An app idea is a guess about a solution. An app strategy is that guess turned into a problem worth solving, a person who has it, evidence that they do, and a plan for the smallest thing you could build to help them.

Or put it the way I do in class: instead of it being an idea, treat it as a hypothesis that has to be proven or disproven.

What is app strategy?

App strategy is deciding what to build, and for whom, and why, before anyone writes code.

In the technical world the word for it is product strategy, and the process applies to almost anything, not only apps. I use "app strategy" on purpose. When I talked to early founders, they did not use the word product. They did not know the word product. The people I want to help were searching for help with their app, so that is the word I use.

There is a second half to it that I call app leadership: everything involved in leading an app's development except writing the code.

The difference in practice

An idea sounds like: an app where nannies and parents share updates instead of writing in a book.

A strategy sounds like: parents and nannies both struggle to work out how much the nanny is owed each week because the hours change constantly; I have heard that from most of the people I interviewed; the paper book is the workaround they use for updates; my first version tracks the day and the pay, and shares photos; my key assumption is that parents will pay for it, and here is how I am testing that.

The first one cannot be checked. The second one can be wrong, which is what makes it useful.

Why you cannot skip to the solution

It is very important to stay in the problem space early, and to stay away from solutioning. If you do not know what the problem is, you have no way of knowing whether the solution you are building is the right one.

There are several solutions to every problem. Decide the solution first and you never find out about the better one. I have watched people build from an idea alone, and the result is a product with no evidence underneath it: you should not do something just because you had the idea.

What is in an app strategy

• The problem, written as a problem, not as a feature
• Who has it, described by behaviour rather than by age bracket
• What they do today instead, including the non-app workarounds
• The assumptions you are making, and which ones the product dies without
• Evidence from real people: what they said, not what you hope
• The smallest version worth building, and what is deliberately out of scope
• How it makes money, if it needs to
• What would make you stop

None of that needs a technical background. It needs you to be honest about which parts are guesses.

Why the strategy has to come before the build

Because it is what you hand to whoever builds it. Bring a developer or an agency an idea and you get a quote based on their imagination. Bring them a strategy and a written scope and you get an estimate based on your product.

It also changes the conversation with anyone whose agreement you need. What I teach people to say is: this is what I think, this is the research I did, here is what I found, and before we put a lot of time and money into building, I would like to confirm it with user interviews. Anybody who says no to that has too much money to burn.

Keep reading

I Have an App Idea But I Don't Know How to Code. What Do I Do First?

How Do I Validate an App Idea Without Building It?

What Do I Need to Know Before Hiring a Developer?

Learn this with me

From Passion to Product is my free six-week live course, and the six weeks are the strategy: the research, the interviews, the competitive work, the solution, the scope, and the launch, in that order.

You arrive with an idea and you leave with the strategy, written down, about your own app.

Join the waitlist to hear when the next free cohort opens. The App Strategy Workbook is the same course in print if you want to begin before then.