Value Design32% of the exam
Strategic vision, experience narratives and business cases
How to defend a strategic direction: narrow concepts through visualize, analyze and critique cycles, turn the strongest into a strategic vision told as an experience narrative, present it with context and a case, and back it with a business case built on value levers, stated assumptions and answers to executive objections.
Defend the rationale for strategic directions, including how they satisfy business and user needs, and future implications.
~7 min read · 15 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Distinguish a concept from a strategic vision, and narrow many concepts to a few through repeated visualize, analyze and critique cycles.
- Build an experience narrative that ties standout features to moments that matter, cuts non-value screens and fits its fidelity to the audience.
- Present a vision in the right order: context first, then the narrative, then the case, feedback and alignment.
- Show the vision's implications for technology, organization, capabilities and leadership.
- Build a business case on value levers, stated assumptions and estimates, and answer executive objections with evidence.
- Key terms: concept (the core idea of what you're designing); strategic vision (an aspirational view of a future state that communicates the strategy's end state); experience narrative (a linear story focused on a single scenario); killing your darlings (eliminating a concept you invested in, for good reasons); value levers (the value drivers a business case focuses on).
Key facts
Concept vs vision
- Detail
- Core idea vs communicating the strategy's end state for buy-in
Narrowing cycle
- Detail
- Visualize, analyze, critique
Concepts to present
- Detail
- A few unique ones; three is usually good
Viability help
- Detail
- Business analysts
Feasibility help
- Detail
- Developers or architects
Feature rule
- Detail
- Every standout feature maps to a moment that matters
Fidelity rule
- Detail
- Bigger, more diverse audience: more likely to need higher fidelity
Value levers
- Detail
- Revenue, cost, productivity, strategic capabilities
"Need time to decide"
- Detail
- Show cost of waiting vs early quick wins
Roadmap deliverables
- Detail
- Capability map, technical architecture, implementation plan
- Which three formats can communicate a strategic vision?
- Why might stakeholders judge the same vision differently?
- Why does the page's roadmap example describe the Aqua Box as including only clothing and shoes at first?
- What does a business capability map show?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the Platform Strategy Designer pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
The pack includes:
- All 17 lessons of the Platform Strategy Designer guide, with reading progress
- Interactive decision walks and step-by-step sequence steppers
- Practice exams purchase adds inline bank questions and topic practice (15 questions for this lesson)
- An official source cited for every claim
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