What is a Product Vision Statement?
The product vision describes the future we are trying to create through our product, and how our product intends to contribute to our company’s larger purpose.
The product vision describes the WHAT and the WHY of a product and It’s highly aspiration and long term
The statement should serve as a guide and reminder to all stakeholders involved in a product’s development (the product team, development, the executive staff, marketing, etc.) about the shared objective they’re trying to achieve with this product.
Your vision statement should also answer the question of why you are creating a product and what your company hopes to accomplish with it in the future. As an example, Google’s vision statement is to “provide access to the world’s information in one click.”
What makes a great product vision
Nailing down the perfect product vision can be tough, especially when you're starting from square one. As the product owner, you also own the product vision, but that doesn't mean you should define it on your own. The best visions are created in collaboration with product stakeholders and pressure tested by the leadership team.
A great product vision is also:
Purposeful: It aligns closely with the company vision and/or mission statement, as well as with the visions for other products in the same portfolio.
Aspirational: It orients your team to the future and paints a picture of what your product aims to achieve.
Achievable: It's grounded in reality and feasible to achieve.
Customer-focused: It's developed with your target customers and users top of mind.
Concise: It's clear and gets the message across without any extra fluff.
Well-documented: Creating your vision is step one, but documenting it and weaving it into the fabric of your product team is critical for making it a reality. Write it down, share it out, and make sure everyone working on the product knows it like the back of their hand.
Before you can craft your vision, make sure you have the right data and resources on hand. Typically, that means gathering your company vision statement, nailing down your product purpose, and completing an empathy map to deeply understand your customers. Let's take a closer look at how these components — in particular, your product purpose and empathy map — feed into an effective product vision.
Who is Responsible for Defining the Product Vision?
The answer to this question is everyone in the company. The product vision, remember, should influence how everyone throughout the organization performs their jobs. With this in mind, insights or inspiration for a statement can and should come from anywhere within the company—and the product team should actively solicit input from all.
As a practical matter, though, the product manager should take the lead on driving the product vision statement to completion and then making sure everyone in the organization knows it.
4 principles of a great product vision statement
Regardless of which direction you go with your vision, there are five pieces that every product vision statement needs to have. All of these help focus your product vision, ensuring its clarity.
All product visions should:
Be customer-focused: Your customers are the whole reason for your product. If you don’t reference them in your product vision, you need to rework it.
Be a bit of a stretch, but not unrealistic: Your vision needs to be attainable. If it’s too much of a stretch, you’ll have a hard time rallying your team around the vision. And don’t say “be the best.” That’s lame. Get to the root of what you mean when you say that you want to be “the best.”
Show differentiation: Something in your vision should explain why your product is different from your competitors.
Look X years down the road: In five years, you want people to say ___ about your product.
Your product vision doesn’t need to state each one of these parts explicitly, but it should imply them to some degree.
What are Examples of Real-world Vision Statements?
Some of the most powerful product vision statements come from some of the world’s most successful companies. This is not a coincidence. These organisations developed compelling product visions that helped keep everyone on the team steering in the same direction—toward a shared, high-level goal for their products.
Here are some of the best examples we’ve seen:
Sonos: Fill every home with music.
Google: To provide access to the world’s information with one click.
Instagram: To capture and share the world’s moments.
Uber: Evolving the way the world moves. By seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through our apps, we make cities more accessible, opening up more possibilities for riders and more business for drivers.
LinkedIn: To connect the world’s professionals and make them more productive and successful.
Amazon: Earth's most customer-centric company