How does someone know what to build and when? That’s the job of a product vision. It’s their North Star. It keeps them on course. And it determines whether or not the company will have any success in the future.
A compelling product vision is more than just a list of features or functional requirements for an upcoming release. It needs to be much broader, capturing how people are using a product now and where they want to go with it in the future based on their evolving needs over time.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how a business should create a compelling product vision.
Table of Contents
Determine the Target Market
The first step is to determine a target market and what needs and wants they have. A business owner should also ask himself what is currently limiting their target market from achieving their goals and what they’re willing to pay for. An example of a target market might be small business owners looking for a CRM to help manage their customer data.
Understand a Current Product’s Position in the Market
Next, an owner needs to understand their product’s position in the market. They also need to identify their closest competitors and what sets their product apart. This information will help them determine where their product should head in the future.
Analyze the Competition
After they’ve determined their target market and understood their current product’s position in the market, it’s time to do some research on the competition. This will help a company understand where to go next.
Determine Values
Next up, a business owner needs to determine the product strategy or company values that will help dictate where to go next. This means thinking hard about how people feel when they use the product and what kind of culture to create around it too.
An excellent way to do this is by having product strategists list out adjectives describing words like “trustworthy” or “funny” or even colors like blue (for example: reliable, dependable, playful). Using these adjectives as filters throughout the process will make it so that every decision made is filtered through those lenses.
Set a Direction
Once a business owner knows and understands their target market and values, it’s time to determine where the product development strategy should go. This product development process means thinking about making people’s lives easier and what unsolved needs still exist to solve with different types of product strategy. In addition, it would be best for a business owner to consider what trends are happening in their industry that they can capitalize on.
Create a Narrative
After setting a direction, it’s essential to create a narrative around the product vision. This narrative will translate how a business owner wants people to feel when they hear or read about the product vision.
For example, should they feel empowered? Or should they feel like they’re getting a great deal? Again, it’s okay if the narrative changes over time, but a business owner should be crystal clear about what their narrative is at this point. This can be done by creating effective product strategies.
Set a Chronological Vision
Once a business owner has a compelling product story, it’s time to work on the chronological vision, which means thinking about how to get people from where they are today to where they want to go in the future.
This includes understanding how people are currently using the product and what needs they have that can be addressed with future releases. It also means thinking about what features or functionality can be added to help them get there.
Create an Implementation Plan
If a company follows an agile methodology for development, once they have their product strategy implementation plan set out, it’s time to create a backlog of user stories. If a company doesn’t follow an agile methodology, it’s time to work with a product team and build a master feature list.
Gather Feedback
Once a company has an excellent product vision set out, the next step is to get feedback from the target market and customers. This can be done by looking at analytics data, conducting customer interviews or surveys, and even communicating directly on social media platforms like Twitter or Reddit. The important thing here is to listen. Then, a business needs to make sure they incorporate this feedback into a plan before releasing anything new.
Release and Iterate
The final step is to release the product vision to the world and then iterate on it based on feedback. This means continuing to gather feedback from the target market and customers and then incorporating that feedback into new releases. The goal is to make sure that a company is always moving in the right direction and that the product vision remains compelling to everyone involved.
Conclusion
Creating a compelling product vision isn’t easy, but following this guide should help put a business owner on the right track. By determining their target market, values, and direction, as well as creating a narrative and implementation plan, they’ll be well on their way to putting together a product vision that will excite both them and their customers.
