New products are being released every day from different companies with varying degrees of success and even failure. Before these products come to market, they begin life in the form of a product vision – a statement that illustrates the desired future state of a product that a company or product team plans to achieve. The role of a Product Manager is to help define the product vision and fully owns it because it serves as the core of creating a product strategy.
Laying out a clear vision that receives buy-in from development teams and key stakeholders plays a massive role in determining the success of a product. Let us review some of the important aspects when developing a product vision.
Start with Asking the Right Question
Identify what questions need to be answered as you start crafting your product vision statement. This is similar to crafting a problem statement in project management as the goal is to identify the business problem that needs to be solved. An important step here involves specifying the timeframe within which the vision statement needs to be answered. For instance, the way a Product Manager sets a vision for a 1-year timeframe will be different than a that of a timeframe that is set for 3 – 5 years because a lot of things could change if the durations involved are much longer. An example of a good question to ask can be:
How will a single sign-on for all our different applications look like in 2022?
The benefit of encapsulating your product vision in a specified timeframe is that it allows you to define success criteria and generate a sense of urgency around the product team, specifically around product visions with shorter timeframe durations.
Create an Alignment on the Definition of Done
Product Managers should ensure that all stakeholders are aligned on when a product will be considered complete or ready to ship. Internal conflicts tend to arise if the definition of done was not well-articulated, and it further stresses the importance of completing this step as it removes ambiguity and generates cohesiveness among the teams involved. The definition of done should be documented and distributed to all stakeholders once an alignment has been established because it will be used to measure the success of a product upon its release. Here is an example of a definition of done statement:
The code has undergone a full code review, and user acceptance testing has been successfully completed.
Some Product Managers prefer to have a checklist of items that need to be met and use those as their version of a definition of done. This method especially works best if there are a lot of product features that need to be delivered but either way, an alignment with all stakeholders is required for an enforceable definition of done.
Effective Communication
Relying on email to communicate important product vision details may sometimes work but, in some cases, email tends to be an unreliable way of communicating because you cannot guarantee that the recipient has read and understood the message. A Product Manager may utilize their communication plan to identify the preferred communication methods for key stakeholders so that they can use those to convey important product information. Effective communication guarantees that the defined product vision has received full support from the stakeholders, thereby making it easier for the Product Manager to outline what success would look like and how it will be measured during product development and upon completion.
At PM Imperative, we cover the latest trends in Project Management and Product Management. As PM practitioners, we understand the value the Project Managers and Product Managers bring to each organization and that’s why we focus on the most practical strategies that Project and Product Managers can implement immediately. If you found this post useful, be sure to check out our latest book: The PM Imperative – Guide for Leading & Managing Projects, People & Delivering Value. https://pmimperative.com/shop/
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