Annual Planning

How to survive and thrive this yearly endeavor

It’s that time of year that product leaders and product managers love—annual planning (and budgeting)!

Here are some tips to get you and your teams through this important series of activities.

1. Do revisit your product vision, strategy, and roadmap on a continuous, rolling basis with your cross-functional team of Design, Engineering, Research, Product Marketing & Co. Don’t wait for annual planning season to prepare all this.

2. Before you even start thinking of initiatives, problems to solve, opportunities to explore, etc., consider the following question, “If your team were to achieve one thing in the next year, what is that one outcome that truly matters?”

3. Think about the desired output/final deliverable. Use last year’s as a point of reference.

4. Make plans based on the assumption that staffing stays the same for the next year.

5. At a high level, map out all your needs in terms of supporting teams and why you need their help.

6. Building on the previous point, instead of having multiple, siloed conversations with all your partners for collaboration, bring all the relevant stakeholders together into the same room in smaller group conversations. The goal here is to get the most value out of every planning conversation with respect to company topline goals in the least number of conversations possible.

7. Keep tabs on which topline goals are important for your company.

8. Be prepared to speak to why related initiatives are on your team’s roadmap (or why they didn’t make the cut).

9. These are the main categories of themes to consider to balance out short-term execution and long-term strategic considerations for your roadmap:

   1. Growing your product, product line, or product portfolio—acquiring new customers, retaining existing customers, and keeping them engaged.

   2. Maintaining and expanding your competitive moat

   3. Maintaining the health of your technical systems and services (addressing technical debt, reliability, and scalability)

   4. Complying with industry regulations that your customers or even your customers’ end-users care about

10. Your goal is not to please all your stakeholders. (Spicy perspective, I know!🤯) Your goal is to advocate for your customers and your company and create & serve the most value to them.

11. However, you do need alignment, buy-in, and support of your stakeholders. Make it easy for them to say, “Yes!” to your plans.

12. Do iterate on your plans as you work with your team, peers, and stakeholders. Don’t expect yourself to put together a well-informed plan on your first attempt.

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