Product vision is a key factor when launching your own business or building your product or service brand. Without being aware of why you are building a particular brand or product you will not be able to take it to the next level. With a well defined vision you can make a customer driven approach and build a product that is in the best interest of the company as well as the people whom you are targeting.
The goal of the product vision is to create a clear and optimised vision strategy or plan which include long term goals, objectives, target groups, deliverables, usability, and more. This will help you as a guide in building team effort and decision making. In this blog, we will learn more about product vision and how to prepare it in simpler steps.
What is Product Vision?
Product Vision defines the purpose of a project completely representing its objectives and usbability for users to support their needs and requirements. A strong product vision acts as a guiding light for the product team and stakeholders. Every brand has a product vision to support their campaign.
It aligns with your common goal and helps you with your decision making and keeps the team focused even on the minimum priority shift. Product vision focuses on the impact that the product can make once it gets available in the market. A strong product vision must align with your product roadmap and business objectives.
Let us take a real life example of the product vision of Spotify music platform.
“To unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.”
It spread a message to empower artists and inspire fans especially for creators and listeners of the platform i,e. Spotify. This is a platform on which creators can earn a living and fans can get access to diverse content. The complete product vision of Spotify conveys the impact it wants to create in the world.
Read More: What is Product Market Fit? | Definition and Examples
Product Vision: Key Takeaways
- Product Vision outlines what the product aims to achieve i,e the objective of the product and how this product can help users.
- A strong product vision unites the product team and drives progress.
- Product vision owners must be familiar with the overall business goals such as targets, market positioning, deliverables, and more.
Why is Product Vision Important?
Product Vision is important as it starts by inspiring your team by showing them how they will change the user’s lives for better with the products they are building. It serves as the foundation and guide for decision making throughout the development process of the product.
When you know exactly what you need, your efforts become effective as working without a vision can be dangerous and with no direction you might end up in a bad place. With a great product vision every department marketing, sales, engineering and others come on the same page and find a purpose in the product.
The most important of all product vision needs to align with the needs of the customers. It must reflect and fulfil the needs of the customers and must justify why this product is all they need. Product vision when clear can have multiple impacts helping to motivate the team, make strategic decisions, build strong customer connections, and more. Without an effective product vision organisation can lose themselves in the market wasting their valuable resources, investment, and more.
Read More: What is a Product Launch? Product Management Glossary
Real Examples of Product Vision Statements
Product vision statement is a sentence presented by companies or brands which represent their vision with the product. This clearly states the “what” and “how” of products. Let us take some of the popular product vision statements from companies.
Slack
“Make work life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.”
Zoom
“The heart of human connection.”
Tesla
“To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.”
“To provide access to the world’s information in one click.”
These are the product vision of the top MNCs around the world you can find by yourself about your favorite company’s product vision in their about section (mostly).
How to Create a Meaningful Product Vision?
If you are a beginner you can create a product vision by keeping in mind certain things mentioned below.
1. Know Why You Need the Product
It is very much important that you understand the core purpose behind the product and the problem it can solve. The product owner must know what value their product is going to deliver to its users and do they even need it or not?
Listen to your customers and understand their needs. You can start by researching the market to get familiar with the needs of your users. For launching a new product you must know your customer’s pain points. Some of the important questions that you can wind up in your mind are mentioned below.
- What is the need of the product and what problem does it solve?
- What makes this product unique or valuable for users?
- What are the customers biggest pain points?
- Who are your biggest competitors in the market?
- What challenges can you face while building your product?
- Does your product in the best interest of the users you are targeting?
- Does this product solve the pain points of the users?
2. Know your Target Audience
Make sure you are familiar with the people whom you are building the product for. Get a complete note of their pain points, goals and expectations from the product and then prepare the product accordingly.
After you know what you are going to build you must determine what the product will be and who it will be designed for. Make sure you get the users familiar with how this product will solve their issues.
3. Think Long Term
Do not go for temporary solutions, research for the problems or issues going on for a large group of people, place or thing that you can solve with your product. It is about the future impact of your product and hence you need to think 3-5 years ahead of today.
Make it clear what values it will provide to your users and how these features will be beneficial for them in the market. Also, consider how well your product can solve public issues when compared to other brand’s products.
Read More: What is Product Excellence? Definition & Overview
4. Align with Broader Organization Goal
Before proceeding with the product make sure it aligns with the broader business vision of the company and help them in achieving their goals in a shorter span of time. This will ensure that the product supports the company’s long term growth and success.
Engage with various teams in the company such as sales, marketing, engineering and more discuss whether the product aligns with their needs and requirements.
What Points We Must Consider During Product Vision?
There are certain points which product owners must keep in mind while developing their new product or making changes in the existing product.
- Be strongly aware of the purpose of the product and the problem it solves. Always ask “why” behind everything in the planning phase of the product.
- It is important for product owners to be familiar with the users they are targeting, their needs, their pain points, and more.
- Think of long years ahead where your product can stand for longer duration and solve people’s problems easily.
- Make sure you use human friendly language and avoid buzzwords or technical jargon in your product so that users might have a hard time understanding the context.
- Your vision must offer some unique value or solutions while aligning to the border business goals.
- All your team members in the organisation must be able to apply the vision and review it during the decision making.
Also Read:
- What is Product Differentiation? | Definition and Examples
- Must-Have Product Manager Tools to Drive Project Success
- What is Product Experience? | Product Management
- What is Product Market Fit? | Definition and Examples
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Get complete career assistance with module assignments, quizzes and more to help you strengthen your concepts of product management. This product management Course will also offer industry recognized certifications after you complete the course.
Product Vision FAQs
Q1. What is Product Vision?
Ans: Product Vision defines the purpose of a project completely representing its objectives and usbability for users to support their needs and requirements.
Q2. Why is Product vision important for an organisation?
Ans: Product Vision outlines what the product aims to achieve i,e the objective of the product and how this product can help users. A strong product vision unites the product team and drives progress and hence it is important.
Q3. What is a Product vision board?
Ans: Product vision board is used to define how we can generate a well defined product vision. It consists of target groups, needs, product and business goals to be kept in mind while evaluating the product fit.
Q4. How to set up product vision to infinity?
Ans: Product vision can be set to infinity in the product management template in workspace. You can write your product vision in the last column of the page.
