There are three important questions in life. Why? Why do we do things? Why do we feel things?
What? - What will we do? What is happening now? What have we done?
How? How did you do it?
Believe it or not, these are also the main questions in product building.
The customers answer the main question - Why? Why do you need this feature? Why are you requesting this?
A PM answers the question What? - knowing why the customer has a need or a request, what will we build. What direction are we going to go? What impediments do we have? What metrics will be the most meaningful to track the results?
And developers, knowing why customers want a feature, and what we need to build answer the question How? Often times an architect or a set of engineers will think deeply about various ways of how to technically implement a solution in the best possible way.
Creating a product vision requires you to know who your customers are. Let's do the product vision exercise together ...
Vision: The vision is your high level, ultimate view of where the company or business line is going. In large corporations, you want to narrow this to the business line or customer journey. In smaller companies, this will be your company and product's overall vision. Think long term here, and keep it qualitative. This is a good chance to talk about competitors, how customers will see you, and ambitions for expansion.
Here are a few examples of how to write a product vision:
- Go over the video presentation offered by a product manager from Dropbox. I found this webinar very concise. Start with 2:20 min: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYd2PN4EUOY
- My simple exercise how to create a vision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gG8p_n8fjY&t=119s
After you go over the videos make sure to try to follow along and build a product vision. We will also practice it during our Saturday class. Come prepared.