Product “State of Union” — what is it?

State of union is the assessment or status update on the current condition, performance, and direction of a product or a product portfolio. It involves taking a holistic view of the product’s standing in the market, its impact on the business, and the strategies in place for future development.

As part of state of union general outline, you answer the following key questions:

  1. What is the status of existing heritage product area?
  • Quality overview with special emphasis on priority escalations, if any?
  • What are the problems/assumptions that are driving new reimagined solutions?

2. What is the state of the market in your area?

  • What are competitors doing?
  • What do other Application Platforms do?

3. What is your vision/problem you are trying to solve? And for whom (Personas)

4. What has been done on build/partner/buy analysis?

  • Why did you choose to build versus partner
  • Who are potential acquisition targets in your area if relevant

5. What DACIs have been done in your area? What spicy open issues exist?

6. What is your current team makeup? How many developers, how many scrum teams, Dev Lead, BA, doc lead, etc.

7. What is your current roadmap? How does your roadmap align to MBOs?

  • What is your API First Strategy?
  • Has your project, what parts of your project have gone through Arch Review?
  • What are your current Figmas you are building?
  • What is the status of your requirements gathering? What research Qual/Quant has been done, where is the summary of that?
  • What are you dependencies? (View in JIRA tool)
  • What requirements is being validated? (please note: you should never release any new features without validation)
  • What is coming, what is the validation plan?
  • What requires discovery (Discovery means UX + PM + Dev prototyping and Arch Review complete to have a fully fleshed out backlog)
  • What are the COGS and cost of implementation of you plan?
  • What are the KPIs you plan to measure to ensure your features are a success?

8. What is your GTM strategy?

  • What is the press release you are targeting?
  • What is your enablement plan? When is your beta / Select targeted?
  • Where do plan to announce efforts?
  • Which customers will support your claims?
  • What are you going to EOL when you announce?
  • How will customers migrate to new solutions? What tools exist?
  • What is the Packaging /Pricing strategy?
  • What is current relevant revenue in heritage?
  • What is pricing migration/transition plans?
  • What services Packages exist, will exist?
  • What status of ondemaned/online training?
  • What are you risks / mitigation plans?
  • What are your resource asks, what is the implication of not being resourced if you are under resourced?
  • What are you doing to fill in holes of understanding, what is expected timeline?

Once these questions are answered and documented, everyone assumes folks are too busy to do pre-work for a meeting and/or due to the global nature of things one must write stuff down so that folks can come up to speed and provide feedback asynchronously. At the start of meetings you poll folks if they have had time for pre-work and if not give folks 10 minutes to read it. This is Study Hall, a term coined by Amazon. Then the discussion ensues, or presentation that guides through.

It ensures that folks with amazing presentation style to accidentally wow the room with charisma while glossing over critical details that are required for success. And often sometimes some of the smartest folks tend to be quieter or more thoughtful so dominant characters can talk over folks with important points. Ensures however you communicate has a place at the table.

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