4. Prioritize features and plan delivery

The final step in the development of the product strategy is to determine the priority of the product features and to plan delivery. The deliverable of this step builds on the artifacts developed in all the previous steps to create a comprehensive product-development roadmap that optimizes value delivery to both your company and your customers.

The product features were defined in the business case in the form of epics or user stories. In this step, these features are prioritized with the goal of ensuring optimal value delivery. This prioritization process requires intensive collaboration between the product team and the business and technology stakeholders to identify the following:

To build agility and adaptability into the delivery-planning process, the product team should emphasize that the prioritized feature backlog is dynamic. Priorities will probably change as product iterations are launched, success metrics data collected, and assumptions challenged or validated. The roadmap must focus on a relatively short timeline, aligned with the release of the minimum viable product (MVP).

The fidelity of the product iterations will be highest for the first few sprints. Later, they will begin to reflect customer and market feedback. A flexible development process supports changing features and plans if the MVP and its iterations are not trending toward delivering the initial target in the 3–5 year time frame. It also supports adjusting plans if opportunities arise to further increase the product's value.