What is product planning? Examples, benefits, & steps
Airtable's Product Team
8 min read
Product planning, like product development, is no longer a static process. Now that it can be enhanced or accelerated by AI, the process requires you to ask different questions about what you’re creating and how you’ll go about it. For some products, there’s also the question of how your customers will interact with your software and its AI capabilities. “A lot of times, the familiar sequences of buttons and boxes we reach for will need to be replaced with a conversation,” shared Jamie McFarland, Airtable’s head of design, in Airtable’s “2025 Predictions for product teams” report. Even if you don’t have all the answers in the early stages, when your product is still an idea, asking the right questions will help get you started.
In this article, we’ll cover the core components of effective product planning, its benefits, and examples of how businesses built plans that guided them toward successful outcomes.
What is product planning?
Product planning is the strategic process of defining what you’d like to build, for whom, and how your customers will derive value from it. At a high level, product planning aligns cross-functional teams around a shared vision and provides a framework that helps inform your product roadmap, feature prioritization, and go-to-market strategy.
You might think of product planning as a recipe for your product’s success—a plan teams can revisit to guide decisions throughout the product lifecycle. Great recipes are usually iterative, the result of trying different ingredients, cooking temperatures, or having to substitute an ingredient when your pantry or fridge comes up short. Similarly, creating a product plan is not a “one and done” task or a simple box to check before kicking off development. Instead, the product planning process is ongoing, requiring checkpoints to ensure that the plan still meets customer and business goals, and can adjust alongside changing marketplace dynamics.
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Production planning vs. production scheduling
Production planning and production scheduling are follow-on activities once your high-level product planning is in place.
Production planning is the strategic process of determining what product(s) to make, in what quantities, and with what resources (i.e., X features, by Y teams, over Z months). The focus is on longer-term capacity planning, resource allocation, and meeting overall business objectives.
Production scheduling is the tactical activity that sequences specific production tasks and assigns them to specific resources. These are all the day-to-day logistics that map exactly when and how product development will unfold.
How does product planning work?
Product planning is a continuous cycle that begins with research and discovery, where teams gather insights about market opportunities, customer pain points, and the overall competitive landscape. This information feeds into strategic discussions about product direction and goals.
Product teams then translate strategy into concrete plans by defining product requirements, prioritizing features, and mapping out development timelines. This planning phase also brings in product operations to provide the operational infrastructure necessary for effective execution.
As a continuous cycle, product planning incorporates feedback. Teams regularly review progress against goals, gather user feedback, and adjust plans based on new information or changing market conditions. This is particularly important for the new product development process, when introducing an entire product to new customers vs. a new feature to a well-defined target audience.
Key components of product planning
Good product planning includes the following key components:
Market research and analysis form the foundation. Teams must understand their target audience and demographics, market size, market trends, and competition. This research helps teams create accurate user personas and understand how to differentiate a product and its positioning.
Product vision and strategy articulate where the product is headed and why. The vision provides long-term direction, while the strategy outlines how the team will achieve that vision. These elements align stakeholders around common goals.
Product roadmaps translate strategy into a visual timeline, communicating planned features, releases, and milestones to both internal teams and external stakeholders.
Resource planning ensures teams have the necessary capacity, skills, and budget to execute plans. This includes workforce planning, technology requirements, and financial forecasting. (Production planning happens later, once resources are secured.)
Success metrics and KPIs define how the team will measure progress and success. Clear metrics enable data-driven decision-making and help teams course-correct when needed.
Stakeholder communication keeps everyone informed and aligned. Regular updates, reviews, and feedback sessions maintain transparency and enable collaboration across the organization.
5 product planning examples
Real-world examples illustrate how organizations implemented product planning as a practice:
BlackRock drove faster collaboration and time savings by building a connected app in Airtable for Aladdin Wealth™. The app connects technologists and internal stakeholders, enabling them to work more efficiently on product management, business development, engineering, design, and product marketing—all while keeping client data safe. By centralizing planning in Airtable, the global investment management firm improved visibility into product timelines, reduced planning cycles, and enabled better resource allocation across its product portfolio.
eBay streamlined its product operations by creating unified planning frameworks. The e-commerce giant manages countless product features and improvements, but with improved planning processes and Airtable, eBay's teams gained clearer insight into customer feedback, improved cross-team coordination, and accelerated time-to-market for new capabilities.
JetBlue elevated its IT roadmap planning to better align technology investments with business priorities. The airline uses comprehensive planning to coordinate product and technology initiatives across customer-facing applications, operational systems, and infrastructure improvements. This approach ensures that IT investments directly support strategic business objectives.
Cisco adopted platform-based approaches to product planning at enterprise scale. The technology leader manages extensive product portfolios across multiple business units. Strategic planning enables Cisco to coordinate product development, identify synergies across offerings, and maintain consistent customer experiences.
Autodesk transformed its product planning to support its transition to cloud-based subscription services. The design software company needed to coordinate complex product migrations while continuing to innovate. Structured planning processes helped Autodesk balance modernization efforts and new feature development across its product suite.
What are the benefits of product planning?
Put simply, good product planning is advantageous for product teams because it prepares your business to enter the market with reduced risk. Good planning also:
Improves alignment by ensuring everyone works toward common goals. When teams understand the product vision and strategic priorities, they make better decisions about features, trade-offs, and resource allocation.
Accelerates time-to-market because teams can coordinate execution, allocate budgets, identify dependencies early, and ensure resources are available when needed.
Replaces guesswork with evidence by using planning frameworks that define clear metrics, pull in real-time data, and enable teams to track progress objectively and make adjustments based on results rather than opinions.
Improves customer satisfaction by building the right things at the right time. Planning processes that incorporate customer research and feedback help teams focus on solving real problems.
What are the steps in product planning?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a startup or an enterprise, product planning generally follows these key steps:
Conduct market research: Gather data about your target market, customers, competitors, and industry trends. Use surveys, interviews, focus groups, and analytics to build a comprehensive understanding of the landscape.
Define your product vision and goals: Articulate what the product should achieve and why it matters. Set specific, measurable objectives that connect to broader business goals.
Identify customer needs and pain points: Go deep on understanding the problems your product should solve. Prioritize needs based on customer value and business impact.
Develop product requirements: Translate customer needs into specific product features and capabilities. Document functional and non-functional requirements that guide development.
Prioritize features and initiatives: Evaluate potential features based on value, effort, and strategic fit. Create a prioritized backlog that focuses resources on the highest-impact work.
Create a product roadmap: Build a timeline that shows planned features, releases, and key milestones. Roadmaps should be visual and accessible to all key stakeholders.
Plan resources and budget: Ensure adequate capacity, skills, and funding are available to execute the plan. Account for dependencies and potential constraints.
Execute and iterate: Ideally, your plan is agile, allowing you to start development, but also adjust to user feedback and market conditions. Your go-to-market product launch plan may also need to adjust along the way to ensure smooth market entry.
Best practices for effective product planning
Your product strategy depends on effective upfront product planning. Here’s how to get started to build better products and ensure a successful product launch:
1. Maintain customer focus
Allow customer needs to drive planning decisions rather than internal preferences. Regularly validate assumptions with real users.
2. Balance flexibility with structure
Create plans that provide direction without becoming rigid. Build in space for learning and adaptation.
3. Involve cross-functional teams early
Include diverse perspectives from the beginning rather than treating planning as a siloed activity. Engineering, design, marketing, and other functions all bring valuable insights and perform different levels of market planning and analysis.
4. Use data to inform decisions
Base priorities on evidence from analytics, research, and testing rather than opinions. Establish clear metrics to track progress.
5. Communicate frequently
Be transparent with stakeholders about plans, changes, and progress. Regular communication, backed by data and feedback, builds trust and alignment.
6. Start with outcomes, not features
Focus plans on business results and customer value, and then map the features that will deliver those outcomes, from your minimum viable product (MVP) to an ideal version.
7. Stay agile
Some recipes are time-tested, but that doesn’t mean they can’t evolve. Treat product plans as evolving, living documents, subject to change as you meet with stakeholders, review data and user feedback, and evaluate resources.
What are the key features of product planning tools?
Effective product planning tools should offer several critical capabilities:
Centralized visibility provides a single source of truth for product information. All stakeholders should have access to current plans, priorities, and progress.
Flexible roadmapping that enables teams to visualize plans in multiple formats. Timeline views, Kanban boards, and strategic overviews serve different audiences and purposes.
Collaboration features allow cross-functional teams to contribute to planning. Comments, mentions, and shared workspaces facilitate asynchronous collaboration.
Integration capabilities connect planning tools to existing workflows. Links to development tools, analytics platforms, and communication systems create seamless workflows.
AI capabilities to streamline processes and accelerate timeframes where it makes sense.
Customization options that allow teams to adapt tools to their specific processes. Configurable fields, views, and workflows accommodate different planning methodologies.
Reporting and analytics to enable teams to track progress against plans—ideally with the views most applicable to their team. Dashboards and reports provide insights into velocity, completion rates, and goal achievement.
Which product planning tool should I choose?
Selecting the right product planning tool depends on several factors. Consider your team size, planning methodology, technical requirements, and budget constraints. Look for solutions that balance power with usability—tools should be capable enough to handle complex planning without overwhelming users.
Evaluate tools based on how well they support your specific workflows. Some development teams need robust roadmapping capabilities, while others prioritize collaboration features or integration with existing systems. The best tool is one that your team will actually use consistently and supports cross-functional collaboration and visibility.
Improve product planning with Airtable ProductCentral
Airtable ProductCentral provides a connected platform for modern product planning. Teams can centralize product information, create custom roadmaps, and collaborate across departments—all in one AI-powered workspace. Custom views, automation, and integrations help product teams move faster while maintaining visibility across the organization.
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Frequently asked questions
The five core steps of production planning include: (1) Forecasting demand to understand production requirements; (2) Planning capacity to ensure adequate resources; (3) Scheduling production activities across timelines; (4) Managing materials and inventory; and (5) Monitoring the product development cycle to optimize efficiency.
The 4 P's of product planning—also known as the marketing mix—include Product (what you're offering), Price (how it's valued), Place (where it's distributed), and Promotion (how it's marketed). Together, these elements form a comprehensive framework for positioning products and developing a pricing strategy to help you capture market share.
The three fundamental production planning strategies are: (1) chase strategy, which adjusts production levels to match demand fluctuations, (2) level strategy, which maintains constant production regardless of demand variations, and (3) hybrid strategy, which combines elements of both approaches to balance flexibility and efficiency based on specific business needs.
Check respected review sites like G2, Gartner Peer Insights, Capterra, and Trustpilot to see ratings and user reviews. AI-powered product planning tools should help teams analyze data, generate insights, and automate routine tasks. Leading solutions like Airtable ProductCentral incorporate machine learning for predictive analytics, natural language processing for feedback analysis, and intelligent prioritization frameworks. When evaluating AI tools, consider how well they integrate with your existing workflows and whether they enhance rather than replace human decision-making.
There are several enterprise product planning solutions on the market. Keep in mind they must handle complexity at scale, including multiple products, large teams, and sophisticated governance requirements. Look for platforms like Airtable ProductCentral that offer robust security, administrative controls, customization capabilities, and integration options. Enterprise-grade solutions should also provide dedicated customer support, training resources, and service-level agreements that meet organizational standards.
Product planning is a shared responsibility, though typically the product owner, a product manager will spearhead planning efforts. Product managers define vision and strategy, prioritize features, and maintain roadmaps. However, engineering, design, marketing, sales, and leadership all contribute essential perspectives. The most effective planning happens when cross-functional teams work together, with product managers orchestrating collaboration and ensuring alignment around shared goals through a unified tool.
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