post

Footer About

Footer Contribute

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

Product Management

Sunday Rewind: Whose job is it anyway? The rise of Product Ops and why it deserves to be an independent function

Guest Post

Creating metrics that matter

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

How much are product managers getting paid in 2024?

Leading product ops at Delivery Hero with Koen Dubelaar

Connecting fans to creators at Spotify (Dariusz Dziuk, Product Lead, Spotify)

“You’re not as competent as you think” 5 lessons from Ken Chin on navigating a product career (CPO, Spark Networks)

Everything wrong with the product management job market. And how to fix it

Helene is a product manager at Neo4j, with a specialism in mobile technology. She has a holistic appreciation of what goes into building high-performing teams who can translate problems into product solutions which improve people’s lives. She likes conversations, especially the ones that challenge the obvious. You can reach out to her on LinkedIn

Product Manager

Helene Sanchez

In this <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank/">ProductTank</a> London talk, <a href="http://linkedin.com/in/paavanb">Paavan Buddhdev</a> &#8211; previously Product Designer at AND Digital and now Founder of <a href="https://trysoundoff.com/">Sound Off</a> &#8211; discusses the concept of product vision through design lens.
Here are the key areas discussed:
<ul>
<li>Vision: a prerequisite to strategy</li>
<li>Properties of a vision statement</li>
<li>How do we get there: Hills and Storytelling framework</li>
<li>Conclusions: an obsolete search for certainty</li>
</ul>
<h2>Vision: a prerequisite to strategy</h2>
Paavan describes the product vision as a key prerequisite to build a solid product strategy. The vision is a high-level statement or slogan that describes the ultimate reason for creating a product.
A clear product vision leads to a coherent product strategy, which results into flexible and adaptable tactics.
<h2>3 properties of a vision statement</h2>
Diving into the definition of a Product vision he quotes Roman Pichler:
<blockquote>The Vision should describe the positive change that the product should bring about.</blockquote>
There are 3 main properties a product vision should have to be successful:
<ol>
<li>Bring out the positive change that your product is trying to make.</li>
<li>Point to the true north: as product managers your role is to take the team on a journey with a clear and communicated end-goal in mind. Always have something to aim for. Keep your product vision statement succinct so the team can refer back to it easily and it’s easily remembered.</li>
<li>Be inspiring: your product vision should motivate, resonate and inspire.</li>
</ol>
What’s key to keep in mind when setting the vision for your product is that the goal isn’t building the product per se, the goal is the outcome the product wants to achieve.
<h2>How do we get there?</h2>
<ul>
<li>Don&#8217;ts: Using product vision canvas is a box ticking exercise, which leaves you with a vision statement that is very safe and won’t take you anywhere new.</li>
<li>Dos: Explore Hills and Storytelling frameworks</li>
</ul>
Hills is a statement of intent written as a meaningful user outcome, which focuses the team on where we’re going and not how to get there.
Hills tell us what the world would be in our wildest dreams. It should state the Who, the What, and the Wow (gives the hill that something extraordinary and special which inspires and drives the team).
Storytelling: “Everything we do in life is shaped as having a narrative” says Paavan. Humans are storytelling creatures, every story follows the same structure: Exposition to set the scene, rising action, climax (wow), falling action and resolution. We can frame a product vision on this basis, but writing a good compelling story is very difficult.
Here is Paaven’s trick: introduce conflict, and frame your work upon this analogy: hero, conflict resolution = user, challenge, solution. He provides a conflict framework which replaces the wow factor with the ow &#8211; tell a sad story about the state of the world and propose your solution (product) for it.
<h2>An obsolete search for certainty</h2>
2020 has taught us that things are always going to change and trying to grasp certainty is not a successful strategy for this new world. Product visions shouldn’t be static, they should allow for flexibility and change.

core/freeform

What good product design looks like – Miguel Fernandez (VP of Product Design, Slack)

10x Product X Design: Product and research team collaboration by Jane Austin

Learnings from London: What is it like to hold Google in your hand?

Learnings from London: How to build a billion dollar app

Product Systems: How to manufacture lightning in a bottle by Oji Udezue

Product management meets UX design by Tanmay Goel, Emi Kwon, Simran Kaur

Designing a sustainable future by Leyla Acaroglu

Making Hard Product Decisions for All the Right Reasons

Product Vision 2020

The Importance of Empathy, By Jack Sheppard

ProductTank Hong Kong

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh

ProductTank Chicago

ProductTank Jacksonville

ProductTank Charlotte

ProductTank Pittsburgh

ProductTank Bangkok

ProductTank Cardiff

ProductTank Exeter

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Köln

ProductTank San Francisco

ProductTank Leeds

ProductTank Raleigh

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Manchester

ProductTank Newcastle Upon Tyne

ProductTank München

ProductTank Hamburg

ProductTank Düsseldorf

ProductTank Warsaw

ProductTank Tokyo