Day 8/30: How to craft a product vision
💠What is the future we're trying to create?
Crafting a product vision is no easy feat.
I’m someone who even struggles to imagine what I want my life to look five years from today, but fear not! This is a muscle that can be honed.
A product vision should aim to address the following:
What problem do we intend to solve by bringing a product to life?
Why does this problem even warrant solving?
For whom are we solving the problem? What does their life look like today? What will their life look like if we were to solve this problem for them? How might that look different than how they currently (attempt to) solve it?
Naturally, the product vision flows into the product strategy, which aims to address the following:
How do we intend to go about bringing this product vision to life, to ultimately solve this problem for our target audience/customers/users?
What are our priorities?
How might we know that we’ve achieved success?
From my experience and self-driven learning, there are some signals to look out that suggest a shaky product vision, product strategy, or both. It’s up to the company or product leadership to revisit both artifacts and their methodology for radiating this information with the broader organization.
👀 These are some signals to look for that may be a symptom of a weak (or non-existent) product vision, product strategy, or both:
Individuals and teams can’t plan out and prioritize work
If you ask multiple individuals what they’re working on and why, you hear drastically different answers. You shouldn’t expect identical answers from everyone, but you also don’t want to hear a complete lack of common ground or similarities between responses.
If you stop and ask someone what they’re working on and why, they struggle to come up with a coherent rationale.
What’s the state of you and your team’s product’s vision?