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Strategy Stack
The Strategy Stack, based on Roman Pichler’s work, provides a simple but powerful way to structure strategic thinking across a company or product ecosystem. It organizes strategy into layered levels—from company vision down to product and technology roadmaps—so that each layer guides the one below it. The model is intentionally flexible: it scales from single‑product environments to complex product portfolios with shared technical components.
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Strategy Stack
Strategy Stack (Pichler)
The Strategy Stack by Roman Pichler is an extremely flexible framework to model the strategy architecture for an entire company or specific product.
It consists of the following layers where layers on the top guide the layers below:
- Company Vision and / or Mission
- Business (Corporate) Strategy
- Product Portfolio Strategy
- Product Strategy and Roadmap
- Technology Strategy and Roadmap
The various layers are adjusted and combined as needed in a given business context.
Variations
Product portfolio with shared technical components
Multiple products with shared components
You might work on a platform that has various independent products. But all products re-use the same components. One example could be a frontend library that provides the components for the user interface or other technical services that are used across the different products.
In hat case your strategy architecture will most likely consist of
- Portfolio or platform strategy that shapes the strategy of the platform itself and provides the guardrail to keep the product features in sync
- Each product will have its own vision, strategy and roadmap
- Next to the products you will have a technology strategy for the shared components and the roadmap
Benefits
There are benefits to such an architecture: you reduce development costs and cognitive load by keeping dedicated focus for each product and shared components. Your core product will be highly standardized.
Challenges
Challenges of such an architecture would be dependencies on shared components and increased maintenance efforts if the products require regular component updates. Another downside might be alignment across teams if there are no clear API contracts and the team responsible for the shared elements can easily become a bottleneck.
Single product
Single Product
You might work on a single product that is attached to the business strategy of your company. In this case you do not need a portfolio strategy or a dedicated technology strategy yet.
Pichler recommends to always start with the most simplistic strategy architecture and add layers whenever there are different owners.
Team lenses
One team delivering multiple products
The Strategy Stack can also be combined with team topologies. The ideal scenario is naturally to have a dedicated product team working on one product.
With product portfolios you might also face a situation where one development team serves multiple products. To reduce cognitive overload it helps to serialize the backlog to allow the team to keep focus. Usually, this is one of the more complex setups. Delivery speed is increased if the team can serialize. On the other hand the business needs might require to work on multiple products in parallel which slows the team down and increases cognitive overload. Also, the backlog should be created just before it will be executed.
References and further reading
- Pichler, Roman (2022): Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age., 2nd edition, Leipzig: Pichler Consulting (Amazon print on demand)
- Pichler, Roman (2024): The Strategy Stack: connecting business, product and technology strategy. URL: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/the-strategy-stack/ (Accessed: 14 Jun 2026)
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