As product managers, we’re often faced with the challenge of ‘predicting’ the future. There is no way to plan how things will plan out. However, depending upon your products maturity, you can plan forward or backward.

If your product is in an early stage, where market fit is essential, forward planning is your best bet – keeping the end goal on the horizon with backward planning. The reason for this is that as your product goes through the customer adoption cycle, new information/needs/wants surface, warranting a deviation. You have to keep anticipating what’s coming up and planning accordingly. Focus here is adaptability in the face of new information.

On the flipside, if your product has already achieve product-market fit or scaled product market fit, you’re working backwards as there are customers needs you have to satisfy. Reliability is the focus here. Backward planning will get you there.