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How do you create a compelling product vision that aligns with your business goals?

A product vision is a concise and inspiring statement that describes the ultimate goal of your product and why it matters to your customers and stakeholders. As a Scrum product owner, creating a compelling product vision is one of your key responsibilities, as it guides the development team and aligns the business goals with the customer needs. But how do you craft a product vision that is clear, realistic, and motivating? Here are some tips to help you.

1 Understand your customers

Before you can define your product vision, you need to understand who your customers are, what problems they face, what their goals are, and how your product can help them. You can use various techniques to gather customer insights, such as interviews, surveys, personas, and user stories. The more you know about your customers, the more you can empathize with them and design a product that solves their pain points.

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Bernard Unamba-Oparah

Programme Management | Digital Transformation
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1. Understand your customers by carrying out market research to understand your customers' pain points, desires, and behaviors. Use this information to create a product vision that solves their problems and meets their needs. 2. Your product vision should focus on creating a positive experience for your customers. Consider how they will use your product and how it will make their lives easier or better. 3. Be innovative and differentiate your product by offering something unique and innovative. Your vision should align with your customers' needs, but also offer something new and exciting. 4. Communicate your vision clearly and make sure your product vision is communicated clearly to your team and customers. 5. Continuously gather feedback

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2 Define your value proposition

Once you have a clear picture of your customers, articulate how your product creates value for them and what makes it unique and desirable. Your value proposition is the core of your product vision, as it summarizes the benefits, features, and differentiation of your product. You can use a simple formula to craft your value proposition, such as: For (target customer) who (statement of the need or opportunity), our (product name) is a (product category) that (statement of benefit). For example: For busy professionals who need to manage their tasks and projects efficiently, our app is a productivity tool that helps them prioritize, organize, and collaborate with ease.

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Megan Cheesbrough
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Make it matter by making it specific. It can be tempting to frame your product's value around a problem that everyone experiences and features everyone wants, but this is a sure way to produce a bland statement that describes nothing other than your product category. Before tackling the value proposition template, identify what's truly differentiating about your product. Are you solving a problem that others aren't, solving it in an innovative way, solving it for the needs of a distinct segment, or giving your customers a unique experience in solving the problem, etc? If you make your value proposition specific to those things your team will know exactly what to prioritize and your customers will know exactly what you do best.

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3 Align with your business goals

Your product vision should not only reflect your customer needs, but also your business goals and strategy. Consider how your product contributes to the growth, profitability, and sustainability of your organization, and what metrics and indicators you will use to measure its success. Align your product vision with the vision and mission of your organization, and ensure that it is consistent with its values and culture. By aligning your product vision with your business goals, you can create a shared understanding and commitment among your stakeholders and development team and avoid conflicts and confusion.

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4 Communicate your product vision

After you have created your product vision, communicate it effectively to your development team and stakeholders and get their feedback and buy-in. You can use various tools and formats to present your product vision, such as a vision statement, a vision board, a vision roadmap, or a pitch deck. The key is to make your product vision concise, clear, and compelling, and to highlight the benefits, features, and differentiation of your product. Show how your product vision aligns with the customer needs and the business goals, and how it will be validated and delivered. By communicating your product vision, you can inspire and motivate your development team and stakeholders and create a common direction and purpose for your product.

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Tanner Williams, MADI., MASD.

Design Scientist | Fort Worth Ad 2 President | Senior Experience Researcher @ 7-Eleven
(edited)
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When pitching your vision, road-mapping it, or even creating a statement, it's important that your vision tells an end-to-end story about the area of opportunity discovered, how your product addresses that, and overall answers the "why" the product needs to exist. Pro tip: You can qualitatively validate your vision by gauging a user understanding of the world with and without your product. Talk to your users over coffee and food and see if they recognize the value-with and value-without of your product.

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Daniel Chow
(edited)
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Product vision should focus on the customer, journeys, motivations challenges and expected outcomes. If you're getting stuck with and in solutions, it's a queue to take a step back and verify you understand the value proposition deep enough. Listen to their story, tell their story, and refer to where the customer is in their journey.

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Daniel Chow
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Focus on the Who and Why first, then the What you will do for them. Include the "Who" when creating and delivering to establish greater connection and continuity. Include ownership of initiatives and outcomes, backlog order/priority, decision making and other guides/rails, risks and dependencies, assumptions, and opportunities to explore and fail. Set up a vision of success, that includes room to learn and persevere without having to pivot. Product vision is the whole life of the product/service/customer needs, the actors, the ecosystems, etc. Not "project" or "feature" or "deliverable". Design, enhance, optimize as a cohesive whole, cross-functionally and iteratively refine the shared understanding. 4Cs communication in all directions.

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5 Review and update your product vision

Your product vision is not a static document that you create once and forget. It is a dynamic and evolving guide that you need to review and update regularly as you learn more about your customers, market, competitors, and technology. Validate your assumptions and hypotheses, collect feedback and data, and incorporate new insights and opportunities into your product vision. It's also important to monitor your progress and performance and adjust your product vision accordingly. By reviewing and updating your product vision, you can ensure that it remains relevant, realistic, and motivating, and that it reflects the current state and future potential of your product.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How do you create a compelling product vision that aligns with your business goals?

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1 Understand your customers

2 Define your value proposition

3 Align with your business goals

4 Communicate your product vision

5 Review and update your product vision

6 Here’s what else to consider

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