Recently, it is an important period for the annual product planning. I am also doing the annual planning of the company's products and the annual planning of the business. Therefore, I intend to sort out my thinking process of the annual product planning for your reference.

Regarding the annual planning of products, I will start from the following five aspects:

Vision

Problem and opportunity analysis

Clear strategic positioning

Strategic Roadmap

Product Roadmap

01 Vision

The first thing to think about or understand when doing annual planning is: the vision.

Because the annual plan is the implementation plan for the implementation of the strategy, and the strategy is based on the judgment of the future, the goal formulated, so the vision is the premise of the strategy.

From another perspective, the road of life is long, we will all encounter setbacks, we will all be confused in stages, and we may all get lost in the deep forest of uncertain reality.

At this time, we need vision, we need to look up at the stars and find the North Star that guides the direction.

Whether for individuals or businesses, the existence of a vision is extremely important.

As for what vision is, Jack Ma has an easy-to-understand explanation. He said: "Mission is what you want to contribute to society and what you want to give to society; vision is what you want to take from society."

Yes, vision is about what you want from society in the future through your judgment on the future.

For example, Alibaba's vision is: to become the world's largest e-commerce service provider; another example, Youzan's vision is: to be the most trusted leader in the field of merchant services, and to continue to be an Enjoy organization.

Vision is based on a long-term perspective, the result of continuous thinking about future assumptions and one's own beliefs; it reflects the vision, pattern, mind and ultimate potential of a leader and enterprise.

02 Analysis of Problems and Opportunities

With the vision, the next step is to sort out the strategy.

A good strategy must be based on "problems and opportunities".

For example, suppose that your company's strategy is to help catering companies grow their performance through software + hardware + generation operation services.

If you want to think in this direction, you must consider clearly what problems you are facing need to be solved.

Only by solving the listed problems one by one can the strategic goals be achieved.

The source of problems and opportunities can be considered from two aspects:

What opportunities are there currently for service providers to do?

In the past year's practice, what problems have arisen in the product and need to be solved.

The first aspect is what opportunities the service providers currently have to do.

How to find opportunities?

We often hear from many country email list entrepreneurs that there is an opportunity to be a platform in this industry, that businesses in that industry need marketing services, and so on.

For such a highly conceptual thing, there is no opportunity to see the opportunity, and it is impossible to make a product that can actually solve the business problem (of course, if the purpose of the highly conceptualization is to facilitate external communication, it is possible; if it is an internal discussion, look for opportunities, is not possible).

When thinking specifically, you need to think about it in a specific scenario, otherwise you will never know what problems need to be solved, and naturally you will not be able to find opportunities.

For example, your company is a service provider that provides Saas software for scenic spots. You may sort out what things in scenic spots require Saas to provide services.