1.3 Product vision

A good product vision will pull your team toward your future state. It eliminates ambiguity by imagining and defining your future, and the guardrails to get there.

Before we get started, let’s check our definition of ready to make sure we have everything we’ll need:

Before starting

Your product vision defines the future. It sets both your aspirations and your boundaries, and creates unity of purpose: a rallying point across team, customer and stakeholders, and a checkpoint the team returns to when asking, “are we doing the right thing?” Vision is distinct from mission — vision is the what (the future state), mission is the why (how the organization operates to get there). A good vision statement is as tight as Khan Academy’s “To provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.”

You’ll need 1.1 Team mobilization and 1.2 Current state analysis finished first. If there’s no existing product, the discovery activities in 1.2 don’t apply — but you should still have set up the architectural umbrella.

Guide to product vision

Your goal in defining your product vision is to establish scope and create guardrails for that scope. The vision statement needs to align your team around the intended outcome. Using a description of where you’ll be 3-5 years in the future is very effective.

By creating this vision statement now, you’re defining both product scope and important guardrails. The scope defines what’s possible; guardrails keeps your team aligned with that scope. The vision describes a future before you get tangled up in technical details (and potentially being limited by those details). By involving the whole team (including your stakeholders), you build commitment and establish alignment between customer and team.

As with other playbook activities, creating your vision depends on certain inputs, and once you’re done, the output — your vision statement — will be used by downstream activities.

Inputs

Executive sponsorship with the customer (buy-in from decision makers).
Team roster, along with proposed roles and responsibilities.
Stakeholder roster, along with roles and responsibilities.
The right people and strategic guidance.

Process

Collaborative input from all stakeholders is essential so everyone feels “bought in” on your product vision. This is especially true when engaging a new team or product. Nobody wants to work on “someone else’s big idea.” On the other hand, when you craft a new vision collectively, ownership is created — everyone is naturally inclined to work on something they helped craft.

My preference for crafting your product vision is using Amazon’s “Working Backwards” approach, which first expresses the future in a press release. From there, refining a vision statement is much easier.

Ultimately you should choose a method that suits your team. There are plenty of approaches. For example, Mural offers this approach, which includes building an empathy map to understand your users.

Working backwards from a press release

Amazon’s “Working Backwards” is a framework for visualizing the end state of a product. Written in a press release format, it describes the problem, gaps in existing solutions, and how it will fill those gaps and solve the problem. The press release defines the future — it’s written as if the product has been finished and is being released.

You can use this template for creating your “Working Backwards” press release and vision statement.

While I prefer doing this as a co-working session with everybody in the same room, in today’s virtual world that’s not always possible. If your team is virtual, think about emulating the workshop environment: Use a collaborative white board (such as Miro) and set up virtual “cards” that mirror those described in the exercise below. Try to have everyone participate with live video too. It’s important to capture everyone’s undivided attention.

This should be a whole-team exercise. Invite all team members and stakeholders, making it clear this foundational exercise will set your long-term strategy.
Prepare your workshop format. A “brainstorming session” is a typical approach, using an interactive format. I like to set up my workshop as follows:
1. Set a large-format paper flipchart on an easel at the center of the room. On separate pages, put the following headlines:
  1. Title
  2. Subtitle
  3. Intro Paragraph
  4. Problem Paragraph
  5. Solution Paragraph
  6. How the Product Works
  7. Customer Quote
2. Set up a second whiteboard with post-it notes at hand. I’ll often sketch a quick empathy map as a starting point (but I let the team be flexible and use the board however they like).
3. Remove any obstacle between seats and boards; everyone should be able to spring up and start writing (not feeling separated by a desk or table).
Once everyone is ready, start your workshop:
1. Explain Amazon’s “Working Backwards” exercise.
2. Hand out markers to everyone. Each person should have their own marker.
Begin co-creating your product’s visionary “press release.”

During the remainder of the exercise, individuals are free to jump up and add to the press release. I typically work forward from the title to the next section, but anyone can jump back and add to or amend previous sections. It’s fine to tear a page out and start over too — it might take a few iterations!

The purpose of each page is to distill about one paragraph, creating a finished press release that has about five paragraphs in total:

Title. Write a press release title in the following format: “Team/Company announces technology/service/tool to enable customer segment to benefits of tech/service/tool.”
Subtitle. Frames the title in a different manner while also providing a bit more detail.
Intro Paragraph. 3-4 sentences that reiterate and expand upon the information mentioned in the Title. Include who the main customers are and what exactly is being launched.
Problem Paragraph. Include 3-4 most important problems for the customers that the product is supposed to solve. Briefly explain each problem and the impacts it has on customers.
Solution Paragraph. Describe in detail how your product solves the problems laid out in the previous paragraph. This needs to be specific, for instance, setting the key result of “operating costs will be reduced by 50%” or “establishes sustained investment into artificial intelligence.”
How the Product Works? Describe what the customer or end user must do to be able to use your product.
Customer Quote. Create a fake quote from your customer or individual user that addresses how your product will solve one or more pain points they experience.

Once you have finished your press release and everyone is happy with it, it’s time to distill a more concise vision statement.

Distilling your vision

A vision statement is typically just one or two sentences. A few examples for comparison:

“To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.” — Tesla Automobiles

“To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” — Amazon Online Marketplace

“To make video communication frictionless.” — Zoom

Using your press release as a foundation, collaboratively work on refining it and making it more concise. This might take a few iterations. Distilling an entire press release down to one or two sentences will be challenging.

It’s important to make sure everyone agrees on the final vision. This is the foundation of your entire product! Getting it right is important. This is what your team will rally around. It needs to accurately describe the future and keep the team pointed in the right direction.

Be sure to document your press release and final vision statement (you can use this playbook template). Then publicize it! Your vision statement should be widely seen and well-known by everyone.

Outputs

Product press release. A press release written from the future, describing your product’s release and its value in the marketplace.
Product vision. A description of the future state product that inspires the team with a shared vision, usually written with at least a 3-5 year perspective.

Your product vision is an essential input into creating your product strategy, objectives, and key results. You’ll use it as an input when you begin either of the downstream activities, business capabilities & functions (1.4) or product strategy (2.1).

You may recall that during the 1.1 Team mobilization activity we created our delivery playbook wiki. The wiki includes a section titled product vision. Now that we have finished this activity, we can more accurately complete the Product strategy portion of the wiki. Add the vision statement developed in this activity to the wiki, further fleshing out your overall product strategy.

Templates

“Working Backwards” press release template