But what is product vision?
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 9:32 am
Bringing it to the Product reality, if your company does not have a defined product vision , any path will do. Therefore, it will be difficult for you to define a roadmap that will bring long-term value to the business. After all, what will be the filter to prioritize and eliminate demands that arise in the day-to-day of the area?
Joca Torres, emphasizes in the Product Leadership Course , that a product leader's time allocation in vision and strategy is 10%, but it is his most important responsibility, since it derives all the product development work.
“The more junior the product managers, the more time should be dedicated to their development and managing expectations.”
– Joca Torres
According to Marty Cagan, product vision describes the future we are trying to create , somewhere between two and five years out.
As such, it is one of our key tools for keeping the organic dominican republic mobile phone number zation truly focused on what matters to the customer. Because as soon as a company grows to the point where there are multiple Product teams , it is very easy for each product team to get caught up in their own problems and their own work, losing sight of the overall goal.
The product vision represents the common goal and constantly reminds us of the greater purpose.
In this article, you will follow the process of creating the product vision of a startup that aims to transform retail using technology to enable better decisions. Over the last year, the company has grown a lot and with the countless opportunities, it has launched several products to serve the market in which it operates.
My first mission in the area was to understand the business and collaboratively build the product vision.
How to Build a Product Vision in 6 Steps
The process of understanding the business was done through conversations with company leaders, product managers , sales and customer success people , participation in sales meetings, customer follow-up meetings and direct interviews with customers. With this, I was able to compile and structure the knowledge in the following steps:
1. Understanding the company and market
To build the future, it is necessary to understand the past and the steps taken so far. I understood the business model, the customer base, the company's long-term strategic objectives and key indicators, the market size and competitors.
Business model: understand the segment, type of customer (B2C, B2B, D2C, C2C), revenue model, model ( On-promise , IaaS, SaaS , PaaS);
Customer base: each company uses its own tools, in this case I sought to understand the tools used by the sales and CS teams. They won't always be systems, the good old Excel created by the departments is one of the best tools for gaining knowledge. I asked for access to the tools to dive in and understand the customers;
Objectives and indicators: the company uses a tool called Qulture Rocks and I was able to understand the history of OKRs and objectives. In addition to talking to leaders to understand the company's strategy;
Market size: a free tool to help you size your market is. This tool provides the number of companies by market segment and by researching other data, you can enrich this information;
Competitors: I surveyed the main competitors and researched available information about the products on the market and how we were positioned.
2. Understanding the products
In this step, I sought to understand the pain points that each product seeks to solve and I set a challenge, as if I were a user of the product, to understand the usability and customer journey within our solutions. Something very common in fast-growing startups is the lack of documentation and in this step we mapped all the functionalities of each product and started creating the user story map.
In the Product Discovery Course , Natalia Arsand explains that the user story map is a tool to capture and articulate important details of the customer’s interactions with our product. It can be “what it is like” or “what it will be like.”
This tool brings clarity to our ideas on how to solve the user's problem with our system and helps us understand the “opportunities”. To build, it is necessary to define the steps and details of the actions.
Steps are high - level interactions and we need to use verbs to write them;
Details are interactions that happen at each step and are focused on functionality. Details also start with verbs .
One tip is to create a board in MIRO to do this mapping.
user story mapping
3. Benchmarking other companies
Conducting research with companies from other sectors is a great tool for inspiration and insights that you can apply to your business. One of the companies I studied was Hubspot and the process it went through to become a platform.
In the image below, it is possible to see the evolution of the solution and the impact of this change on the company's indicators: increase in LTV and customer lock-in .
Medium is full of articles analyzing companies’ business models and their stories. You can also choose companies you admire and learn about their growth .
Gympass product vision
4. Drawing the first version of the vision
With a map of information about the business, I made the first draft of the vision through a drawing and a short sentence, enough to give clarity about what we want to achieve in the next 3 years.
5. Validation and refinement
With the design in hand, the next step was to validate the construction of the product vision to understand whether it would help the company achieve the company's long-term strategic objectives.
This validation began with PMs, designers and, finally, leaders. At this stage, it is essential to debate and understand the main feedback from the first version built. Based on the feedback , it is your role to refine the vision until leaders understand that what was defined brings clarity to achieve long-term goals.
6. Communication to the company
Invest considerable time in communicating the product vision to the entire company and, whenever possible, revisit it to ensure that all teams are moving in the same direction.
This is a way to inspire teams, stakeholders , investors and partners to want help making this vision a reality.
Joca Torres suggests that the vision be defined as soon as possible , because without it, it is not possible to do the rest and that we should review it annually and when there are changes in the external or internal scenario. It should not change every year, but it is important to review it annually.
Putting it into practice
In addition to the steps I followed to build the vision, I leave as inspiration the key principles for creating an effective product vision from Marty Cagan:
Start with why. Use your product vision to articulate your purpose;
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution;
Don't be afraid to think big about your vision;
Don't be afraid of disruption because if you don't, someone else will;
The product vision needs to inspire;
Determine and adopt significant trends;
Go where things are going, not where they were;
Be stubborn with the vision, but flexible with the details.
Realize that any product vision is a vote of confidence . If you can actually validate a vision, then your vision is probably not ambitious enough;
Evangelize continuously and tirelessly. There is no such thing as over-communication when it comes to explaining and selling the vision.
If you, as a Product area leader, do not have a defined vision, it is your mission to do this job so that the entire team is directed strategically.
Master Product Leadership
Do you want to build a top-notch Product team? Or even further qualify as a Product leader? Then you need to check out the Product Leadership Course !
The course brings together in-depth content with more than 25 hours of recorded content , made for leaders or senior people in the Product area (more than 3 years of experience).
More than 12 renowned leaders with extensive experience in the Brazilian market share their learnings and cases , transmitting the best practices in people management and product strategy.
Learn how to connect business and product in an aligned and strong strategy!
Joca Torres, emphasizes in the Product Leadership Course , that a product leader's time allocation in vision and strategy is 10%, but it is his most important responsibility, since it derives all the product development work.
“The more junior the product managers, the more time should be dedicated to their development and managing expectations.”
– Joca Torres
According to Marty Cagan, product vision describes the future we are trying to create , somewhere between two and five years out.
As such, it is one of our key tools for keeping the organic dominican republic mobile phone number zation truly focused on what matters to the customer. Because as soon as a company grows to the point where there are multiple Product teams , it is very easy for each product team to get caught up in their own problems and their own work, losing sight of the overall goal.
The product vision represents the common goal and constantly reminds us of the greater purpose.
In this article, you will follow the process of creating the product vision of a startup that aims to transform retail using technology to enable better decisions. Over the last year, the company has grown a lot and with the countless opportunities, it has launched several products to serve the market in which it operates.
My first mission in the area was to understand the business and collaboratively build the product vision.
How to Build a Product Vision in 6 Steps
The process of understanding the business was done through conversations with company leaders, product managers , sales and customer success people , participation in sales meetings, customer follow-up meetings and direct interviews with customers. With this, I was able to compile and structure the knowledge in the following steps:
1. Understanding the company and market
To build the future, it is necessary to understand the past and the steps taken so far. I understood the business model, the customer base, the company's long-term strategic objectives and key indicators, the market size and competitors.
Business model: understand the segment, type of customer (B2C, B2B, D2C, C2C), revenue model, model ( On-promise , IaaS, SaaS , PaaS);
Customer base: each company uses its own tools, in this case I sought to understand the tools used by the sales and CS teams. They won't always be systems, the good old Excel created by the departments is one of the best tools for gaining knowledge. I asked for access to the tools to dive in and understand the customers;
Objectives and indicators: the company uses a tool called Qulture Rocks and I was able to understand the history of OKRs and objectives. In addition to talking to leaders to understand the company's strategy;
Market size: a free tool to help you size your market is. This tool provides the number of companies by market segment and by researching other data, you can enrich this information;
Competitors: I surveyed the main competitors and researched available information about the products on the market and how we were positioned.
2. Understanding the products
In this step, I sought to understand the pain points that each product seeks to solve and I set a challenge, as if I were a user of the product, to understand the usability and customer journey within our solutions. Something very common in fast-growing startups is the lack of documentation and in this step we mapped all the functionalities of each product and started creating the user story map.
In the Product Discovery Course , Natalia Arsand explains that the user story map is a tool to capture and articulate important details of the customer’s interactions with our product. It can be “what it is like” or “what it will be like.”
This tool brings clarity to our ideas on how to solve the user's problem with our system and helps us understand the “opportunities”. To build, it is necessary to define the steps and details of the actions.
Steps are high - level interactions and we need to use verbs to write them;
Details are interactions that happen at each step and are focused on functionality. Details also start with verbs .
One tip is to create a board in MIRO to do this mapping.
user story mapping
3. Benchmarking other companies
Conducting research with companies from other sectors is a great tool for inspiration and insights that you can apply to your business. One of the companies I studied was Hubspot and the process it went through to become a platform.
In the image below, it is possible to see the evolution of the solution and the impact of this change on the company's indicators: increase in LTV and customer lock-in .
Medium is full of articles analyzing companies’ business models and their stories. You can also choose companies you admire and learn about their growth .
Gympass product vision
4. Drawing the first version of the vision
With a map of information about the business, I made the first draft of the vision through a drawing and a short sentence, enough to give clarity about what we want to achieve in the next 3 years.
5. Validation and refinement
With the design in hand, the next step was to validate the construction of the product vision to understand whether it would help the company achieve the company's long-term strategic objectives.
This validation began with PMs, designers and, finally, leaders. At this stage, it is essential to debate and understand the main feedback from the first version built. Based on the feedback , it is your role to refine the vision until leaders understand that what was defined brings clarity to achieve long-term goals.
6. Communication to the company
Invest considerable time in communicating the product vision to the entire company and, whenever possible, revisit it to ensure that all teams are moving in the same direction.
This is a way to inspire teams, stakeholders , investors and partners to want help making this vision a reality.
Joca Torres suggests that the vision be defined as soon as possible , because without it, it is not possible to do the rest and that we should review it annually and when there are changes in the external or internal scenario. It should not change every year, but it is important to review it annually.
Putting it into practice
In addition to the steps I followed to build the vision, I leave as inspiration the key principles for creating an effective product vision from Marty Cagan:
Start with why. Use your product vision to articulate your purpose;
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution;
Don't be afraid to think big about your vision;
Don't be afraid of disruption because if you don't, someone else will;
The product vision needs to inspire;
Determine and adopt significant trends;
Go where things are going, not where they were;
Be stubborn with the vision, but flexible with the details.
Realize that any product vision is a vote of confidence . If you can actually validate a vision, then your vision is probably not ambitious enough;
Evangelize continuously and tirelessly. There is no such thing as over-communication when it comes to explaining and selling the vision.
If you, as a Product area leader, do not have a defined vision, it is your mission to do this job so that the entire team is directed strategically.
Master Product Leadership
Do you want to build a top-notch Product team? Or even further qualify as a Product leader? Then you need to check out the Product Leadership Course !
The course brings together in-depth content with more than 25 hours of recorded content , made for leaders or senior people in the Product area (more than 3 years of experience).
More than 12 renowned leaders with extensive experience in the Brazilian market share their learnings and cases , transmitting the best practices in people management and product strategy.
Learn how to connect business and product in an aligned and strong strategy!