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Discord vs slack company12/13/2023 The Product Strategy Stack helps us solve one of the biggest reasons for startup failure-ambitious goals that are untethered to a clear strategy. Without a clear strategy, product leaders at Slack and Discord would not know which features to prioritize. Since Slack focuses on productivity, it prioritizes features that will help its users become more productive, such as integration with JIRA so its users can easily file tasks based on a Slack discussion. Since Discord focuses on community building, it prioritizes features that will help its users feel a sense of community, such as integrating with Spotify so you can see what kind of music your friends enjoy. For example, the products have a different emphasis for their 3rd party integrations. In other cases, the Slack and Discord products will diverge to better align with the companies respective missions and strategies. Since both products have a social element to their mission, it's important to provide a lightweight way for people to react to each other within the chat. For example, both products have the ability to react to a chat message with an emoji. In certain cases, this may mean that PMs at Slack and Discord arrive at the same answer. Therefore, it is critical for product roadmaps and goals to be tethered to product and company strategy rather than defined in isolation. A PM at Slack and a PM at Discord might be working towards the same product goal, but in service of entirely different company strategies. The desktop clients for Slack and Discord use nearly identical multi-column layouts, with UI to select a particular space, select a channel within that space, and a chat window for that channel.Īlthough the mission and strategy for Slack and Discord are entirely different, there is significant overlap in the work their product teams have done. A casual observer might mistake the apps for each other, if it were not for the different color schemes. The user experience for both products is surprisingly alike. However, once we get into the product, things begin to look more similar. In addition, teams can work bottoms-up to 1) communicate the status of execution and 2) track how well the product team's work is driving company-level objectives. Teams can work from the top of the stack down to 1) define the stack, 2) work at a progressively finer level to plan product execution, and 3) align the company to that execution plan. The Product Strategy Stack is a system we can use for both planning and execution: Tops Down = Definition, Bottoms Up = Evaluation Given this relationship between the layers, Product Strategy serves a critical role-it is the connective tissue between the objectives of the company and the product delivery work of the product team. We cannot have product goals without knowing our product strategy. We cannot have a company strategy without knowing our company's mission. Put another way, each layer is a prerequisite for the successive layer. Importantly, each layer of the stack builds on the previous layer. Product Strategy is the Connective Tissue Execution becomes much easier when the strategy is clearly defined, communicated and connected to the company's mission and its day-to-day work. Gaps in strategy make it harder for teams to execute. In many cases, these execution issues are the symptom of gaps in strategic thinking. This problem not only affects prioritization but also manifests in other hard to diagnose ways: muddied UX, miscommunication within teams, lack of coordination across teams, diminishing returns, product-market fit saturation, and negative impact on team morale. It is impossible to make rigorous prioritization decisions when the guidance on how to do so is missing, unclear or disconnected from what you are trying to do. Too often, the terms "vision," "mission," "strategy," "goals," and "roadmap" get conflated into a jumbled mess - leaving product leaders without the context they need to focus their work on the difficult task of moving the company forward.ĭifficulty prioritizing is often a strategy issue, not an execution issue. The word "product strategy" has been stretched to a point where it is almost devoid of meaning. Today, companies win or lose based on the quality of their products-and this puts enormous pressure on product teams to not just deliver products, but deliver products that drive the company's strategy.īut product strategy is often misunderstood. In the past, companies gained a strategic advantage by excelling in supply chains, logistics, manufacturing, and other operational capabilities. As software has eaten the world, product has become the most important lever for a company's success.
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