The product vision plays an important role in bringing a new product to life: It captures what the product should roughly look like and do, and why it should be created. It acts as the shared, overarching goal guiding everyone involved in the development effort. As the vision is so vital, teams need a tool that helps them create and capture their vision. This post introduces such a tool.
I’ve named the tool that I use Product Vision Board. The board allows the product owner and the team to map out the key aspects of their idea, as the following diagram illustrates:
The Product Vision Board
Here is a sample board that contains two personas, three scenarios, a card with the product’s top three features, an user interface and an architecture sketch, and a business model sketch (loosely based on the business model canvas):
A Sample Product Vision Board
As the above diagram illustrates, the product vision board is most effective when put on the office wall where everyone can see it. Simply add the artefacts you create to the board while investigating the four product aspects. If you work on a distributed project, post a picture of the vision board on your wiki or replicate it in an easily accessible electronic spread sheet.
Don’t fall into the trap of specifying all features upfront: Select only those features that are crucial to address the selected customer and user needs and that significantly influence the product success. The same is true for the product and user interface design: Focus only on the most critical aspects, and discard the rest for now. Additional requirements and the detail design will emerge later and are best captured on the product backlog board. And while it is helpful to reflect on the value the product should create for the organisation developing and selling it, providing a detailed business model and a firm business plan for a new product is often not feasible. Finally, test your vision quickly by creating a prototype or product increment (minimal viable product), exposing it to target customers and users, and analysing their feedback. This is likely to result in changes to your vision, particularly if you create a new, innovative product.
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Hi Roman,
Poor visioning is a common weakness for Product Owners according to a survey I’m conducting on Linked In (along with involvement in planning).
Is the business model optional in innovative product development or public sector work when revenues are not key but service?
Some products have been known to focus on fulfilling needs rather than worrying about revenue streams and have been successful? They seem to have faith that revenues will follow (I’m thinking Google Maps here and such), I might be being a little idealistic!
Hi Arran, I also recommend to my not-for-profit clients to consider how a new product or the next product version will benefit them. In that sense, the business model question still applies.
Great post Roman! We started using SCRUM about half a year ago at our company and as product owner I’ve been busy aligning our stakeholders and visualizing our product strategy. This is a very helpful post. Thanks!
By the way, if you would like to know how I’ve implemented your product backlog board. Check it out on http://bit.ly/eUoc26.
[...] http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-innovation/the-product-vision-board/ [...]
Great post, Roman, thanks! I agree that simple, evolving tools that are visible to the entire team are really useful. I’ve shared this link with a team I know who is struggling with creating a shared vision. They have many of these elements, the just don’t have a discipline about putting them together in a visible place.
You might want to check out something similar I did for a recent Lean Startup weekend.
http://www.theapprenticepath.com/2011/04/05/our-lean-startup-machine-sketchboard/
best wishes,
– Lane Halley
Thanks for the feedback, Lane. I enjoyed your lean startup sketch board. Nice idea to integrate a sketch of the ecosystem including buyers and sellers – something that I do as part of the business model discussion on my vision board.
[...] prefer to derive the contents of the product backlog board from the product vision or the product roadmap and to focus its content on the items that are essential to develop the next [...]
[...] it should create for the organisation developing and selling it. (See my vision board for a handy tool to capture and display the relevant information.) These assumptions [...]
[...] your product backlog from the product vision or the product roadmap. Your product backlog should describe one [...]
This is great and I can see how this works for a new product. Does this work for existing products that are being enhanced or developed further though?
Hi Finn, Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it also worthwhile creating a vision board for a product update if the update addresses a new market segment, if additional needs are addressed, or if the business model changes.