Create a New Product Strategy/Vision by Google Product Leader, Meher Vurimi

What is meant by “Vision”

A product vision, or product vision statement, describes the overarching long-term mission of your product. Vision statements are aspirational and communicate concisely where the product hopes to go and what it hopes to achieve in the long term.

Your product vision is where you want to be. The product vision should be clearly articulated and guide everyone.

A few example.

Google play is a safe, simple, and helpful way to pay and manage your money.

DJI

Our platforms empower them to capture images that were once out of reach. Our flying and camera stabilization systems redefine camera placement and motion. Amazing photos and video, treasured personal memories, and high-end professional imagery are captured every day, in every corner of the world using DJI products.

Our mission is to enable people to have meaningful interactions regardless of physical distance. Oculus.

We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

How to come up with a Strategy?

There are a few things to check and probably make some recommendations to come up with a strategy.

  1. Focus area.

Determine a focus area. Even a single domain might have multiple target areas.

  1. Problem

Focus on customer problems in the focus area. Come up with a list of prioritized issues.

  1. Value Proposition

Determine how the value prop is for the users, business, market etc. Use data if possible.

  1. Company/Product Vision

Come up with a product long-term vision. Check how that's tied to a company vision.

  1. Situation/Challenges

Understand the current market/business situation. Are there any other environmental challenges to focus?

  1. Principles and Values

Create values/principles to achieve the product vision. It is very important to be ethical and question every time whether it's a right thing.

Focus area.

What should we consider?

Identify the problem

Steps

There are problems and there are improvements - focus on them.

Come up with some metrics, identify the parameters that are important for prioritization, do the prioritization exercise and gain experience.

Customer journey

Understanding the whole journey of a customer is important to define a solution or even to identify a problem.

Create a customer journey map?

  • What are the goals?

  • What are the activities?

  • What are various touchpoints?

  • What are various KPIs?

Value Proposition

Come up with a “Product Vision”

Analyze all the things you have done.

SWOT, Customer journeys, Value Prop, JTBD.

Key questions:

  • What would you like to achieve long-term?

  • Does it tie up to your company's mission?

  • Does this vision makes sense three, five years from now?

A product vision can be like this from the very beginning if you know exactly what needs to be created or if you really focus on certain improvements. And so you come up with a vision for the product later. Determine the value of identifying problems, identify your strengths, come up with a vision for the product.

Situation/Challenges

It is important to understand the current landscape as part of our strategy definition.

Key questions:

  • What is the current situation in our focus area?

  • What are the challenges faced by the user/customer?

  • What are other challenges we might anticipate? (environmental, political, no tech solutions etc.)

  • If no solution, why doesn't?

Define Product Strategy blueprint

  1. Problem Statement

Define the problem statement we are solving. Why do we think this is the one? Use data wherever possible.

  1. Principles and Values

What are our core principles? What should be the ethical values of the product?

  1. Target audience

List the target segments. There can be various segments, but good to have a focus.

  1. Core CUJs

What are the core CUJs the product achieves? Weigh/ranking system to determine the important ones.

Many ideas/features

Now you have a vision for the product, you know exactly what the problems are, you can come up with a lot of product ideas, focus on something. You can't create everything at the same time, several different products, so focus on the product you're aiming for.

This will help you develop your roadmap.

What do you want to achieve in year 1, what is the minimum viable product to help you move in the direction you want. You need to distribute your work for the period that you plan, you cannot build everything in one year. This is where your roadmap comes in. Transforming your strategy into a roadmap will lead you to execution.

Meher Vurimi, Google Product Leader