Developing a product vision

Framework

The framework has 3 simple components, each component has key questions & suggested methods for the team to collaborate & answer. The goal is to help teams provide clarify their vision, align everyone on the problems needed to be solve, & outline the path forward.

Vision

Step 1: Define the aspiration

Often times, the team are given a business objective by their sponsors or client in some form of a project brief. This is a good starting point, but often lack the answer to a fundamental question, What value are we providing our target customer?  To answer this question, we take a step back & have the team review the company’s “core” inputs. I classify “core inputs” as key materials that define the company mission, such as the company’s value proposition, competitive landscape, mission statement, &/or strategic priorities. During these sessions, everyone builds a deeper understanding of the company’s purpose & start to align on how their product will need to contribute & potentially evolve over time.

The output is simple, a 1-page synthesis of a vision statement and potentially some guiding principles that begins to summarize what success looks like. Keep in the mind, this is a draft. This summary will be revisited & potentially updated as the team progresses through the other phases and learns more.

Step 2: Define what success looks like

Now that a vision statement & guiding principles are in place, the next step define: what does success look like? We do this by anchoring on the vision statement & brainstorm what are our desired outcomes in 3 years. Desired outcomes are aspirational statements that paint a picture of a future state that everyone can understand and they can use to start to plan the path to get there. Depending on the situation, I typically use 2 types of outcomes: (1) business outcomes (ie reduce operational cost by 50%) or customer outcomes (new customer’s sign up in under 2 minutes). In either case, the outcomes need to reflect the ideal future state. It is very important to be inclusive and their the products leaders/sponsors are involved in the sessions.  It’s important to focus the group on desired outcomes and not specific solutions. You know you have a desired outcome when you know you can measure it, just like the 2 above examples.

I have found that using customer outcomes can help focus everyone on the customer value their product/service will provide. Customer outcomes are also easy to understand b/c everyone on the team can relate to being a customer & can put themselves in the customer’s shoes. Overall, generating these outcome statements creates team alignment & sets a common team language on they define success. There may be moments during this phase that the discussions venture into solutions. That’s ok, as long as everyone uses solutions as hypothetical examples. There will be  dedicated time and space to talk solutions in a later phase. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Encourage big thinking – The desired outcomes is an opportunity to inspire the group, reimagine possibilities, & set the tone for the level of ambition you are expecting. I have found a good probing question to be “what would you love to report out to the CEO 3 years from now?”
• Focus on outcomes, not solutions –  Solutions or the “how we will do it” will likely surface during the sessions, that’s fine, just translate the solution into an outcome. Question to keep the group focused on outcomes are: (1) How will you measure success? &/or (2) How will you know the solution is successful?
• Be inclusive & selective– Invite everyone to participate in these session to build the engagement & diversity of thought. That said, you want to converge into a minimal set of outcomes 1-3 to ensure focus. This requires collaboration & referencing the guiding principles from the previous step.
• Begin to capture measurement needs – If you have data analysts available, this is a great opportunity to take the desired outcomes & begin to outline the needed metrics for each outcome.

Gaps

Step 3: Define the gaps we need to solve for

The gaps are the problem’s we need to solve in order to reach our vision. The first step in this phase is to ensure everyone has a deep understanding of the current state. The methods will vary based on the complexity of the product ecosystem. For example, for high complexity, we typically use an Ecosystem mapping exercise to capture an exhaustive list of all of the variables & people involved in our product & the capture relationships between them. This allows for the team to understand where they need to influence. In simpler cases, we utilize a customer-focused journey mapping method to frame how a customer flows through the experience. This allows the team to make a clear connection between the current customer experience and desired customer outcome. In all cases, once we have a clear definition of the current state, we facilitate sessions to layer in the gaps we need to solve for using the desired outcome as our guide.

There is no shortage of problem framing methods to choose from. My personal favorite is the Jobs to Be Done methodology as it focuses on customer unmet needs. However, you may also have Technical gaps, Organizational gaps, & Expertise gaps, so I keep the framing simple in order to accommodate for the different types of gaps. We begin by taking each desired outcome & conduct sessions with all of the needed stakeholders to capture the gaps.

For example, if our desired outcome is  to “increase customer product adoption by 2x in 1 year”,  we may find that the gaps are:

• Customers lack awareness of our product; we have limited leads into our sales funnel.
• Customers don’t adopt because they believe the cost of the product is too high; Lead are high, but we have high fallout in our sales funnel.
• Customer attrition is high; we have high abandonment rate after 6 months.

As you progress through this process, you will capture gaps similar to the above. It’s important to leverage quantitative & qualitative insights to validate which gap. For example, all 3 examples above might be true, but which one has the highest impact towards your desired outcome. You may be able to solve for all 3 or you may have prioritize. The data will help you prioritize.

Lastly, as the team investigates the gaps, key questions will also come up. Don’t get too caught up in questions you can’t answer, but do capture them along the way. These questions will inform your teams research plan (aka discovery plan). The discovery plan is a set of research questions that will require qualitative &/or quantitative methods to answer. Not all teams have access to these resources. If a lot of questions are raised during, you may need to develop ways to prioritize which questions are most critical to inform your strategies.

• Clarity on the primary gaps to solve for w/ insights.
• Key questions to explore that the team (or someone else) could research & answer.

Step 4: What strategies could we employ.

At this point, there is an understanding of current state & the gaps to solve for your desired outcomes. This is a good opportunity to step back and review with everyone where you are. You have learned more in the last few phases and it’s a good idea to confirm that the aspiration (vision statement & guiding principles) & the gaps (the problems to solve) are aligned. For example, you might have learned that your aspiration may need to be adjusted based on the insights you have uncovered. If everyone is good to discuss strategies, you are ready to start evaluating solutions.

During this phase you will align on strategies the team will employ that will solve for the gaps. Sometimes the strategies seem obvious and the team might be tempted to jump into solutions. However, I have found that outlining strategic options will allow the team & stakeholders to agree on whether it’s better to solve for short term &/or focus more on a longer term strategy. There are always trade-offs to strategies. I have found it helpful to talk through the Pros (Why will this strategy succeed?) & the Cons (Why might it fail? What are our assumptions?).

For example, for the desired outcome of “increase customer adoption by 2x in 1 year”, let’s assume one of the gaps is “Clients don’t adopt because they believe the cost of the product is too high”, then the strategic options could look like this:

Option 1: Show customers the value through proof points that matter to your customer (ie Celebrity endorsements, Try before you buy option, Highlight positive customer reviews)

Option 2: Target an audience that finds the cost to value desirable (ie Shift marketing efforts to tailor to a more targeted audience)

Option 3: Streamline your operations to lower your cost of your product (ie Outsource manufacturing, Reduce customer service hours)

Each of these strategies have benefits and tradeoffs. The next step is to prioritize with your team on which direction the team is most confident will deliver the desired outcome. There are a few common methods that will help the team prioritize. Again, much like the other phases, it’s ideal to be inclusive & have everyone aligned. They don’t need to agree necessarily, but everyone needs to align on the path forward. I have found that a simple exercise of Pros (potential) & Cons (assumptions/trade-offs) will allow everyone to weigh-in, vote, & decide on which strategies they will move forward.

Path forward

In the last phase, there have been many strategic conversations of what “could be..” , ”should be …” & “it would be awesome if we …”. The next step is to ensure everyone is outline the path forward. In the previous phase, there are strategic options that could be deployed  & everyone are clear on the desired outcomes. Now is a good time to gut check that everyone has clarity by asking everyone to playback the vision as they understand it so far. I often do this in a group discussion to help foster a common language for how the team describes their vision.

In random team huddles, I will ask the team 4 questions to ensure the vision is resonating: (1) Describe our aspiration (2) Describe what success looks like (3) Describe 1 gap we need to solve for (4) Articulate the strategy we are employing. I do this to ensure there is focus and clarity on the vision. I always have the 1-page summary with the answers to those 4 questions accessible for everyone to reference. I treat this as a living and breathing document that may need to be updated as the team deploys the strategy & learns more.

This last phase is all about planning & activating the path forward. This requires diligent planning and continued alignment across teams. It also requires cooperation from other teams &/or investments into new capabilities that don’t exist yet. There are also key questions that the team needs to research that we don’t want to loose sight of. The planning methods will vary depending how many teams & stakeholders involved, but in general, we break the strategy down into key initiatives using the following guidelines:

1. Divide & conquer: List initiatives & assign to the team or individuals best suited to complete the work. This often works for large companies with established org structures. You may find there are skill gaps on your teams that you need to bring in talent or outsource.

2. Tackle in phases: List initiatives & group into key phase over time. This is effective for strategies that include a lot of new territory for teams &/or the strategy has large assumptions that may require adjustments in the strategy as teams learn more.

3. Continuously learn & grow: List initiatives by 2 tracks: (1) Discovery: what key questions do we need answered? & (2) Delivery: what can we start building & testing now?. This is often referred to as dual track b/c the teams have two tracks of work that are simultaneously in-flight. This works great for teams who are 100% assigned to their products and have access to UX resources & development resources on the same team.