We’ve worked with hundreds of teams stuck in reactive delivery cycles, constantly shipping features but never sure if they’re actually moving the needle. In our webinar, Chaos to Clarity, Kenny Kranseler and Tom Evans shared a fictional case study that hits close to home for many PMs: WellNest Health, a company with a strong reputation and a bloated backlog.
What WellNest needed wasn’t another roadmap or velocity boost. It needed a rethink of its product management strategy.
In this post, we’ll walk through how WellNest Health used the Productside Blueprint to move from tactical noise to strategic impact, and how you can, too.
The Breaking Point: When Shipping ≠ Progress
WellNest Health’s flagship product, BuildNest, was built on good intentions. It promised to help employers and healthcare providers support employee WellNest with physical and financial tools. But growth stalled. Customers were disengaged. Executives were frustrated.
And the product team? Drowning in requests from sales, executives, and large clients… with no way to prove which features mattered and which didn’t.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In fact, a live poll during our webinar showed zero attendees described their team as “a humming, outcome-focused product team.” Most said they felt like Heather (VP of Product) and Tommy (Senior PM): under pressure, overwhelmed, and disconnected from real impact.
Enter the Blueprint: A Framework for Strategic Product Management
The Productside Blueprint helps teams align on what matters, validate what’s true, and build what works. It’s built around five phases:
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Context: Understand your business, market, and customer landscape.
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Investigate: Learn what your customers actually need through research.
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Define: Prototype and test potential solutions before scaling.
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Create: Prioritize, align, and build a strategic roadmap.
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Deliver: Launch with purpose and measure what matters.
Each phase builds on the last. Together, they shift product teams from reactive delivery to intentional outcomes.
How the Blueprint Helped WellNest Reboot Their Product Management Strategy
Let’s zoom in on a few key moments from the WellNest Health story that illustrate how the Blueprint works in action.
1. They stopped guessing and started aligning
Heather began by aligning with execs on the real business outcomes WellNest needed to drive (not just “grow revenue”), but the levers underneath that. From there, she mapped macro trends (using a PESTEL analysis) to understand what was happening in their market and customer base. That context became a foundation for every product decision to follow.
2. They built customer understanding from the ground up
Instead of jumping to AI, blockchain, or whatever buzzword was trending in the C-suite that week, Heather and Tommy focused on listening. They created proto-personas across their three key customer groups (HR managers, employees, and healthcare providers), then ran empathy interviews and used Jobs to Be Done to uncover true pain points.
One insight: HR managers didn’t just need dashboards. They needed clear, customizable ways to show WellNest program ROI to their leadership. That shaped everything that came next.
3. They tested ideas early (before building)
With insight in hand, the team brainstormed widely and used “How might we” questions to frame opportunity areas. They chose storyboarding as their low-cost, high-speed prototyping method, even using AI to generate visuals. Feedback from early tests helped them refine solutions without burning dev cycles.
4. They built a strategic roadmap (not a feature dump)
In the past, the roadmap was just a dumping ground for whatever sales promised last quarter. This time, Heather and Tommy used a product outcome canvas to connect customer needs, potential solutions, business goals, and success metrics.
Then, they prioritized initiatives based on value, feasibility, and viability, ensuring each feature had a clear purpose and measurable impact.
5. They treated launch as a team sport
They didn’t wait until the last sprint to throw features over the fence to marketing and support. Heather and Tommy co-created persona-based messaging with the marketing team and trained customer success and sales with mock scripts, call guides, and feature proofs.
The result? No surprises at launch and a much smoother adoption curve.
What Changed (and What Didn’t)
After launch, the team used success metrics and health metrics to track adoption, satisfaction, and red flags. When signals showed some drop-off in engagement, they didn’t panic. They ran another round of discovery and quickly shipped targeted improvements.
The Blueprint didn’t just help WellNst build a better product. It helped them become a better product organization.
They shifted from “What should we build?” to “What problem are we solving, and why does it matter?” That’s the heart of any strong product management strategy.
Product Management Lessons You Can Steal
No matter what stage your product is in (new, mature, or declining) the Blueprint can help you:
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Clarify your product’s role in achieving company strategy
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Get aligned with execs and stakeholders on what good looks like
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Validate ideas before committing resources
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Deliver customer value without burning out your team
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Measure what matters and adapt quickly
As Heather put it: “It’s not about launching things. It’s about delivering outcomes—for customers and for the business.”
Let’s Break the Cycle Together
If your team’s stuck in feature churn, unclear product management strategy, or stakeholder chaos, the Productside Blueprint can help you get unstuck.
- Download the Productside Blueprint eBook to learn how to put the frameworks, tools, and templates to building outcome-driven product practices that stick.
- Watch the full webinar to see how teams like WellNest Health applied the Blueprint to real-world product challenges (and how you can, too).
- Explore the Optimal Product Management course if you’re ready to sharpen your product management strategy, align your team, and lead confidently.
Where does your team get stuck: discovery, alignment, delivery? We’d love to hear how you’re turning chaos into clarity. Join the conversation on LinkedIn.
Let’s make product work effectively.
