Strategy & Direction · master area · gap
Market & Competitive Awareness
The landscape the product lives in. The chain's principle is observation-first — and the same principle applies to competitors: not described in slide decks, witnessed in use. Currently a gap in the corpus.
This is a gap area
The chain has a clear discipline for observing named users. It does not yet have a considered position on observing the competitive landscape. The risk: a team that lives only inside its own observation loop ships features the world has moved past. Filling this is part of the corpus's job.
Owners: PO, Leadership Phase it would live in: Why We Build (Volume I)
What the practice would look like
Competitive awareness as observation, not analysis:
- Use the alternatives. The PO opens a competitor's product, signs up as a real user, walks the same flow the team is shaping. Notes time, friction, surprises. Not a feature comparison — a use comparison.
- Read alternative users. Where do their users talk? What do they complain about? What workarounds have they invented? The same observation discipline applied to a market.
- Witness substitution. What do potential customers do today instead of using anything in this category? The non-consumption story is often more useful than the head-to-head story.
- Map the moats. What does the leading alternative do well that the team would have to match or accept the loss on? Honestly named.
Why this matters
A team in deep observation of its own users can produce a product perfectly fitted to a problem someone has already solved better. The competitor was observing too, and they shipped first. Market awareness is the chain's defence against that — not by chasing competitors, but by knowing what the alternative looks like to the person we're building for.
The principle still holds: witnessed, not described. The competitor's marketing site is description; the competitor's product in your hand is observation. The corpus is missing a considered discipline for that observation — when to do it, how often, how to write it up, how it feeds the Initiative Brief.
Related crafts
- Competitive Analysis — the discovery-side counterpart (also a gap)
- Vision & Mission — what market awareness checks against