Vision starts with knowing your customers and what they need. You have to deeply understand their challenges and how your product will solve them. A product vision will serve as a guide for the stakeholders, as it will remind them of the general direction the product should be taking, and the common objectives within the team.
A product’s development and management involve time, perseverance, effort, and a distinct product vision. In simple terms, stakeholders must be persuaded by the product vision that your development strategy is in line with business objectives and is best for your target market.
What is a Product Vision?
A product vision also known as a product vision statement is a long-term vision of the product, or what the product will look like in the future. It outlines a product’s strategy and objectives so that stakeholders understand how they should proceed.
It also describes the future state of the product as well as the issues or goals it seeks to address.
Your product vision sheds light on the motivation for the development of the product and how it meets consumer needs in a way that benefits the company.
They also serve as a product manager’s compass for maintaining communication with all relevant parties. As they proceed through the development process, this enables the product team to maintain organization. It also helps the users learn about and connect with a particular product.
Ultimately, product vision statements act as benchmarks for the creation of the product. In other words, you begin with a high-level vision statement, then translate that vision into a strategic guide and action plan—the product roadmap.
Why is a Product Vision Important?
Product vision statements are crucial for businesses for a number of reasons, both for the sake of the customers and stakeholders. To begin with, individuals involved in creating the product and realizing the future state described by the product owner want a clear and cogent development roadmap.
A product vision can be compared to a company’s compass in this way. This is so because product vision statements give a lot of important background information about a product, including its objectives, the motivations for its conception, the benefits it aims to offer consumers or users, and the desired future state of a product. All of this provides the stakeholders with a shared goal for their work to change the product’s current state.
Additionally, one of the few things that may convey a significant amount of information about your business and product in the fewest possible words is a product vision statement. A product vision can quickly respond to customers who may have accidentally discovered your product and are wondering what it is or what it is intended to accomplish.
What makes a great product vision?
Define the motivation behind the product
It’s great to have an idea for a product but it doesn’t end there. Defining the reason why this product is necessary will help shape the development process.
Ask yourself why you are excited to work on the product, why you care about it, what positive change the product should bring about, and how it will shape the future. This provides a great deal of context and information to both customers and stakeholders and can be very useful in determining the best course for further product development and use.
Product vision should align with company vision
The majority of the time, your product vision will be different from your company vision, which is a crucial concept to comprehend.
However, the company’s overarching vision must be complemented by the product visions. This is required because corporate visions and goals can be complex.
If the corporate vision is to be realized, it will be accomplished through the company’s products, which are defined by its product visions. As a result, for a company’s corporate vision to be realized, its product visions must be aligned with it.
Keep your customers and end users in mind
Your customers are the reason for your product, therefore, the product vision must be created with the needs of your target audience and end users in mind.
Distinguish between product vision and product strategy
Although they are closely related, product vision and product strategy are different. Your vision of the product should not be a plan that demonstrates how to reach your goal. Instead, the product vision and the product strategy, the path toward the goal, should be kept separate. This allows your strategy to be modified while remaining grounded in your vision.
Where you want your product to be should be the main focus of your vision.
The shorter, the better
Your vision should be short and straight to the point so it’s easy for your team and stakeholders to understand. It will most likely be difficult to condense all of the words you want to use in the product vision, but short and sweet usually works better with customers. Furthermore, people are more likely to remember something that is only a sentence long rather than a lengthy paragraph.
E.g Insight7’s product vision is “to help businesses build more successful products and services.”
Make it inspiring
Customers should be motivated to purchase your product or service when they read your product vision. A vision centered on generating value and benefitting others ultimately provides a particularly deep motivation and long-lasting inspiration.
A great vision statement should be inspirational for both stakeholders and customers. It must be compelling enough for stakeholders to rally behind, as well as motivate customers to support it.
It should be achievable and attainable
Your product vision should represent a view of the future that your team believes in and is confident you can achieve. Great product visions are always ambitious, even remarkably so.
However, they’re still blueprints and roadmaps stakeholders are using to develop a product, so they must be attainable.
Differentiation
Your vision should explain why your product is different from your competitors’. It is critical to examine the competition and understand why your product’s vision differs. What requirements does this satisfy that the competitors do not? What distinguishes it?
Answering these questions can aid in shaping the vision and shifting away from existing products.
Conclusion
Product visions may appear simple, but developing one that consumers buy into takes time.
It will become a compelling statement if you spend time writing, editing, refining, and sharing it with stakeholders.
A flawed vision statement could cause all sorts of planning and execution problems. Hence, the importance of not only understanding the point of your product vision but also spending time carefully crafting it.
