Product Vision: Begin with the End in Mind

July 2020

We rarely embark on a journey without a planned destination, and yet we often do exactly that when launching a new development project. Sure, we write out user stories or product requirements describing what product we want, but did we do everything we can to help those that are bringing it to market understand why? If not, we are definitely missing an opportunity. We're missing an opportunity to give our development team purpose in their work, inspire them to be a part of positively impacting peoples lives, and focus them on the truly important.

Let's imagine that you are planning to launch a new product. You have done the market study, identified a core customer problem, the business opportunity and created a concept to solve it. You then begin writing out product requirements one by one describing the product that you want to create, hand this list of requirements to the development team and answer questions to clarify. You might do this all up front in a waterfall hardware project, or as you go in an agile software sprint. Development teams develop, and they are quite accustomed to working from a list of requirements to create products. And as they code, they are making micro-decisions every day on how that product will work, usually without the context of the customer they are serving. If the product manager has not articulated a solid product vision, these micro-decisions on the functionality of the product will more than likely not be in line with the end goal, requiring rework once the product manager tests or worse, after the product has gone to market and misses the mark.

“Build it and they will come”: a marketing team's most hated phrase. A product manager works diligently with a development team on a new product for almost a year, and then the marketing team is tasked with launching it to market. The marketing director asks for some higher level information to direct the marketing effort, such as: who is this product for? What pain point is it solving? Why is this important? How is it better than the alternatives? And, in return, they are handed a product requirements document showing a few specs where the product is technically better than the competition, and told that customers have been begging for it. The marketing director sighs, realizing once again that she will have to write the entire story herself, creating a reason for the product to exist - after the product exists. And, if she is really creative, she might pull a rabbit out of the hat and get customers to try it, but if the product doesn't deliver, most of the inventory will stay on the shelf or users will never adopt.

'Beginning with the end in mind': there's a much better phrase. One that was coined by Steven Covey in his book 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'. Everything goes much better if you apply this principle in your product development process. Before writing one requirement, create a Product Vision that truly articulates what the successful product looks like, how it aligns with your organization's mission and strategy, and how it will make people's lives better. Your Product Vision will then act as a North Star, ensuring that all features are prioritized based on what you are truly trying to accomplish for your customer. It also provides deeper context for your development team on who the customer is, what their challenges are, and what they are doing to make that person's life better, bringing purpose into their work.

An effective Product Vision brings focus, inspires and reinforces the brand which leads to products that are more customer-centric, shortens time to market, and lowers turnover in development teams.

Saying No (to say Yes)

With as many tools that we have now at our disposal to develop products, almost anything is possible. That, combined with the fact that the list of feature requests could keep your development time working full time for a decade before bringing a product to market, makes the job of deciding on what features should be in the first release of the product a challenging one. Steve Jobs, known for his tremendous ability to deeply understand the customer problem, then bring extreme focus to solving it states this best when he said "Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features."

One method for developing a product vision comes from Geoffrey Moore in his book 'Crossing the Chasm', where he describes how to give an elevator pitch:

For (target customer)

Who (has this need or opportunity)

Our (product name)

Is a (product category)

That (offers the following benefit)

Unlike (competition)

We (unique benefit that our product delivers)

To use one of Steve Job's products as an example using the elevator pitch format, the product vision would look something like this:

"For music lovers who want to bring their music collection with them wherever they go, the iPod is a music player that holds 1000 songs in the palm of your hand. Unlike alternatives that require you to carry around stacks of CD's, we allow you to sync all of your music from your computer to the iPod in minutes so you can have all of your music with you in your pocket."

Or, much more succinctly, "1000 songs in your pocket".

An effective product vision aligns the Product Manager and development team on the most crucial features, prioritizing on those that have the most customer impact and will therefore drive the most value. And, more importantly, saying no to everything else and eliminating distraction to get the most important features to market quickly. To get the first iPod to market in the shortest time, any feature that did not align to the product vision of enabling a person to carry 1000 songs in their pocket was either rejected or put on the backlog for a future release.

Inspiring Your Development Team

Many engineers entered the field because they loved to tinker, code and build things. They get handed a list of requirements and they are happy to get going. With a project manager or scrum master driving the project, they are tasked with getting the requirements implemented in as short a time as possible, and therefore incentivized on timeliness and efficiency. Speed is highly valued in the technology world, as it should be.

However, we are now seeing a generation of developers and engineers that are becoming much more interested in purpose in their work. They want to feel inspired, find meaning in their work and see the impact that their efforts have on others. When they do find this connection, they are more engaged, productive, generate more innovative ideas, and will stay around because they feel like they are a part of something.

I've seen both types of developers in my experience leading Product Management teams: the developer who just wants to work from hard requirements and get it done, and those who want to understand the customer, their pain points, and how they can help solve the problem in the most innovative way. The ones that cared about the customer and our mission always delivered more innovative products, and did so faster. There was truly a passion for the plight of the customer, and a constant drive to go over-and-above to get the features to market as quickly as possible. I can also say that there are few things more rewarding than working with teams like this, and seeing the smiles on their faces when customers are telling them how much better life is as a result their work.

An inspiring product vision does not tell a development team how to solve the customer problem, only envisions what the customer's life will be like after the product is delivered. "1000 songs in your pocket." Go. The development team is allowed to be creative, to be a part of coming up with an innovative way to solve the customer's problem, giving them much deeper attachment to the project and its outcome. Now, they are not just coding to a written requirement, they are changing people's lives.

Reinforcing your Brand

A company's brand, at its core, is its promise to its customers. It is a value or experience that a customer expects to receive when they interact with that company. Products, of course, play a very important role in delivering on a company's brand promise. From the experience of purchasing, installing or unboxing, using the product and how it is supported, it is where the rubber hits the road for the brand. Nothing is more important than every detail of the experience the customer will have with its product. It can take years to build a brand, and minutes to destroy it - all based around the experience a customer has with its product. This is why it is important that the product vision align to a company's mission, which is built upon its brand promise.

Your product is the social proof of your brand's promise.

Going back to the Apple example, its brand has long stood for ease of use, quality, attention to detail and simplicity, and its brand promise has therefore been "it just works". It would be great to put 1000 songs in my pocket, but if I had to spend several hours reading through technical documents on how to do it, or navigating to my favorite song was a challenge, or it stopped working after 3 days, I would not be overly impressed with the brand. And I doubt I would pay a premium for it, or even buy from it again.

The product vision must be in total alignment with how it will positively impact the experience the customer has with your brand, and to do so, requires you to make sure that your company's vision and mission are well articulated. If not, stop here and do that first. If you can't for whatever reason, then imagine what you would want that brand promise to be and develop a product vision to support it. Your marketing team will definitely appreciate it, as the product vision will clearly articulate who the product is for and how it will make customers’ lives better, giving them what they need to create an effective marketing plan and eliminating the time they would spend in coming up with this story after a product is already developed, which rarely works.

Creating the Product Vision

There are several methods that can be used to craft an effective Product Vision statement. The elevator pitch method authored by Geoffrey Moore mentioned above is one of the most common, and is helpful to quickly summarize what the product is and its purpose. However, to truly 'begin with the end in mind', there are other methods that can be used to help the development team get a much deeper understanding of the end goal, and bring much more context to development decisions.

One of these methods is to create a 'Vision Box'. Design a box for your product, with 3 to 4 key features on the box that will be used to sell it. It doesn't have to be pretty, you could do it in PowerPoint instead of Photoshop, but the key is distilling all the features down to the most important 3 to 4 that will have the most impact on the buying decision. Putting these down in a rough box design makes it real, helps the team visualize the end goal of what is required for the product to be successful, and reinforces the importance of delivering on those core features or you don't have a product.

Depending on how your company announces products, you can also create a few slides of the product announcement for the tradeshow or sales meeting where the product will be announced. This is a very powerful visualization exercise, similar to how professional athletes visualize successful outcomes before they happen on the playing field. Limiting yourself to 2 to 3 slides forces focus on the key features and benefits that drive the 'wow factor', and visualizing yourself on stage announcing the product with these slides to a sales team or customers really reinforces what is truly important. Walking your development team through these slides and explaining why these features are crucial to success is a very effective way to help them understand the vision for the product.

If you really want your marketing team to hit the ground running along with aligning your development team to an inspiring product vision, write the press release for the product before developing it. Another very effective visualization exercise that helps you truly articulate the key features, customer benefits and brand value that is being created in more detail than what a vision statement can provide. Once you write the press release, you will know right away if you have the makings of a successful product before you begin developing it.

Taking this one step further, write what you would want a product review to say about your product. This forces you to think outside of yourself and removes your internal bias. What would you want a magazine editor or review site blogger to say about your product, its features, how it compares to competition, and how it makes people's lives better. Write it in the third person and it will help you flesh out what is really important.

In the world of technology, speed is extremely important. But, getting a product to market that does not effectively solve a customer's problem better than the alternatives will do nothing. Actually, it will do worse than nothing: it will waste extremely precious development time that could have been spent doing something else of value. Take a little of that time to create a compelling product vision with your team, and use it to guide development. Your customers, and as a result your company, will appreciate it.