The product vision
Tags: productivity, product, mvp, design
Published: 2019-11-15 14:39:42

The product vision is a very useful tool to define before starting any kind of product development, as will help you on every stage in the road to success.
There is a misconception on the term "Vision" that it takes to being interpreted as a single statement, while this "Vision statement" is just a little part of the product vision. A useful product vision is composed of: **mission**, **vision statement**, **principles**, **measurement framework** and **strategies*.
In the first place defining a product vision will help you become aware of what you are trying to build. This is a very important value, as it will lead you to focus on what matters, and avoid spending effort on unnecessary tasks from the very beginning. (understand and focus)
Another key value on defining the product vision is that will facilitate how to communicate your idea, through the entire company and others involved. (communicate)
Finally will help you make decisions as you really know what you want, you know what is important and what isn't and you are also capable to share the idea correctly for getting help and feedback. (decide)

##The mission

It is intended to describe the "Why you are building this product?". It's about the propose. The mission is related to the present, the problem and the solution. A possible mission structure could be: The product helps **someone** to make **something** due to the **problem detected**. 

> With the purpose of giving some examples, we are going to use my lately personal product: An app for keep track of purchases on our office kiosk

**Example**
The product helps office members to easily keep track of their kiosk expenses and transactions avoiding handwritten data interpretation.

##The vision statement

Is typically a one-sentence articulation of the imagined future. It should be inspiring and broad enough to remain valid in the future.

**Example**
Make office life easier

##The principles

Talking about product principles could be understood also as the product culture. Any product feature that you build should share the same culture. Shouldn't be many. 3 is a good number.

**Example** (1 principle) 
**Ease**: We want to avoid any mental effort on every office task we handle

##The measurement framework

It's always important to measure your goals. In order to make your product vision measurable, you should define a way to do it. Shouldn't be many. 3 is a good number.

**Example**
- Office members happiness
- Number of manual tasks avoided

##The Strategies
Here we should define how we plan to achieve everything we have defined above. These strategies are the starting point and will start evolving as the product does. Shouldn't be many. 3 is a good number.

**Example**
- Develop an app for automating manual office tasks
- Digitalize office data

##The Result

The product vision result should be a short file you should share with everyone involved in the product development, and also with any stakeholder. This simple file, that won't take you more than an hour will help you to be aligned with your team and those interested in the product also.