Hi Reader,
If you don’t know where you are, how can you know where to go?
That’s the question I found myself asking, again and again, while working with product teams and leaders on their strategic planning. It’s not that they didn’t want a solid strategy. What happened was that they skipped the critical first step: understanding the current state of their products and portfolios.
And I get it. Analyzing the current state can feel overwhelming. It’s messy, time-consuming, and not nearly as sexy as bold visions or roadmap planning. But if you're not willing to roll up your sleeves and dig into where you are today, you’ll struggle to make confident bets on where to go next.
This is why I built the new Mastering Product Strategy course at Product Institute. Because over and over again, I saw teams jump into planning mode without the foundation they needed. And without that foundation, strategies crumble.
Why This Step Matters So Much
Analyzing the current state isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s essential. It gives you a baseline of performance across products and helps uncover which ones are driving the business forward. More importantly, it helps you identify the biggest opportunities for impact.
Done right, this step connects product work directly to measurable business outcomes. It tells you what’s working and why, where your biggest pain points are, and which untapped opportunities are worth exploring. If it’s your first time doing this work, expect to spend a month or two collecting data and running the right research. With the right tools and systems, this will go faster next time, but upfront, it takes real commitment.
How To Get Started
So how do you avoid getting lost in the data? Start by narrowing your scope. Before jumping into metrics, revisit your company’s strategy. Ask yourself what the business is trying to achieve, and then examine your products by looking at who you serve, what value it delivers to them, and how that drives value in return for the business. Look for patterns. Who is getting the most value today, and who isn’t? What products or behaviors are tied to revenue growth, retention, or expansion? Understanding these factors allow you to figure out where to focus your efforts.
Once you’ve defined your focus, it’s time to gather information and explore the problems in those segments. You’ll need to look across multiple sources: revenue and sales trends, product usage data, churn, cost structures, tech limitations, market insights, and user research. Individually, these data points are interesting. Together, they paint a picture. The goal is to find patterns: what you're great at, what’s broken, and where unmet needs exist in the market.
How It Looks Like In Practice
When I was working with a healthcare company, we discovered that viewing the same data through different lenses can reveal the real problems you need to solve. They were redesigning a hospital platform and had already completed what looked like a thorough current-state assessment: administrator satisfaction scores were high, and sales were solid. Yet churn was creeping up, and feature adoption stayed stubbornly low. When we re-segmented by user group and examined NPS, one persona leapt off the chart: the nurses. Their NPS was abysmal. The workflows didn’t mirror how they actually worked, and features meant to simplify tasks only added complexity. Nurses were so frustrated they left for other systems, and the hospitals suffered as a result.
Focusing on the nurse experience changed everything. We conducted fresh research, built personas around real users instead of market buckets, and redefined our success metrics. We didn’t stop at tweaking the UI; we set out to understand how nurses do their work, minute by minute. Armed with those insights, the team shifted its strategy, reprioritized outcomes, and rebuilt core flows. The result? Churn plummeted, staff satisfaction soared, and the product went from “leadership-approved” to “nurse-loved.”
You Can Start Right Away
Stories like that are why I emphasize this step. Strategy isn’t about clever plans on paper. It’s about aligning your product portfolio to the realities of your business and your customers. If you don’t understand your starting point, you’ll never build a path that leads anywhere meaningful.
So as you think about 2026 planning (I know, I know. We just finished 2025 planning!), remember not to skip this part. You need to start early, and get the lay of the land before you dive in.
Not sure how to do this? I built something to help. The new Strategy course is available now and we're getting awesome feedback from our first students. Sign up on Product Institute and get started today!
PS: If you want to level up your Product Leadership game and connect with like-minded peers from all around the globe, don't miss the Product Leaders Retreat in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 20-22nd. It's hosted by my dear friends at Product Weekend and the amazing Rich Mironov, and you can get a 10% discount with the referral code MELISSA.
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See you soon,
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Melissa Perri
Founder Product Institute, Board Member, and Teacher
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