Boost your Product Management practices; start with the Product Vision
We’ve all heard a lot about having a Product Vision but why is it good to have one?
In the technology world, teams tend to grow and change members, so it is important to have information about the key elements of our product, what makes it stand out, the business goals but most importantly who our customer is, their needs, and how our value proposition satisfy them.
When developing a Product we often have information about it in several presentations we share with our stakeholders, we have reports and a huge amount of documentation that later on is likely to be forgotten in a shared drive, and what most of us do is to take the latest version and do some editing on it to present it in the next status meeting.
In my experience, it is not about just filling in the canvas and other tools available in the market, it is more about the questions raised when using those tools and the opportunity to keep our team aligned on what we want to accomplish.
The Product Vision Board
Let’s talk about the Product Vision board proposed by Roman Pichler. I like this tool since it helps us to quickly understand the reason for the existence of our product. Let me share some questions and considerations that crossed my mind when trying to use this board.
The Vision
The product vision is an easy-to-read statement describing the reason why our product exists, it is inspirational and motivational. A few questions we should ask ourselves when creating it are:
Is the Product Vision created only by the Product Manager?
I would say that creating the Product Vision is not a “one-man” or “one-woman” job, we would rather create the vision with the product team, that involves different areas like development, marketing, sales, etc.
The more involved the team is in creating the Product Vision the more collaboration you’ll have and you will end up with a more enriched version because of the different roles that helped to create it.
Here you have an inspiring product vision by Tesla “Create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles”
Some considerations when thinking about the Product Vision:
- Try to be specific about the Why.
- Keep your customer at the center.
- Be prepared to adjust it because you may need (definitely have) to.
Target group
There is a saying in Marketing, “if you’re trying to talk to everybody, you’re not reaching anybody” so we need to have information about our target group
- What is the market segment? Like Qualtrics describes it “it is the practice of dividing your target market into approachable groups”. My recommendation is to consider these four primary categories like demographic (age, gender), psychographic (attitudes, aspirations), behavioral (product usage, technology), and geographic segmentation (country, urban or rural).
- Who is my target user? When talking about a new product you need to define who your target group will be and validate it through research and experimentation. If you already have an existing product then try taking a deep look at the data and get some quantitative information.
Needs and Product
I like to think that if we are not solving a problem or adding value to our customers through our product then we are not doing it right. If you want to get more detail you can start thinking about other canvas available such as the Value proposition canvas by Strategyzer. However to be able to have that information you will need to perform user research, interviews, etc. A couple of tips you may want to consider:
- When thinking about customer problems try to think about their pains, keeping in mind that they could be social, functional, emotional, etc. Focusing on pains will help to answer what your product is solving and the benefit your customers are getting from it.
- The Product information does not have to be a huge list of features but a statement that helps you communicate your product value proposition and of course you should include those characteristics that make your product stand out.
Business goals
Why do we need to have business goals? Think about a time you had to decide what to prioritize and I’m not talking about bug fixes you had to release to solve a production problem, I’m talking about those times you’ve had to prioritize in order to generate value not only to the users but also to the business. Here are some things you can consider:
- Product business goals should be aligned with your company strategy, if your company goal is to “triple revenue year over year” you should think about how your product is going to help to achieve that goal.
- Try to be specific, using OKRs to link your Product Roadmap with your Business Goals is one of the best ways to validate your product value.
Conclusion
Having a Product Vision will help you to guide your team and stakeholders, it will act as a North Star to remember where you are right now and where you want to be in the future, it will help you to easily explain what your product is about and it will help you to prioritize your next product initiatives. Try to keep your Product Vision updated since market and business conditions change constantly so you need to be ready to make adjustments. Start with the first draft of your Product Vision and share with me what other questions or discoveries you had during this process.
References
https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/what-is-market-segmentation/
https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/tips-for-writing-compelling-product-vision/
