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There’s the assumption that the “average” person has about 10 ideas in their life that could/would change the world. Very successful people have about 15-20 of these ideas. That’s interesting, isn’t it?
How do you really know that an idea could become a life-changing billion-dollar product or service?
I don’t have the answer to this question. What I do know is that continuous product discovery and a clear product vision helped many successful companies to get there. Ok, some companies made it with shit loads of money… but that’s a different topic altogether. 😉
In this article, I’ll focus on how to define a product vision. I want to highlight that creating a vision for your product is one of the hardest challenges. It has a lot of implications for the organization and the teams within it. I’ll break it all down into simple segments from the definition to the creation process underlined with real-world examples.
A product vision describes the future state of a product that a company or team desires to achieve. You can also define that future state as a goal. It's the long-term mission of your product
But, the product vision isn’t just that! It’s a foundation for other big topics such as the
A great product vision will ease up the definition and alignment process for all of the above topics.
Before we jump into the definition process, let’s clarify a few pieces of core information that surround the product vision.
1. The reason every company exists is because of its customers. Whether they’re end-customers (B2C) or businesses (B2B). That’s why the most important characteristic of a product vision is that it’s focused on the customer!
2. It’s looking into the future and outlining a clear state of the product/goal that the company and team(s) want to achieve. I recommend setting a big and bold goal! As I mentioned in 5 Best practices to make your OKRs awesome:
“We don't fail because we aim too high and miss. We fail because we aim too low and hit." – Les Brown
3. This goal should be underlined with the motivation behind it. This motivation should answer the “why” (not how!).
4. The art of defining a great product vision that people want to follow is to make it catchy. Something that makes you want to pitch it to other people no matter if you’re the founder or an employee.
5. (optional) A product vision can have a time constraint, although, it’s better to define it as “timeless.”
As mentioned, the product vision defines the future state of the product that you want to achieve. Bold and achievable.
What is the best time frame though?
I believe a timeframe of 1-2 years is too short because people tempt to focus too much on legacy issues. A product vision that looks 6-7 years into the future might be too much “science fiction.”
Therefore, I recommend going with something in between. A timeframe of 3-5 years isn’t too close and not too far away.
Important note: The timeframe depends a lot on your industry! The tech industry for example is moving very fast. If you are in the automotive industry or agricultural industry you might think about much longer time frames. This can go up to a century!
A product vision isn’t a detailed plan that explains how to reach the goal. It’s important to leave the goal kind of “open” with some room for interpretation. It’s also not a sentence that you just hang on the wall or toilets!
Let’s have a look at the product vision for Google Calendar. The team realized in about 2006 that no other company offered a great calendar product and experience. Therefore, the team came up with a simple 4 point vision:
It contains no detailed explanation on a feature level, although the goal is clear. It may not be sexy, but it helped the team to build the most popular calendar application on the planet.
There’s a difference between a company vision and a product vision. The company vision isn’t necessarily the product vision. Especially in multi-product companies. Google, for example, offers many different products, such as its search engine, Google Adwords, Google Calendar, GSuite, and more.
Each product has its own product vision. Ideally, the product vision should be connected to the company vision. Google’s company vision statement is: “to provide access to the world's information in one click.” because that’s Google’s core business.
In single-product companies, the product vision is usually the company vision and vice versa.
Note: The whole topic of company vision is a bit more complex. I’ll write about it in more depth in a separate article soon.
To summarize, it’s important for us (especially Product Managers) to understand the definition and core information a product vision needs to contain. With that in hand, we’ll always have a good foundation to start defining our own product vision.
🚨 Important UPDATE: Upon further experience and reflection, I've come to realize that my viewpoint was limited regarding the product vision creation. I’ve summarized my latest learning in this article:
👉 The Vision-Based Product Strategy 👈
To me, product vision creation is a two-part creation process
Let’s take a deeper look at each step.
Before defining a product vision, it’s important to have some valid data. The whole product discovery process is obviously a great way to get data and find answers to open questions. Without the data, it doesn’t make sense to define a vision for the next couple of years. I
It’s, however, important to remind ourselves that a product vision needs to be regularly challenged, evaluated, and updated based on new data.
According to Roman Pichler’s product vision board, it’s important to answer 4 key questions:
Alternatively, you can work with other models, e.g. the lean business model canvas focusing on the product.
What’s most important is gaining a clear picture of your customer, your market, the problems you want to solve, and your business goals. You can build a product vision based on that.
Let’s look at the data we have for our example product (simplified example):
Depending on the state of your product and research you may have more or less information. For the product vision statement/sentence, it’s important to focus on the most important ones.
Before we think about a final sentence it’s important to ask ourselves two important questions:
Our card readers enable merchants and customers to make fast and safe cashless payments.
Looking at the Google Calendar application the main category is time management or self-organization.
For the Spotify app, it’s music streaming. We could go deeper and connect music with creativity, joy, freedom, and many other things. I’m pretty sure you and the Spotify Product Managers know more than I do. 😉
The reason I’m looking at this question is to identify the key value and connect it with strong verbs and adjectives that we can use for our vision statement.
2. What Will Our Product Do Better/Make Outstanding in the Future?
I look at topics such as:
Are you familiar with the typical bold CEO product requirements that ignore all technical difficulties, legal requirements, or other important things :
Great! These statements can be perfectly implemented into your product vision.
Going back to our card reader example, we do have the following key information in place:
A way to phrase the vision statement could be:
“We believe in a world where small businesses can offer a super fast and safe payment experience to their customers, for minimal costs with no administrative efforts.“
Obviously, that’s one way to phrase a vision. The way you phrase it depends on the length, complexity of the sentence, and your personal preferences.
I’d like to share my three favorite vision statement templates:
I’ve mentioned earlier that my learnings on defining a product vision and product strategy have fundamentally changed.
I regularly get asked questions by Product Managers or Product Teams I coach around the product vision. Therefore, I summarized the main questions and answers below.
If you have more questions don’t hesitate to contact me.
I’ve worked for companies with and without a product and company vision. There’s always a big difference in companies that work with visions. It gives teams a clear direction and fosters a common understanding of where they want to be in the future. Product Managers and their teams can make better decisions and prioritize based on the product vision.
That’s a tricky question and it depends. In early-stage startups, the product vision is defined by the founders. That doesn’t mean that the first employees are excluded from the definition process.
In growing and bigger companies, the Product Manager and Teams define the vision together with their Development Team. Nevertheless, it’s not owned by them in my opinion. Neither by the founder(s) nor by the Product Managers. Every employee should feel responsible when contributing to and challenging the vision at any time.
As an employee, if you don't contribute towards the vision, then don't be surprised if it turns out to be something you don't agree with. The same concept applies to a Founder or Product Manager. If you don't engage your colleagues in the vision, don't expect them to follow it.
That depends on how you work as a Founder/Product Manager. I’m always a fan of going the “formal” way and inviting people to a meeting. Sharing an agenda and documents with the attendees beforehand will help them to better prepare upfront. If you want to learn more about the process from discovery to product vision and strategy definition follow this link.
If you want to learn more about the process I recommend listening to this podcast episode.
The product vision is definitely compatible with the agile mindset and methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, and others. The vision shows a clear direction and teams can decide how they get there. They can adjust the plan and the vision at any time if needed.
It’s crucial to regularly share and repeat the product vision process. Especially in backlog grooming sessions and sprint planning sessions. I always tell product people to regularly align with the Leadership Team and challenge if
Syncing on this topic once a quarter for an hour isn’t too much.
Last but not least I’ve got one more important product vision secret to share.
Understanding the distinction between a company vision and a product vision is essential for steering an organization toward success. A company vision is a broad, long-term aspiration that defines where the entire organization aims to be in the future. It encompasses the overall purpose and the impact the company wishes to have on the industry or society.
In contrast, a product vision is a focused statement that outlines the future state and objectives of a specific product. It describes what the product aims to achieve, the problems it will solve, and how it will meet customer needs. A good product vision aligns with the company vision but zeroes in on delivering value through a particular product offering.
An effective product vision acts as a guiding star for the product development team, ensuring that all efforts contribute to creating a successful product. It helps in making strategic decisions, prioritizing features, and maintaining alignment with the overall goals of the organization. When you write a product vision statement, it's crucial to articulate a clear and inspiring picture that motivates the team and resonates with the target audience.
While the product vision paints an aspirational picture of what the product will become, the product strategy outlines the roadmap to achieve that vision. The product vision answers the "why" behind the product—why it exists and the value it aims to provide. It's about envisioning the ideal future state of the product and how it will fulfill product needs in the market.
On the other hand, the product strategy addresses the "how" and "what." It involves planning the steps, initiatives, and resources required to bring the product vision to life. This includes defining target markets, positioning against competitors, feature prioritization, and go-to-market plans. The strategy is actionable and often adapts over time in response to market feedback and changes.
For existing products, revisiting and refining the product vision and strategy is vital to stay relevant and competitive. A well-defined product vision ensures that even mature products continue to evolve in ways that meet customer needs and align with the company's goals.
By clearly distinguishing between the product vision and product strategy, organizations can ensure that they not only have an inspiring destination in mind but also a practical plan to get there. This alignment is key to developing products that not only succeed in the market but also contribute to the overarching mission of the company.
What’s most important is to not copy any fancy product vision one by one! It’s important to define a vision everyone buys into, believes in, and works toward. Look at successful companies:
They spend a lot of time and money on offsites, meetings, fights, time with coaches and consultants, etc. to come up with their own unique vision. Alignment and a clear direction is the key! Make sure your product vision has an individual touch to it. I can tell you from my experience, that people love that most. That’s it. That’s all the magic. ✨
If you need support with your product vision or product strategy feel free to reach out to me here.
Alternatively, let's connect on LinkedIn.
