Make critical decisions on building, buying, or shutting down product lines while aiming for growth and stakeholder satisfaction.
Implement a rigorous self-evaluation process to accurately identify products that align with strategic goals.
Develop and employ a versatile product evaluation framework to maintain agility, informed decision-making, and competitiveness in fast-evolving markets.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

A CEO should rigorously assess internal needs and evaluate product roadmaps, minimizing strategic errors and controlling development costs to speed up growth realization.
By adhering to our methodology, a CEO will realize the importance of strategic alignment in product decisions, ensuring that every choice directly contributes to the company's overarching goals and addresses the dynamic needs of the market, thereby optimizing resource allocation and enhancing value creation.
The adoption of a rigorous and versatile product evaluation framework facilitates quicker, more informed decision-making, enabling the company to swiftly adapt to market changes, seize growth opportunities, and maintain a competitive edge, ultimately leading to sustained long-term success.

Impact and Result

Info-Tech’s approach necessitates a thorough self-review to pinpoint requirements for achieving business objectives.
It employs a structured assessment method to gauge company competencies and identify potential obstacles and opportunities.
It yields well-prioritized, strategically aligned product choices with business goals for products, services, or revenue generation activities.

Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Research & Tools

1. Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Storyboard – A step-by-step document that walks you through how to assess internal needs and evaluate product roadmaps.

The Executive Brief found within walks through the information with the correct multidepartmental team structure to make critical product decisions.

Access your product strategy through self-assessment tools and guides.

Learn how to evaluate the market and potential partners or competitors to decide what to do.

2. Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Self-Assessment – A best-of-breed template to help you build a clear, concise, and compelling self-assessment of product strategy for stakeholders.

Here's how to approach this focused self-assessment:

Define the scope and set objectives.
Identify key factors and develop assessment criteria. Consider market demand, competitive landscape, financial implications, technical feasibility, and strategic alignment.
Collect data through market analysis.
Evaluate internal resources and capabilities.

3. Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Workbook – A structured product strategy workbook to help you prioritize strategy activities and build a product roadmap to ensure success.

This workbook is crafted to help product leaders identify their needs and facilitate the practical evaluation and choice of potential product lines to build, buy, or shut down.

This workbook helps you:

Use an interview guide method to critically evaluate your strategy and objectives, including examples of potential questions and their corresponding answers.
Determine your company's criteria to develop, purchase, or discontinue a product.
Implement the interview guide technique to systematically appraise various products that could enhance your company's offerings.
Create a structured list outlining the profiles of top-priority products or potential partners that align well with your company's needs and potential.
Formulate a proposal that clearly articulates the essential aspects of the desired relationship or partnership based on your company's key priorities.

4. Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Executive Presentation – This presentation template uses sample data to demonstrate an ideal build, buy, or shut it down strategy.

Use this template to document your final strategy outputs including executive-facing business alignment and strategy highlights, key initiatives and summaries, budget proposal, goals and operating model, and functional project roadmaps.

Build, Buy, or Shut It Down

Make tough decisions when it comes to your products.

Executive Brief

Analyst perspective

Corporations face the pivotal decision of acquiring, expanding, or discontinuing product lines in the dynamic business arena.

The expansion strategy involves either forming new alliances or creating products from scratch. This method allows for greater customization and oversight but also requires a significant investment of time, expertise, and financial resources.

On the other hand, the acquisition strategy is often product-centric, with companies sourcing components from select partners. This approach enhances the integration process and meets the demands of discerning buyers who prefer partners that provide a broad range of services, including cloud solutions, technical assistance, integration, education, and ongoing support.

The discontinuation strategy is employed when a product line fails to meet its expected value or return on investment, prompting companies to sever ties and reallocate resources to more lucrative endeavors.

To adeptly maneuver through these strategies, firms must employ a rigorous self-evaluation process to pinpoint their strategic goals and source products that align with them. A versatile framework for product evaluation and selection is critical, particularly when addressing the needs of exacting customers. This strategic mindset is essential for companies to remain nimble, make well-informed choices, and maintain a competitive edge in their swiftly changing sectors.

A picture of Joanne Morin Correia

Joanne Morin Correia
Principal Research Analyst, Marketing Advisory
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive summary

Pain Points

Product roadmap plans require decisive, hard choices that may involve cutting losses or redirecting resources for the company's greater good.

Objective decision-making in product roadmaps is often clouded by personal bias that hinders alignment with company strategy.
Product roadmap decisions are complex. Insufficient strategic frameworks impact lifecycle management.
Consumer preferences overlooked: A lack of insight into buyer preferences leads to misinformed product development and neglected market needs.

Obstacles

Market competition and changing business models limit time for in-depth evaluation and fact-based decision-making for future product planning.

Executive decision-makers demonstrate a resistance to reflect and adopt a framework for appraisals.
Senior development executives hesitate to integrate external partners into their strategic planning, instead relying on internal capabilities.
Undisclosed product-related financials and critical metrics hinder the due diligence required for well-informed decisions.

Info-Tech's Approach

Upgrade decision-making acumen by integrating contemporary methodologies and analytics, transitioning from speculative to data-driven strategies.

Perform a thorough self-review to pinpoint necessities for achieving business objectives.
Employ a structured assessment method to gauge company competencies and identify potential obstacles and opportunities.
Yield well-prioritized, strategically-aligned product choices with business goals for products, services, or revenue generation activities.

Tip!

CEOs should rigorously assess internal needs and evaluate product roadmaps to minimize strategic errors,
control development costs, and speed up growth realization.

Product roadmaps are for tough decisions

Halting or altering a product line is challenging and requires an unbiased, objective framework to accomplish effectively.
A strategic product roadmap, rooted in deep self-analysis and comprehensive external assessment, is essential for aligning with customer value and driving business success.
Such evaluations are crucial for aligning the company's product portfolio with its financial objectives and market needs.
The roadmap must be laser-focused on delivering value to customers by meticulously selecting and defining products or partnerships that propel the business toward its goals.
A product line's success and longevity hinge on the collective value it provides to all stakeholders involved.

A strategic product roadmap is a plan that outlines a product's vision, direction, and progression over time. It is a strategic document that connects a product's future to the organization's high-level strategic goals.

A strategic product roadmap is…	A strategic product roadmap is not…
Guiding: It guides teams to understand the product's lifecycle and the steps required to accomplish the roadmap. Flexible: It is adaptable to change, as it must account for market shifts, technological advancements, and customer feedback. Value focused: It aligns product development with customer needs and business objectives, emphasizing value creation. Dispassionate and data driven: It relies on objective data and analytics rather than subjective opinions.	Fixed: It is not a rigid schedule or a commitment to specific features or dates, as this would limit its adaptability. Product specification: It doesn't include detailed specifications of features or technical design documents. It's a strategic tool that prioritizes based on strategic value rather than just operational efficiency. Only for developers: It is not a document exclusively for the Development team; it should be understood across the organization.

A strategic product roadmap is…

A strategic product roadmap is not…

Guiding: It guides teams to understand the product's lifecycle and the steps required to accomplish the roadmap.
Flexible: It is adaptable to change, as it must account for market shifts, technological advancements, and customer feedback.
Value focused: It aligns product development with customer needs and business objectives, emphasizing value creation.
Dispassionate and data driven: It relies on objective data and analytics rather than subjective opinions.

Fixed: It is not a rigid schedule or a commitment to specific features or dates, as this would limit its adaptability.
Product specification: It doesn't include detailed specifications of features or technical design documents. It's a strategic tool that prioritizes based on strategic value rather than just operational efficiency.
Only for developers: It is not a document exclusively for the Development team; it should be understood across the organization.

What stops companies from managing their product decisions?

Executives can manage product decisions successfully when they can overcome critical obstacles and pain points.

"What's keeping your teams from achieving their goals?
Is outdated technology holding you back?
Disparate tooling?
Is it your process?
Lack of visibility and alignment?
Or, are you stuck in a stage of analysis paralysis because you don't know what your customers want?"
Source: Cprime, 2022

State product roadmap goals clearly

A product roadmap can have many goals depending on the organization's objectives and the product's purpose. Some of these goals include:

Strategy description: A product roadmap can describe the product's vision, helping the product team take strategic initiatives.
Strategy execution: A product team may curate a product roadmap to outline guidelines for executing its strategy.
Stakeholder alignment: A product roadmap can align all internal stakeholders.
External stakeholder alignment: A product roadmap can help the team communicate with customers and other external stakeholders.
Discussion facilitation: A product roadmap can facilitate scenario planning and other discussions by getting everyone on the same page.

A product roadmap is a visual summary of the priorities, direction, progress, and vision surrounding a product over a specific time frame. It is a plan aligning the organization's short-term and long-term goals.

Avoid common product decision gaps

Vision	Leadership	Product lifecycle management	Value realization
Focusing solely on backlog grooming (tactical only) Failing to align product roadmap to enterprise goals Neglecting operational support and execution Making decisions based on opinion rather than market data Ignoring or missing internal and external threats to your product	Failing to include feedback from all teams who interact with your product Using a command-and-control approach Viewing product owner as only a delivery role Acting as a proxy for stakeholder decisions Avoiding tough strategic decisions in favor of easier tactical choices	Focusing on delivery and not the full product lifecycle Ignoring support, operations, and technical debt Failing to build knowledge management into the lifecycle Underestimating delivery capacity, capabilities, or commitment Assuming delivery stops at implementation	Focusing exclusively on on-time/on-budget metrics Failing to measure a 360-degree end-user view of the product Skipping business plans and financial models Limiting financial management to project/change budgets Ignoring market analysis for growth, penetration, and threats

Optimize for faster decisions and risk management

Making a product's lifecycle decisions underscores the importance of cross-departmental collaboration and strategic risk assessment in the product roadmap. Accurate cost estimation, informed decision-making, and rapid market entry should all be emphasized.

Enhanced integration cost projections: The financial implications of product integrations often elude businesses. A dedicated team should be mandated to provide nuanced insights into the compatibility of varying systems, enabling more precise projections of the time, resources, and financials required, thereby setting more grounded expectations for the business.

Optimized decision-making process: By ensuring the representation of all relevant departments at the strategic discussion table, a diverse array of information can be exchanged swiftly and effectively. This approach is critical to facilitating expedited, accurate decision-making and streamlining the path from concept to execution.

Strategic risk management: Through a refined process where partners delineate potential risks with greater specificity, the business can achieve a higher level of precision in forecasting risk-related costs. This enables the development of comprehensive internal and external business strategies and risk mitigation plans.

Accelerated market entry: Improve the partner evaluation process to create synergy among all business functions, which is crucial for swifter integration. Begin integration planning before finalizing deals to enter the market seamlessly and quickly while maintaining competitive agility in the product lifecycle.

"Complacency is the enemy of growth. That is why companies pursue adjacent and breakout business opportunities. What sets outperformers apart is that they do it discerningly.

C-suite leaders who pursue adjacent businesses where they have a 'right-to-win' by leveraging unique capabilities and customer or value chain connections position their companies to generate the strongest shareholder returns."

Source: McKinsey & Company, 2023

An image of the summary slide for Build, Buy, or Shut it Down

Measure a product's success by its ability to support business goals and timelines.

Upper management measures a product's success based on how it supports the underlying reasons for the business change. Use business metrics to assure stakeholders that you understand their needs and are working to meet them.

Business-specific metrics

Business-specific metrics
Revenue growth	Synergy extraction	Profit margin growth
Product-specific metrics
Operational cost reductions due to synergies: Operating expenses, capital expenditures, licenses, contracts, applications, and infrastructure over time Reduction in staff expense and headcount: Decreased budget allocated to staff; ability to identify and remove redundancies in employees. Meeting or improving on budget estimates: Delivering successful integration on a budget that is the same or lower than the budget estimated during planning. Business capability support: Delivering the end state of all departments that supports the expected business capabilities and growth.

Map Your Stakeholder Roles and Influence on Product Strategy

Create a visual stakeholder map related to product decisions and prioritization.

Your stakeholder map defines the influence landscape in which your product operates. It is as important as the teams who enhance, support, and operate your product directly.

Use connectors to determine who may be influencing your direct stakeholders. Even without formal authority, they may have informal yet substantive relationships with your stakeholders.

An example of a visual stakeholder map for product decisions and prioritization.

Measure a product's success by its ability to support business goals and timelines.

Business-specific metrics

Revenue growth

Synergy extraction

Profit margin growth

Product-specific metrics

Operational cost reductions due to synergies: Operating expenses, capital expenditures, licenses, contracts, applications, and infrastructure over time

Reduction in staff expense and headcount: Decreased budget allocated to staff; ability to identify and remove redundancies in employees.

Meeting or improving on budget estimates: Delivering successful integration on a budget that is the same or lower than the budget estimated during planning.

Business capability support: Delivering the end state of all departments that supports the expected business capabilities and growth.

Map Your Stakeholder Roles and Influence on Product Strategy

Create a visual stakeholder map related to product decisions and prioritization.

Your stakeholder map defines the influence landscape in which your product operates. It is as important as the teams who enhance, support, and operate your product directly.

Use connectors to determine who may be influencing your direct stakeholders. Even without formal authority, they may have informal yet substantive relationships with your stakeholders.

Clearly state and agree on goals before assessment.

You won't have a clear vision for the product if every stakeholder has a different objective.

Each goal must contribute to a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the product's position and competitiveness in the market.

Product portfolio adjustment: Assess the viability of expanding or consolidating the product lineup through strategic alliances or discontinuations.
Resource reallocation: Evaluate and decide whether to enhance, repurpose, or phase out existing resources and partnerships based on technological, geographic, and market relevance.
Operational cost efficiency: Methodically analyze and decide to share or restructure financial liabilities. Aim to enhance, outsource, or eliminate operations that do not contribute to significant cost savings.
Strategic market positioning: Evaluate market reach enhancement tactics. Pinpoint products to develop, acquire, or discontinue to maximize productivity, adaptability, and overall market opportunity.
Customer-base rationalization: Evaluate your partnerships with critical organizations based on long-term value and decide whether to maintain them, dissolve them, or form new ones by expanding your customer base.
Capital allocation and financial strategy: Determine which products could lead to either an infusion or a divestment of capital, depending on their potential to strengthen strategic business growth.
Operational streamlining: Optimize or reduce operational costs by cosharing or fully taking on the financial responsibilities of initiatives where appropriate.
Market reach and product viability: Assess product opportunities with the aim of enhancing or streamlining the portfolio for improved productivity and business agility. This may entail discontinuing unprofitable lines to minimize opportunity costs.

Metrics to consider

1 Proactive	2 Discovery & Strategy	3 Evaluation	4 Execution & Value Realization
% Share of business innovation spend from overall budget % Critical processes with approved performance goals and metrics % Project initiatives that meet or exceed value expectations defined in the business case % Initiatives aligned with the organization's strategic direction % Satisfaction with strategic decision-making abilities $ Estimated business value added through project-enabled innovation % Overall stakeholder satisfaction with the roadmap team	% Budget as a percent of revenue % Unallocated assets % Unallocated software licenses # Obsolete assets % Spend that can be attributed to the business (chargeback or show back) % Share of CapEx from overall budget % Prospective organizations that meet the search criteria $ Total cost of ownership (before and after project and rationalization) % Business leaders that view all departments as business partners	% Defects discovered in production $ Cost-per-user of enterprise applications % In-house-built applications vs. enterprise applications % Owners identified for all data domains # IT and other staff asked to participate in the project	% Satisfaction with the effectiveness of capabilities % Overall end-customer satisfaction $ Impact of vendor SLA breaches $ Savings through cost-optimization efforts $ Savings through application rationalization and technology standardization # Key positions empty % Hours of unplanned downtime % Releases that cause downtime % Incidents with identified problem record % Problems with identified root cause # Days from problem identification to root cause fix % Projects that consider IT risk % Incidents due to issues not addressed in the security plan % Application budget spent on new vs. existing builds/buys (e.g. deferred feature implementation, enhancements, bug fixes) # Days to value realization % Projects that realized planned benefits $ IT operational savings and cost reductions that are related $ IT staff–related expenses/redundancies # Days spent on IT integration $ Accurate IT budget estimates % Revenue growth directly tied to IT delivery % Profit margin growth

1 Proactive

2 Discovery & Strategy

3 Evaluation

4 Execution & Value Realization

% Share of business innovation spend from overall budget

% Critical processes with approved performance goals and metrics

% Project initiatives that meet or exceed value expectations defined in the business case

% Initiatives aligned with the organization's strategic direction

% Satisfaction with strategic decision-making abilities

$ Estimated business value added through project-enabled innovation

% Overall stakeholder satisfaction with the roadmap team

% Budget as a percent of revenue

% Unallocated assets

% Unallocated software licenses

# Obsolete assets

% Spend that can be attributed to the business (chargeback or show back)

% Share of CapEx from overall budget

% Prospective organizations that meet the search criteria

$ Total cost of ownership (before and after project and rationalization)

% Business leaders that view all departments as business partners

% Defects discovered in production

$ Cost-per-user of enterprise applications

% In-house-built applications vs. enterprise applications

% Owners identified for all data domains

# IT and other staff asked to participate in the project

% Satisfaction with the effectiveness of capabilities

% Overall end-customer satisfaction

$ Impact of vendor SLA breaches

$ Savings through cost-optimization efforts

$ Savings through application rationalization and technology standardization

# Key positions empty

% Hours of unplanned downtime

% Releases that cause downtime

% Incidents with identified problem record

% Problems with identified root cause

# Days from problem identification to root cause fix

% Projects that consider IT risk

% Incidents due to issues not addressed in the security plan

% Application budget spent on new vs. existing builds/buys (e.g. deferred feature implementation, enhancements, bug fixes)

# Days to value realization

% Projects that realized planned benefits

$ IT operational savings and cost reductions that are related

$ IT staff–related expenses/redundancies

# Days spent on IT integration

$ Accurate IT budget estimates

% Revenue growth directly tied to IT delivery

% Profit margin growth

Case study
Use your product roadmap for partnering and acquisitions.

Category
Electronic Forms, Workflow

HQ Location
Ottawa, ON, Canada

Revenues (Adobe)
$18 billion

Industries
Financial, Government, Healthcare

Problem

JetForm was a Canadian software manufacturer based in Ottawa. With a leading electronic form software product, JetForm needed to expand its market reach into more significant growth markets.

Solution

JetForm created a clear vision to grow its company equity:

They expanded their size and geographic reach by placing offices and employees in critical markets and partnering with significant printed forms, software, and hardware companies as sales channels.
They bought out competitive product lines like Delrina to access their large customer bases.
They repacked and positioned the company for sale.

Value

JetForm's Product Management & Development team developed the XFA form, an XML format that Adobe adopted into its PDF software.
Their Marketing team started an SMB forms product line, BizForms, to directly compete against other electronic forms software, such as Delrina's Perform and FormFlow products.
Choose the right product roadmap, channel, and partner strategy. Note the following examples of strategic components to include:

Choose the right product roadmap, channel, and partner strategy. Note the following examples of strategic components to include:

Adobe & JetForm partner on PDF standards
Moore Business Forms signs private label contract for retail against Avery Forms
Moore Business Forms signs private label contract for retail against Avery Forms
JetForm acquires competitor Delrina's forms division from Symantec for US gov't customers
JetForm changes its name to Accelio
Adobe buys Acceli

Case study

Review this company's post-investment relaunch, product roadmap, and timeline alignment.

Category
Enterprise Planning

HQ Location
Southern Asia

Revenues
Less than $20 million

Industries
Financial Services, Insurance, Public Sector, Retail & Logistics, Telecom

Problem

A company used funding it received in the winter of 2022 to hire a new C-suite and heads of Product Management and Marketing in the Spring of 2023. All current projects were delayed until the new management took over and wrote a new corporate strategy to support its sales growth projections.

Solution

Info-Tech researched and guided the newly hired C-suite executives to support their changes to the company while they reorganized to move forward.
Info-Tech advised product leaders to revisit their product roadmaps and customer engagement, which needed to sync with past customer promises and forward marketing activities.

Results

With Info-Tech's advice, the company is executing its strategic and year-long tactical plan for their products and marketing relaunch.
It has realigned product management with marketing activities such as AR relations and conferences for product launches.

Info-Tech's methodology for Build, Buy, or Shut It Down

	1. Assess Your Product Strategy	2. Evaluate Market Opportunity to Make a Decision
Phase steps	1.1 Review your portfolio, select the target product area, and outline team roles and responsibilities. 1.2 Conduct a self-assessment of your product, sales, and marketing capabilities. 1.3 Identify product roadmap requirements needed to remedy missing capabilities. 1.4 Build out evaluation criteria to prioritize products for evaluation.	2.1 Identify target products and competitors. 2.2 Evaluate at least three competing companies. 2.3 Present final decision(s). 2.4 Build, buy (contract), or shut the product down.
Phase outcomes	A self-assessment of your product roadmap strategy using an interview guide presentation and workbook Documented internal and external product, partner, and sales requirements Your company's criteria for investing in a new product line or shutting down a product or service at its end-of-life (EOL)	A guided workbook evaluation of several competitors or potential products and why they are critical to your company A prioritized list and profile details of high-priority, high-potential, good-fit candidates Proposal information based on the key elements of a product's success or shut down

Blueprint deliverables

These supporting tools accompany each step of the blueprint you need to complete to evaluate your partner or product strategy.

Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Self-Assessment

This efficient and easy-to-use PowerPoint diagnostic interview will identify foundational gaps and opportunities in your product requirements.

This guide will determine the following:

Internal strengths and weaknesses as they relate to your company's product strategy

How to use your requirements to evaluate your product line, competitors, or outsourcers

Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Workbook

This workbook will help you research and prioritize partnerships or products that fit your company's goals and capabilities.

This guide will determine the following:

Competitor, product line, or partner strengths and weaknesses related to your company's strategy

How to use your self-assessment criteria to evaluate your desired state

Build, Buy, or Shut It Down Executive Presentation

This fully customizable, prebuilt PowerPoint template documents the results of the channel partnership strategy.

This presentation does the following:

Outlines your readiness plan, foundational gaps, accompanying evaluation strategy, proposal elements, and recommendations for future product lines

Identifies vital stakeholders and aligns them on next steps, including priorities and timelines

Insight summary

Overarching insight
CEOs should rigorously assess internal needs and evaluate product roadmaps to minimize strategic errors, control development costs, and speed up growth realization.
Mitigate risks and cost savings by assessing your capabilities	Evaluate financials, market, and partnership strengths and capabilities	A better business fit saves resources, time, and money
Optimize roadmaps for investment and strategic partnerships. Select the optimal product to enhance ROI and efficiency. Define your roadmap objectives and partnership criteria. Ensure accurate self-evaluation for roadmap development.	Boost decision-making and knowledge acquisition. Gauge readiness for customer value alignment. Streamline internal build decisions and contract talks. Consider cost implications and market influence.	Improve risk assessment accuracy and potential growth strategies. Cut technology and staffing costs. Boost indirect revenue opportunities. Enhance strategic product growth planning precision.
Develop the skill and science of product evaluation	Plan beyond just one product line to increase your growth options
Leverage current methodologies and data analytics in your product roadmap development to transition from speculation to informed partnership choices, amplifying long-term growth and exit opportunities.	Motivate your team to explore additional markets and enhance product lines, focusing on features or market entries that align with customer needs and business objectives.

Build, Buy, or Shut It Down visualization

Make tough decisions when it comes to your products.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: Assess Your Strategy

Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
Call 2: Review self-assessment questions.
Call 3: Identify product type and market segmentation.

Guided Implementation 2: Evaluate Market Opportunity and Make a Decision

Call 1: Review the opportunities, competitors, and buyer expectations with industry analysts.
Call 2: Refine product criteria and scoring attributes.
Call 3: Review research and draft findings.
Call 4: Use presentation to get management buy-in.
Call 5: Build or shut down the product and determine go-forward activities. Buy or start building out your RFP.