideally, quantified).

  • Is the type of solution or level of differentiation very new in the market?

  • Do we have evidence that customers want the solution and will switch from current solutions?

• Feasibility considerations - Evidence that we can build and run this:

  • Do we understand the technical design, including the ability to build it and ensure it will scale to customer demand?

  • Do we understand the service design, including the ability to run it and ensure it will scale to customer demand?

  • Do we have any major risks that could lead to this failing or greatly increasing in cost?

• Viability considerations - Evidence that this will generate a profit:

  • Do we know which pricing model we will use, and that its target price point is competitive?

  • Do we have evidence that customers will pay?

  • Do we understand the costs, including build, customer acquisition and running the service?

  • Do we know the break-even point for investment and how long to achieve a good Return on Investment (ROI)?

Filter based on team capacity

Consider the number of strategy items being discussed based on:

• Aiming for each team to have one strategy to work on.

• The number of teams you have. For example, having 3 teams and evaluating 30 potential strategies will be a waste of time and effort.

• Amount of investment period left on their current strategies.

• Likelihood of their current strategy being continued (see below).

Current strategies

Options for teams with a strategy in progress:

1. Continue to invest in the strategy - Option to set a new timeframe for them.

2. Pivot their current strategy - Keep the same strategy but change the solution.

3. Stop their current strategy - Ensure there is time to release / tidy up current work.

You don’t have to create a new strategy for every team each time you prioritise.