Product Management line, station 3 of 11
Strategy, Priorities & Roadmaps
Turn a pile of requests into a clear strategy, outcome goals, a priority order that holds up in the meeting, an honest roadmap and sound build-or-buy decisions.
- 5lessons
- 3 hto read and do
- Intermediatelevel
- 5podcast episodes
- 1simulators
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
Every product team has more requests than people. This course teaches the methods strong PMs use to decide what to work on and why: a one-page strategy built on a real diagnosis, outcome goals with guardrails, a request intake and scoring that hold up when a department head pushes back, a Now/Next/Later roadmap with an explicit capacity split, and a five-year total cost of ownership for build, buy or partner decisions.
Every lesson works through the same planning season at Mangrove Market, a fictional grocery chain with 320 stores, four distribution centres and 1,800 partner shops. You follow Imran, the PM for the Store app and the Partner app, as a stack of requests becomes one strategy, three key results, a ranked backlog, four outcomes and a vendor contract. Real cases, such as M-Pesa's launch, Netflix's cloud and delivery-network choices and Broadcom's VMware licensing change, show the same ideas outside the company.
Internal tools get full attention: valuing goals in minutes, errors and money at risk when there is no revenue, competing with spreadsheets and chat groups, and choosing and contracting software vendors and agencies. Each lesson ends with a template you can copy into your own work, practice tasks with model answers, and a podcast episode for the commute.
What you will be able to do
- Write a one-page strategy with a diagnosis, a guiding policy that rules things out, and coherent actions
- Set two or three outcome OKRs with baselines, leading and lagging measures and guardrails, even for a product with no revenue
- Run a request intake and prioritise a messy backlog with RICE and cost of delay, and say where the scores mislead
- Turn a long feature list into a Now/Next/Later outcome roadmap with dependencies and an explicit split between new work, tech debt and keep-the-lights-on
- Make a build, buy or partner call backed by a five-year total cost of ownership, and choose and contract a vendor or agency you can leave
Syllabus
5 stops, about 3 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
Vision, strategy and why now
A strategy is a choice about where to put your limited people and time, based on an honest diagnosis of what is in your way. This lesson gives you a method to write one on a single page, test it, and use it to say no to good ideas that don't fit.
Product strategyCompetitive analysisStrategy writing
OKRs and outcome goals
Goals decide what a team pays attention to for the next three months. This lesson shows you how to turn a strategy into two or three outcome goals a team can actually move in a quarter, with guardrails so nobody hits a target by breaking something else, even when the product earns no revenue.
OKRsOutcome metricsGuardrail metrics
Prioritisation that survives the meeting
Every team has far more requests than people. This lesson gives you a request intake that collects the same facts for every ask, scoring models to rank them (RICE, ICE, cost of delay, Kano and MoSCoW), and the traps that make a score lie, so your ranking holds up when a department head pushes back.
PrioritisationRICE scoringRequest intake
Outcome roadmaps
A roadmap says which problems you will work on and in what order. This lesson shows you how to turn a long feature list into three or four outcomes with metrics, lay them out as Now, Next and Later, protect time for tech debt and keeping the lights on, and say how sure you are, so the roadmap survives contact with reality.
RoadmappingCapacity planningDependency mapping
Build, buy or partner
Not everything your product needs should be built by your own team. This lesson shows you how to decide between building in-house, hiring an agency, buying software and partnering, how to compare them with a five-year total cost of ownership, and how to choose and contract a vendor so you can leave if you ever need to.
Build vs buyVendor selectionTotal cost of ownership
Capstone: Planning season for the Store app
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Planning season for the Store app
It is planning season at Mangrove Market. Department heads have sent Imran 18 requests for the Store app, from planogram photo checks and damaged-stock photos to staff shift scheduling, and the managing director wants a plan for the year in three weeks. Start from the requests in the lessons (the five in pm-12 and the store items among the 16 in pm-13) and add your own to reach 18, writing realistic estimates where the course gives none and saying so. Write a one-page strategy for the Store app and two or three outcome OKRs for the first quarter. Score and rank the 18 requests with RICE, check timing with cost of delay, and name the two scores you trust least and why. Lay out a Now/Next/Later outcome roadmap for a team of six engineers that reserves capacity for tech debt and keep-the-lights-on work. Finally, for staff scheduling, compare the five-year total cost of buying a SaaS scheduling tool, extending the Store app, and partnering with the HR system's vendor for its scheduling module, and recommend one with the contract terms you would insist on.
You will hand in
- A one-page strategy: a diagnosis with numbers, a guiding policy with three requests it rules out, coherent actions and why now
- First-quarter OKRs: one objective, two or three key results with baselines, targets, sources and owners, and two to four guardrails
- A scored backlog of 18 requests with the units and Impact anchors stated, a cost-of-delay check on the top items, a decision log and one written 'no'
- A one-page Now/Next/Later outcome roadmap with metrics, dependencies with needed-by dates, and the capacity split
- A build, buy or partner memo for staff scheduling: five-year TCO, adjustments for time to value and team time, the number that flips the decision, a contract checklist and an exit plan
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 5 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 3 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Do I need to take Product Thinking Foundations first?
It helps, because this course builds on its problem statements, jobs to be done and the four risks. If you already write problem statements comfortably, you can start here. Product Discovery is useful too, but not required.
I build internal tools that earn no revenue. Is this course for me?
Yes. Every lesson shows the internal-tools version: valuing goals in minutes, errors and money at risk, competing with spreadsheets and chat groups, saying no to department heads, and choosing and contracting vendors and agencies.
Which prioritisation framework should I use?
Usually RICE with one Reach unit and an Impact scale anchored to minutes and errors, plus cost of delay when timing matters. Kano and MoSCoW do narrower jobs well. The prioritisation lesson shows where each one misleads.
Will this help with PM interviews?
Yes. Strategy, goal-setting, prioritisation, roadmap and build-or-buy questions come up often, and every lesson has an 'In interviews' note on what a strong answer covers.
Is there a simulator?
The prioritisation lesson has a backlog scorer. You edit Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort, switch between RICE and ICE, and turn on two common traps to see how the ranking moves.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How long does it take?
Each lesson shows an honest time for reading and doing. Most people finish a course in two to four weeks at three or four hours a week.