Catalog
concept#Product#Governance#Architecture#Delivery

Product Vision

A clear long-term target that describes a product's purpose and aligns strategy and roadmap.

The product vision states the long-term target state for a product and aligns strategy, roadmap and stakeholders.
Established
Medium

Classification

  • Medium
  • Organizational
  • Organizational
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Roadmapping tools (e.g., Jira, Aha!)Customer feedback platformsBusiness strategy and OKR systems

Principles & goals

Focus on value over features.Keep it short and clear: a vision must be communicable.Involve stakeholders early and review regularly.
Discovery
Enterprise, Domain

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Overdesign if the vision becomes too detailed too early.
  • Stakeholder fragmentation due to unclear communication.
  • A rigid vision can prevent necessary pivots.
  • Keep it short and concise, ideally one paragraph.
  • Link to concrete user needs and measurable goals.
  • Review and adjust regularly in short cycles.

I/O & resources

  • Market and competitor analyses
  • Customer and user research
  • Strategic corporate objectives
  • Formulated product vision
  • Derived roadmap principles
  • Measurable success criteria and KPIs

Description

The product vision states the long-term target state for a product and aligns strategy, roadmap and stakeholders. It describes customer value, core users, and expected market impact. A concise vision supports prioritization, cross-functional alignment, and consistent decision-making across teams and domains.

✔

  • Improved prioritization across teams.
  • Better stakeholder communication and expectation management.
  • Clearer decision basis for product investments.

✖

  • An overly generic vision offers little operational guidance.
  • Cannot completely eliminate divergent expectations.
  • Requires regular validation through data and user feedback.

  • Active users (MAU)

    Number of unique active users per month as an indicator of market acceptance.

  • NPS / customer satisfaction

    Measure of user satisfaction to validate the customer value of the vision.

  • Conversion rate on target actions

    Percentage of users performing target actions; indicates economic impact.

Dropbox MVP phase (simplified vision)

Early vision focused on simple file sharing and growth via referral mechanics.

Spotify: focus on user experience

Vision emphasized personalized experiences; guided roadmap for recommendations and playlists.

Internal product vision for a B2B tool

Vision helped clarify integration priorities and compliance requirements.

1

Initial vision workshop with core team and sponsor.

2

Collect and review user and market data.

3

Formulate the vision and align with stakeholders.

4

Define initial KPIs and derive roadmap principles.

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Unvalidated technical assumptions in the vision.
  • Omitting integration planning leads to later bottlenecks.
  • Missing monitoring infrastructure for vision KPIs.
Unclear KPIsStakeholder conflictsResource constraints
  • Vision used as a marketing claim without operational anchoring.
  • Vision misunderstood as a binding specification.
  • Vision replaces concrete product goals and metrics.
  • Too many stakeholders lead to diluted wording.
  • Unclear terminology complicates internal alignment.
  • Lack of measurability prevents validation.
Product strategy and market analysisStakeholder facilitation and communicationData-driven validation and metric definition
Market need and customer valueBusiness goals and revenue potentialTechnical feasibility and operability
  • • Company budget and time constraints
  • • Regulatory requirements in target markets
  • • Technical legacy and integration needs