Annual Planning: A Guide for Product Managers

Sid Arora

Oct 23 in General discussion

This simple process will help you create an effective, realistic, and ambitious annual plan:

#1: Create Focus Areas For The Year

#2: Align on And Finalise Focus Areas

#3: Break-down Focus Areas into Initiatives

#4: Estimate the Impact of Each Initiative

#5: Estimate the Cost for Each Initiative

#6: Prioritise

#7: Finalise and align on initiatives for the year

💡But what is an Annual Plan?

An annual plan is a comprehensive document that lists all the initiatives the entire organisation will focus on in the coming year. The document also has concrete goals for each initiative and team.

And this is based on what worked/failed in the last year, what you want to do in the next year, and a lot of other variables (like vision, strategy, market, industry, users, product strengths, etc.)

Annual planning often feels overwhelming, exhausting, and some times even frustrating.

Yet, it is critical for Product Managers to do:

⭐ To learn what we did well this year

⭐ To create a clear plan (with concrete goals) for the next year

⭐ To ensure everyone knows the plan

⭐ To ensure everyone knows what they need to contribute

By doing this, you create a process to ensure your product (and you) is successful!

In my recent post, I shared all the details on these 7 steps: how to do it, why is it important, and examples.

You can check it out here: https://japm.substack.com/p/annual-planning-we-hate-it-but-we?r=1mbfg

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