Product Vision

One of the commonalities the most admired tech companies share is a strong product vision. With an ever-changing world, distractions, roadmap changes, a vision provides a shared purpose and motivation when hard decisions need to be made.

What is Product Vision?

• Your overarching goal you are aiming for
• The reason your company exists, the reason for creating a product and what everyone there is working towards
• The product’s True North

While product vision is NOT product strategy it heavily informs the product strategy.

How to build a Product Vision

As for any product you should know the problem you aim to solve before your product vision. You likely wouldn’t create a product vision prior to knowing what problem your product solves.

First, some basic rules to a good vision:

1. Inspiring — “If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you,” said Steve Jobs. Your vision should drive people, connect them to the product and inspire them.
2. Think Big — Make your product vision broad and ambitious
3. Simple, not simplistic — As your vision is the ultimate reason for creating the product, it should be easy to communicate and to understand. It should be easy to memorise and recite.
4. Tell the world — Your vision needs to be communicated often enough and broadly enough to be familiar to employees. communicating the vision. Then you tell the rest of the world about it.

Product Vision Framework

By now we established what the product vision is, it’s importance and how to create an inspiring vision. Now let’s use an effective framework or template for it. Using Roman Pichler’s Product Vision Board is a great framework. The framework has these parts:

Vision

• Overarching goal you are aiming for, the reason for creating the product
• Product’s true north

Target Market

• Describes the market or market segment
• Who are the users or customers

User Needs

• What problem does it solve?
• Why people will want to use and buy your product
• What the product’s value proposition is

Product Principles

• The intentions and characteristics of your product

Product Features

• 3–5 features
• An unfair advantage feature

Business Value

• Why it’s worthwhile for your company to invest in the product
• The desired business benefits
• Example: increase revenue, enter a new market, reduce cost, develop brand

Business Goals

• Timelined Business Goals with specific KPIs
• Example: Increase ad revenue by 30%, reduce support costs by $30k, increase mobile adoption by 100%, reduce support tickets by 50%

Revenue Streams

• How can you monetize the product and generate revenue?

Competition

• Who are the product’s main competitors?
• How does it differ from them?
• What are its strengths and weaknesses in comparison?

Go-To-Market

• How will the customers get hold of the product?
• How will we sell it?
• Positioning

Cost Structure

• What are the main cost factors to develop, market, sell and support the product

Obstacles / Risks

• What major obstacles will you face?
• What trade-offs will you need to make?
• What risks will you encounter?

Resources

What key organizational resources will you need?