Product vision

Product vision describes the purpose and reason for creating a product and aligns it with the business goals of the organization. The product vision serves as a starting point for communicating your idea. Teams use it as the north star when a decision goes to a vote. It is a key element to ensure strategic alignment across the team and organization.

What a good one does

• A product vision is the very first thing product team uses to communicate "where are we going".
• It helps prioritize work and acts as a judge when facing tough decisions to make.
• Clear product vision helps determine riskiest parts upfront
• A product vision aligns team execution in achieving the intended goal.
• A product vision describes the target groups of users of the product and the benefits for them.
• A product vision describes the competitive advantages over other products.

How to create one

First of all, you need to collect key information from the market, competitors and analyze it. Then you can answer the following questions:

• What kind of product are you developing?
• What problems will your product solve?
• Who are your users?
• What do your users need?
• What is the current market situation?
• What is your competitiveness in target areas?

Keep it short and concrete enough that the team can tell what is in scope and what is not. A vision nobody can apply to a specific decision is decoration.

Those questions are a starting point, not a template. Which ones matter depends on the product and the organization, and a vision written to fill in a form is harder to change later than one written from scratch.