Crafting a product vision is one of the most underrated exercises in Product Management. The vision statement ideally is the guiding north star to success and provides a clear aim for building the ideal product.
An ideal product vision will articulate the long-term goal for the product, the value it is providing users and the best version of the product in an ideal scenario.
While defining the product vision is a collaborative exercise taking inputs from all stakeholders of a product, it is primarily the product owner who takes ownership of it and champions it through the organization.
Why do organizations need a strong product vision?
- It provides internal teams with a purpose and understanding of what their effort is going towards.
- It helps with team collaboration and understanding.
- In times of uncertainty, the product vision is what guides the team in terms of decision making.
- A great product vision makes prioritization of features and product roadmaps a lot easier. If a feature moves the team closer to the product vision, then that is usually prioritized.
How is product vision different from a company vision?
A vision statement, at its core, is a touch point for all stakeholders of an organization to align with and understand the purpose of the organization. It provides an aspirational ‘why’ statement for them to be motivated.
A few examples of great organizational vision statements:
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Nike
To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. [If you have a body, you’re an athlete]
Amazon
Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
We can notice the common thread that makes these statements great for the organizations they represent. They are inspiring, clearly state a purpose and provide a concrete direction for the organization and its stakeholders to align and pursue. It is the ultimate dream of the organization. However, none of the statements provide how they intend to achieve their vision.
The product vision, on the other hand, should be the bridge that connects the dream to reality. It should be able to articulate the how, the value it provides and the ideal version/ use of the product. It should still remain inspiring for its stakeholders to build the ideal product. However, in the real world, product visions range from inspiring to functional – the ideal vision statement is somewhere in the middle.
Here are a few examples of great product visions:
The iPhone (Apple’s vision for the first iPhone)
A revolutionary phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator together in one product. Apple reinvents the phone.
Microsoft Surface
For the business user who needs to be productive in the office and on the go, the Surface is a convertible tablet that is easy to carry and gives you full computing productivity no matter where you are.
Falcon 9 – SpaceX
Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. Falcon 9 is the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket. Reusability allows SpaceX to refly the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn drives down the cost of space access.
Crafting a winning product vision
The perfect vision statement as mentioned above will comprise the following factors:
- Consumer need: A very important aspect is to keep it focused on the user & their needs that is being addressed with the product.
- Your product in the future: Your vision statement is imagining the ideal future version of the product. It should be ambitious and something the team cannot deliver with its current skills and capabilities. It should be a motivating factor for the team and inspire them to get better with every version.
- Value proposition: It should clearly articulate the value it provides the user and the differentiating factors of the product from others.
Ideal length: There is no particular ideal length for a vision statement; product visions vary from a single sentence to a one-page document. The ideal product vision should be no longer than a couple of sentences at the maximum. Condensing it to that length distills your thoughts into their most straightforward and most authentic form. Keeping it concise also strips it of the unwarranted fluff we usually fill up.
How
It is very important for the product vision to be owned by the whole team. While the C-suite usually defines company visions, the product vision can be workshopped with all functions and departments sharing their perspective.
A couple of exciting ways to do this:
- Get your whole team on to a call/ conference room – Ask them to share their vision of the product and write down some ideal qualities they would like to see. The product manager can then collect all their inputs and use them to form the ideal product vision. Eg: Sales will ideally share the value proposition and differentiator, design will share the user problem/ solution bit and so on.
- Think about the product and begin with a “We believe….” statement of the product. Try to encompass everything about the product in a couple of lines and you have your product vision. Think of it as an elevator pitch statement for your product, only keeping in mind the 3 factors you need to cover.
- A few good templates are available online to craft a good product vision statement. Here is one you can use to craft an excellent functional problem statement –
For <ideal users> who need to <problem statement>, <product name> is a/an <product category> that <solution, key differentiator>.
The Surface product vision statement shared earlier is an excellent example of this format.
If the company is a single product company, then the company’s product vision can also be the mission of the company. As product visions and mission statements are primarily created for alignment with internal teams and stakeholder, they serve the same purpose in this scenario.
Great product visions are one of the most important strategic tools for product management. It distills the ideal version of the product and, down the line, informs your product strategy and tactical execution of product development. It also gives purpose and a shared objective for teams to align around. It is vital that you get the product vision right to ensure product success.