From Strategy to Metrics: Building a World-Class Product Management Organization at Ancestry
The case study follows Ancestry’s transformation under CEO Deborah Liu as she modernizes the product organization of the genealogy market leader. Upon joining in March 2021, Liu—an accomplished product leader with experience at Facebook, PayPal and eBay—faces the challenge of establishing a robust product discipline that can sustain Ancestry’s market leadership while positioning the company for future growth and preserving its mission-driven culture.
The case centers on the critical decision Liu faces in early 2022: whether to prioritize shipping new products to drive immediate growth, address accumulating technical debt, or first invest in building foundational product management capabilities. This dilemma illustrates the strategic tensions product leaders face when balancing short-term results against long-term organizational health.
Through Ancestry’s journey, readers witness how Ancestry’s leadership team navigates competing priorities: enhancing core offerings for loyal subscribers versus expanding into adjacent markets to attract new, untapped demographics. The case provides insights into translating high-level corporate strategy into actionable product roadmaps, establishing appropriate metrics frameworks, and making disciplined resource allocation decisions.
Students analyze how product leaders build organizational alignment during periods of transformation, develop frameworks for feature prioritization, and implement structured processes without stifling innovation.
Learning Objective
- Explain how product leaders systematically translate high-level corporate mission and strategy into actionable product vision, strategy and metrics to guide day-to-day decision making and align teams across the organization.
- Analyze how product leaders make critical trade-off decisions between competing priorities in resource-constrained environments—from strategic decisions to feature prioritization.
- Illustrate the “70-30 rule” of how companies allocate resources between strengthening their core offerings for existing customers versus expanding into untapped, adjacent markets to reach new customer segments—particularly in the context of an established market leader seeking continued growth.