Product Strategy Document Template
A statement is a choice only if somebody argued for the opposite. This template goes looking for that person, by name, one line at a time.
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A strategy is a set of choices, and a sentence is only a choice if somebody in the building seriously argued for the opposite. That single test separates a strategy from a description of the present tense with "we will" in front of it. No strategy template in circulation applies it, because applying it requires knowing who was in the room and what they argued for.
So the Choice Register carries three columns no template has. Rejected Alternative holds the option that was genuinely considered. Advocated By holds the name, because an alternative nobody argued for was never an alternative, it was a strawman written to be knocked down. Switch Trigger holds the observable thing that would make the choice wrong. Fill all three and it is a choice. Fill none and it is a description, and it will survive every review precisely because there is nothing in it to attack.
In the worked example, eleven statements produced three choices and eight descriptions. The count is the finding: three real choices is a defensible strategy, and three presented as eleven is a document where nobody can tell which three matter. Two of the descriptions contradicted the choices outright, and four of the claims underneath them rested on research nobody had opened since 2023. The strategy is what the roadmap pack follows from and what the prioritization framework scores against, which is why a document of unfalsifiable statements quietly breaks both.
What is in the pack
Choice Register
One row per drafted statement with the rejected alternative, the name of the person who argued for it, and the observation that would make the choice wrong.
The count, not a critique
Choices against descriptions, totalled and reported before any individual line is discussed, because a ratio is arithmetic and a line edit is an opinion.
Contradiction pass
Every statement compared against every other, plus against the roadmap, to find the pairs that imply different products. Named and decided rather than hedged into coexistence.
Evidence Register
Every factual claim carrying the date of its source, with anything over eighteen months chased to the current edition and the difference written down.
Assumption and Risk Log
A falsification test with a real threshold and a date for each assumption, so the ones that are actually permanent get labelled instead of looking checkable.
What We Are Not Doing
The rejected alternatives turned around, each with its advocate, its strongest case, a re-entry condition, and the sentence you say when somebody asks.
How it works
- 1
Send everything
The draft, the board deck, the last strategy nobody followed, the research underneath it. Contradictory versions help rather than hurt.
- 2
Test every statement
Could somebody have written the opposite, did somebody argue it, and what would make this wrong. Three questions, stop at the first no.
- 3
Date every claim
Each factual claim gets its source and that source's date, and the stale ones get chased to whatever the current edition says.
- 4
Write the three documents
The narrative people read, the choices with the losing case stated properly, and the not-doing list with a re-entry condition on every entry.
Frequently asked questions
What do I need before this is useful?
A draft, however rough, plus whatever research the numbers in it came from. Send the contradictory versions too, because the disagreements between two drafts are usually more informative than either one. If you have a blank page instead, start from whatever decision is currently being argued about most: a live disagreement is a choice with both advocates already present.
Are you saying most of my strategy is worthless?
No, and the descriptions are usually the best-written lines in the document. A sentence with nothing contested in it reads cleanly, which is exactly what makes it hard to spot. Descriptions get reclassified rather than deleted: standards like security become operating principles, bets like an AI investment become initiatives under the choice they serve, and only the genuinely empty ones go.
What counts as a rejected alternative?
An option a competent colleague argued for, with their name attached. That name is the whole test: an alternative the author invented in order to reject it is a strawman, and nobody owns a strawman. Where an alternative is live but nobody has said so aloud, go find that person first. It is usually the most valuable hour in the process.
Why does the not-doing section matter so much?
Because trade-offs are what make a position defensible. Porter's What Is Strategy? argues that trade-offs "create the need for choice and purposefully limit what a company offers", and his example is an airline that competed two ways at once and paid a straddling penalty. Same failure as a draft committing to both a committee buyer and a self-serve motion.
How is this different from a strategic plan?
A plan is a list of initiatives with dates and owners, comforting because it describes things you control. Roger Martin's Don't Let Strategy Become Planning observes that most people asking for strategy want that document, where strategy "is manifested as a long list of initiatives with timeframes associated and resources assigned". This pack files the initiatives under the choices they serve.
What happens after the document is written?
The registers stay useful, which is most of the point. When somebody asks why you are not doing something, the answer is already recorded: what it was, who argued for it, why it lost, and what would bring it back. And when the same declined request arrives three times in a month, that is a switch trigger firing rather than three separate conversations.
Does it write the OKRs and the roadmap too?
No, deliberately. Those are downstream and they are separate systems: measurable outcomes belong in the OKR and outcome pack, and where the effort actually went last period comes out of the portfolio and investment review. Collapsing strategy into a roadmap is the most common failure in this genre, because it produces a document that cannot be wrong.
Find out how many of your statements are choices
Send the draft and the research underneath it. The first thing back is the count, and the name of whoever argued for the option that lost.
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