Product Vision: How to Write One? 2021 Guide

A successful product is not a day’s job. It needs a lot of time, energy, resources, strategies, and a lot of commitment. You need to have a clear vision of your product to convince yourself that you are headed in the right direction. 

The product vision is that link that that binds and guides everyone involved in the making of a product. Your product vision is your true north, providing you a constant purpose in the changing world around you, motivating when things look tough, and facilitating smooth collaboration. All the departments involved in your product gain from a product vision, be it sales, marketing, support, or management.

Introduction

If you have an idea for a product, it is just the starting but not enough to create a quality product. You also need a product vision to be the guiding star for you and your entire team.

A product vision also called a product vision statement, gives information about the essence of your product. It contains information like; what kind of problem will the product solve, who is the product targeted to, and why now is the right time to take out that product. Your team gets a bigger picture of their role and responsibilities in developing a product if the product vision statement is done right.

1. Vision Statement
2. Product Vision Template
3. Product Vision Tools

1. Vision Statement

Let us understand the content of a vision statement with a few product vision example:

• Let us say your product is an enterprise network app then your vision statement could be “Maximize impact by connecting and empowering every person across the organization”.
• If you own a restaurant that serves burgers and your especially is fast service,  your product visions statement might look like this “We give customers the best quick service restaurant with our quality service, cleanliness, and value for money”

Both the examples above clearly state what the product intends to do and also qualifies it with other properties like “cleanliness”, “empowering”, which acts as a checklist.

With all this info in mind let us try to answer the question “what is product vision?”

A product vision describes the goals or the future state of your product. It contains the long-term mission that you want to achieve with your product. A product vision statement is a guide and serves as a reminder to all the stakeholders in a product about the common objective that all of them are working towards.

Qualities of a good product management vision statement

If you are planning to launch a product then the first thing you must think of is how to write a product vision. You must know what makes a good vision statement to incorporate them into your product vision strategy. Listed below are a few qualities of a product vision that would make it valuable and successful.

• Aspirational – When you tell your team to work extra hours or look into the tiniest details, they would readily do it if you have a product vision statement that clearly tells them what their ultimate goals are. Designing a well-crafted product that has the capacity to change customers’ lives in some way is something that would make them work weekends or come early. You must describe the motivation behind the product to your team in form of your product vision statement.
• Acts as a guide – Once the product vision is internalized by your team, you do not need to be there to guide them at each step. At times when the team needs to make a quick decision without the owners around, the product vision is what would keep them from going off the tracks and violating the vision of the product.
• Keep product and product vision separate – A product is not the same as a product vision. The product vision is the motivator to create the product. Let us say that you want to develop a computer game for children that lets them interact with the characters in it, play together with friends, select music tracks, and choreograph their dances. This looks like a nice idea, but not a product vision statement. A good product vision would capture the changes that the product would bring about. A vision for such a computer game could be “Lets children enjoy music and dance together”.
• Actionable – Product visions might seem dreamy and lofty but they must always have an underlying actionable item in them.
• Depicts a shared vision – People involved in your product to make it successful must buy into your product vision. If you do not have a shared vision, people will keep following their own goals which will make it very difficult to achieve product goals. A good way to create a shared vision is by letting key people create it together. You could use the product idea as input and ask stakeholders to come up with their motivation for working on the product.
• Must be in-line with corporate goals – You need your company’s support to make your product a success. So your product vision must be linked with corporate goals so that you could sell it up the chain.

2 Product Vision Template

Though one does not necessarily need a product vision template, a standard format is:

• For – Here you mention your target customer. For example “business user”.
• Who – this will capture your product’s opportunity or what need of customers can it satisfy. For example “be productive on the go”.
• The – Here comes the name of your product, let us say “My game”.
• That – The main benefits of this product are listed here which would be a compelling reason for the target audience to buy your product.
• Unlike – Here you would mention the main competitive product which is similar to yours.
• Our product – This will state the differentiation factors between your product and others,

3. Product Vision Tools

There are many useful product vision tools and techniques that can help you in collaborating and developing a common vision for the product along with its key objective. Some of the popular ones are:

A) Product vision board

It is a simple tool to gather all your product vision strategies and has 5 sections to be filled:

Vision – This contains the overreaching goals of your product.

Target group – This refers to the market segment you wish to target.

Needs – Here you would explain the problems that your product aims to address and alleviate for its target group.

Product – You would mention 3 to 5 key features of your product in this section which would be the biggest draw for your customers.

Business goals – Here you would jot down the gains that you expect with this product, for your company. For example; entering a new market, acquiring valuable knowledge, reducing costs, etc.

B) Opportunity Canvas

This tool is useful at the discovery of a product. It helps you better understand your business processes and customers’ needs. It is also helpful when you already have a product and you wish to enhance its capabilities.

Conclusion

The product vision definition is that it is a guide that serves the purpose of binding all the stakeholders of a product and represents the core essence of your product. Whether you are starting a brand new product or tweaking an existing product, you must begin with a product vision to give you and your team a bigger picture of their everyday work.

Interested to learn all about Product Management from the best minds in the industry? Check out our Product Management Course. This 6-month-long program takes place online through live instructor-led sessions. It is the only program in India that offers the ‘Bring Your Own Product (BYOP)’ feature so that learners can build their product idea into a full-blown product, and go through an entire Product Development lifecycle. Not only this, but this is the only program in India with a curriculum that conforms to the 5i Framework. Post completion, learners receive a joint certification from the Indian Institute of Management, Indore, and Jigsaw Academy.