Oct 24, 20192 min

Women in Product Workshop at Smartsheet

Updated: Nov 12, 2019

“Strategy is a living & breathing container for change & learning.”

Last night, our founder, Terri delivered her Strategic Product Canvas workshop to 60 Women in Product at Smartsheet.

Amy Frampton (left) and Gene Farrell (right)

The evening kicked off with some networking and yummy food, followed by a fireside chat with Smartsheet leadership - Gene Farrell (Smartsheet’s CPO) and Amy Frampton (Smartsheet’s VP of Product Marketing).

Our favorite takeaway: Strategy should focus on what's NOT going to change: specifically core customer needs.

Soon after, the workshop kicked off with Terri explaining what to expect from an experiential workshop. Here's a quick review of her intro:

  • Expect Incompletion: You won’t and shouldn’t finish.

  • Expect Questions: You will have lots of (good) questions that won’t get answered.

  • Think & Adapt: All frameworks are just starting points.

  • Move Through the Process: Stay in the process - the difficulty is part of the learning.

Terri Eccles explains how to work through the "current state analysis"

Attendees were also provided a Product Strategy Canvas. The workshop allowed each person to consider the following components:

  1. Where they are today: Current-state analysis starting with the customer, moving to the business, and analyzing the technology.

  2. Where they are trying to go: The product vision across customer, business, and technology. 

  3. How they plan to get there: The product plan with strategic themes.

Terri Eccles reviews the steps in a strategy framework

Terri shared how product managers must also create strategies that:

  1. Align all work: Most importantly the roadmap and prioritization

  2. Can be shared broadly and succinctly: With a short and compelling story

  3. Be adapted for new learnings:
         Otherwise it becomes irrelevants

Finally, she shared 1 last important reminder: Strategy is a team sport

A product manager’s job is strategic empowerment of specialists across the company and they should all be involved in the creation of the product’s strategy.

Rekha Raghu (left), Terri Eccles (center), and Parul Shorey (right)

Big thanks to Parul Shorey, Rekha Raghu, Amy Frampton, Gene Farrell and the entire Women in Product and Smartsheet team for having us.

Thank you to everyone who came out! Let us know what you thought.

If you have any questions, or if you want help with your 2020 strategy reach out to us here.

You can find the Strategic Product Canvas on our website - here.

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