Last week we talk about What is Product Management, Who is a Product Manager, Product Manager’s roles and responsibilities, and the skillset required to become a product manager. You can access the blog here

Today we are going to talk about Product Vision and how can we create one, practically.

What is Product Vision?

Let’s again try to understand by breaking this into the Product and the Vision. As explain in the last blog, the Product is the vehicle through which businesses deliver values to its customers and the Vision in this context means to foresee where the product will be in some point of time in future. Therefore together Product Vision or Product Vision Statement is the statement which explains What the vehicle will be, for Whom and Why the company is building this vehicle.

Let’s take an example of the vision we created for JioWorks.

The above statement clearly explain

• What the vehicle is? A Project Management Tool

• For whom are we building it? For teams

• Why are we building it? To increase team’s productivity and to better organize the projects

Now, you might ask where is the futuristic view in the above statement. Let me explain, when we talk about future in terms of tech we always think about some sorts of flying cars coming to reality, this may become a reality but it may take couple of decades looking at the current infrastructure and technological advancement. This is not the future you should align with your product, the future in terms of product should be set for a maximum of 5 years.

Furthermore, we create a vision of a product before we start building the product, so the future in the vision is what are we going to deliver. Example, for JioWorks it is the delivery of Project Management Tool as well as the features which will help eliminate the use of multiple tools for project management, were the future.

A good Product Vision will have 4 key elements (a.k.a MAAA)

It should be Meaningful: The vision should speak by itself. Anyone reading it should instantly understand what we are building, why we are building and for whom we are building. It is foremost important that the meaning being perceived remains the same for all, this will help keep the team focus and avoid going “off the rails”.

It should be Aspirational: The Product Vision should aspire the entire Product Team to build a product which will change their customer’s life. It should motivate the team and help them understand why they should focus, stay late or work on weekends if needed.

It should be Actionable: The Product Vision does contain some giant goals and these goals shouldn’t scare the team, therefore it should also contain a message which will help the team clearly understand that the vision is achievable.

It should Align with Company’s vision: As explained earlier Product is the vehicle through which Companies deliver values to its customers, so therefore the Product is one of the action item towards achieve the company’s vision.

What is the importance of Product Vision?

One of the most important factor why do we need a good Product Vision is that it will help you align the teams and the stakeholders across the company. It also help to keep the team focus and avoid going “off the rails”.

The Product Vision helps you define the roadmap. Post creating an aspirational vision you will need to break it down into a strategic guide and action items to achieve this vision. The artifact which is used to record the action items is called the Product Roadmap.

How to create a Product Vision?

Now let’s understand how to create a Product Vision. I hope by now we understand that the Product Vision is created before we start building the product, therefore it is important to first validate the idea on which we going build the product on. Post validation of the idea we can start working on creating a Vision. Here are the steps to follow to create a good product vision.

Step 1: Understand the Company’s Vision: Clearly understand the Company’s vision and where does the product fits into.

Step 2: Understand the users and the pain points: The next step is to conduct user research to understand the users, their pain points, their goals and motivations. User Research method such as User Interview, Ethnographic, Dairy studies can be utilised for this.

Step 3: Validate the Solution: Post the user research you will understand in depth about the user pain points. Now it’s time to find the solutions for those pain points and to validate them with the users if the solution really solves the problem. Ideation technique such as Brainstorming, Crazy 8 can be used to find the solutions and for validation we can create prototype of the solution and get it tested with real users.

Step 4: Finally The Vision Statement: Once the validation is done, you are ready to create the Product Vision by answer the What, For Whom and Why.

• Answer What: The validated solution in Step 3 is your What

• Answer for Whom: The users in Step 2 is your for Whom.

• Answer Why: The major pain point found in Step 2 is your Why.

Next Week Topic: What is a Product Strategy and how to create one?

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