TL;DR: A shared product vision is a team’s unified understanding of what a product will be. This can be achieved using a product vision map; a collection of artefacts showing the relationships between design, business and technology.
Once upon a time…
A man stumbled across a construction site and saw three builders working. He was a pretty nosy guy and wanted to know what they were doing. So he walked on over to the first builder, tapped him on the shoulder and asked “Hey! What are you doing?” The builder replied with a grunt…
“I’m laying bricks.”
He strutted over to the second builder and asked “What are you doing?” The builder wiped some sweat from his brow and chirped…
“I’m making a wall.”
He moseyed on over to the final builder and heard him humming a tune. Intrigued, he asked “What are you doing?” The builder stood, looked to the sky and smiled…
“Well, I‘m building a cathedral!”
You see where I’m going with this?
Making new products is tricky
Damn right it’s tricky! You’re exploring new areas and solving problems that have not been solved yet. You need to deliver something on-time, on-budget, which is useful, usable and delightful. Now, add to the mix some people in the team who have a narrow view of what the product actually is… only focused on their own “walls”. Very tricky!
So, moaning aside, these are some of the most common challenges I see when creating new products…
- Different goals across the team
- Poor communication
- Long decision periods
If you dig a little deeper, you may get to the root of these problems. In my experience, this is often down to a lack of a shared product vision. Your team isn’t on the same page.
What is a shared product vision?
It’s important to realise…
Not everyone has the same product vision in their heads as you do.
That’s right… your team members may not have the same idea of what the product will be. This could be the result of miscommunication, different personal interests, varying levels of expertise/experience or even team politics.
A shared product vision is a team’s unified understanding of what a product will be. It is a big picture idea of the design, business and technology.
This cross-discipline view helps your team understand what each work stream is aiming for. You can start seeing how everything fits together and if any pieces are missing. It gets everyone thinking outside of just their domain and about how their decisions affect the big picture ‘cathedral’.
What it is not…
A product vision is not an endless stack of documentation which takes ages to create and will never be read. It can be summed up with some well thought-out artefacts. But these artefacts require time and effort from the entire team.
Creating your shared product vision
First off, you actually need to create your shared product vision. It’s important to start as soon as possible in the project lifecycle. I’ll mention a few methods and mindsets that will help you on your way…
Think of your vision as a ‘fuzzy goal’
You will never know from the get go, your exact product goals. Furthermore, the path you take to achieve these goals is uncertain. You need the freedom to explore and adapt your goals without being constrained by too many specific details.
A fuzzy goal is an objective with flexible or ‘fuzzy’ boundaries. They provide a sense of direction whilst leaving room for creativity and innovation. You can consider your product vision to be a beefed-up collection of fuzzy goals.
For example, your product vision may try to serve a particular customer need without yet defining the type of interaction. So for Tinder they might have said “we will let people browse a list of potential matches and select who they like.” A number of approaches may have then been designed and tested until the swipe left or right interaction was chosen.
Use your whole team to create the vision
Multidisciplinary teams bring together different areas expertise to help shape the product vision. This is a proven recipe for innovation. Having your team work in silos only leads to the mindset of “I’m laying bricks.” A product vision requires a whole view of the design, business and technology — so designing together is vital.
It’s important to involve key stakeholders in this process. Even if they can’t be there for the entire time, including them in a workshop or design sprint does wonders!
Don’t confuse multidisciplinary design with design-by-committee — You need someone (a product owner) who can sit between all the disciplines, listen to expert opinions and make informed decisions on behalf of the product.
Be Agile and refine your vision as you go
Agile development uses an iterative approach for continuously improving products. A shared product vision provides guidance for the goals of each iteration. The learnings you then obtain from each iteration are used to refine your shared product vision.
You can get lots of insight for your vision by defining the value metrics for the design, business and technology. The lean startup methodology shows how to use this data from your metrics to develop and test new ideas for your product.
Finally, Agile also advocates co-location, which makes communication around your product vision so much easier! What’s more, sitting in the same location means you can use physical artefacts to map out your vision.
Product vision artefacts
This is a list of artefacts which I have found useful for creating and mapping a product vision. Different artefacts may be more useful depending on your team and product — but combining a few of these together is a good way to ensure you capture a big picture overview of the design, business and technology. You can use all these templates for ideation in design thinking workshops. These can later be refined into a poster or pdf which are easier to share, discuss and present.
Product Vision Board
The Product Vision Board is a great tool from Roman Pichler for a high level summary of your product vision. It captures the main themes across both the the business and design. See if you can also summarise your product vision across the top with one or two sentences. I find it useful to link parts of this board with other artefacts which dive into greater detail. For example, connecting the target groups section to a number of personas.
Prototypes
Prototypes are one of the most effective ways to communicate ideas around how the product will look, feel and work. These can range in fidelity from paper sketches to technical proof-of-concepts. What’s important is to keep the prototype specific and clearly state what features you are trying to highlight from the product vision.
Value Proposition Canvas
The Value Proposition Canvas from Strategyzer provides a link between customer needs and the way in which a product can serve them. Similarly to the Product Vision Board, this provides a nice link between the business and design. On the right hand side is a concentrated empathy map. On the left is your value proposition.
Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas from Strategyzer gives an overview of how the business model fits together. This was designed to work perfectly with the Value Proposition Canvas. Use it for for ideation and summarising how you plan to make money. The simple layout helps make the content more consumable for non-business folk.
Other notable artefacts
Putting it all together
So now you have an idea of the methods, mindsets and artefacts needed to achieve a shared product vision. It’s important to give form to you shared product vision, so you have a point of reference. For this you can use a Product Vision Map.
The Product Vision Map pulls together your most important artefacts and shows the relationships between the design, business and technology.
I like to use the Product Vision Board as an index which dives into detail with more artefacts. This demonstrates a continuity of information and ideas. For example, a target group on the Product Vision Board can be expanded upon using a persona. This persona can then be given more dimensions using scenarios, storyboards and user journeys. The user journeys can then be used by the technology teams to understand platform requirements.
Use a Product Vision Map as a point of reference for achieving a shared product vision.
Artefacts don’t necessarily need to come all at once. Building them up over time gives you a better picture of your product vision with each new iteration. Having the Product Vision Map as a point of reference helps your team see what other work streams are doing and why they are doing it. It gets everyone thinking outside of just their domain about how their decisions affect the big picture ‘cathedral’.
Summary
A shared product vision is a team’s unified understanding of what a product will be. Having your team work in silos only leads to the mindset of “I’m laying bricks.” You want to get everyone thinking outside of just their domain about how their decisions affect the big picture “cathedral”.
It’s important to give form to you shared product vision, so you have a point of reference. You can use a Product Vision Map; a collection of artefacts showing the relationships between design, business and technology.
By achieving a shared product vision you get…
- Unified team goals and a sense of purpose
- Better communication using a single point of reference
- Focus, quicker decisions and the ability to say ‘no’
So, now you’ve seen a shared product vision… what would you rather have your team doing; laying bricks, making a wall or building a cathedral?
P.S: I’d love to hear what methods and tools you have used to achieve a shared product vision… please comment below!
