Product Vision: Planning Out a Web App and Creating a Roadmap - A Guide to Success 🚀#1
No product can be successful without a solid roadmap for its development and production. Today, we will be talking about setting our sail to craft a compelling product vision as it serves as a powerful compass that guides the company's direction and inspires others to do the same.
When it comes to creating the roadmap for a product starting with a clear product vision and setting realistic goals is crucial as it helps us to critically think about what we do we want to achieve with our product and to break down our product vision into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Crafting the vision
The product vision should not be only about creating yet another product in the market but our minds should be wrapped around the idea of revolutionizing the way people communicate and interact with the technology using our product. This vision can guide our decisions, inspire innovation, and it will lead to a transformative product that reshapes the industry.
We can explore the vision by thinking about certain ideas...
What do we want our product to achieve?
Who is our target audience?
What problems are we trying to solve?
By taking a moment to think about these questions and writing down the answers, we can get to know our product inside out and set it up for a successful launch!
Setting Realistic Goals
Now we embark on our journey to truly start working on our product – it's the moment when the momentum truly kicks in. Now, our planning shifts gears as all the brainstorming about the product idea ends we start working on the roadmap by setting realistic and achievable goals.
We should set our goals keeping in mind to...
Break down our product vision into smaller, more manageable goals
Set goals that we can achieve within a reasonable timeframe
The objectives should drive our roadmap decisions
The S.M.A.R.T Approach
It is a framework that is used widely to effective goals as it provides a structured way to ensure that your goals are well-defined, realistic, and actionable. Here's a breakdown of what each component of SMART stands for:
| S | Specific | A goal should be clear and specific, leaving no room for ambiguity. It should answer the questions of who, what, where, when, and why. |
| M | Measurable | There should be a way to track and measure progress. Measurable goals allow you to gauge how far you've come and how close you are to achieving the goal. |
| A | Achievable | While it's great to be ambitious, setting goals that are too far-fetched or unattainable can lead to frustration and demotivation. |
| R | Relevant | Goals should be relevant to your overall objectives and aligned with your vision. They should contribute to the bigger picture and make sense in the context. |
| T | Time Bound | Goals should have a clear deadline or timeframe. This adds a sense of urgency and helps prevent procrastination. |
Having clarity in our goal-setting provides the motivation and focus you need to be successful.
Thinking About the End Result
We should envision our product before getting our hands into the craft, it's the act of conjuring a vivid mental image of what our product (web app in this case) will ultimately become—a digital masterpiece that seamlessly addresses user needs, solves real problems, and delivers an unparalleled experience. This imaginative process is crucial altogether for the overall success of our product in the market.
Thinking about the final product gives us the ability to think that where our product will stand in the market giving us a competitive insight. In this phase, we can make changes to the plans to make our product more relevant to the market which sets it up for success.
Benefits of a Product Vision
It can help us to attract investors and partners
It can help you improve your product development process
It can help you stay ahead of the competition
The Case Study
We will take a look at a case study to better understand the importance of the product vision and how it helps us to navigate our way!
imcoded: Edtech Platform
"imcoded" is an edtech platform that I have developed from the scratch (along with my business partner) which aims to provide education to the students to make them excel in their technical skills.
The Vision:
"We at imcoded, envision a future where every young student has access to educational resources, empowering them to excel in technical skills and become the innovators and problem solvers of tomorrow.
In the crowded world of Computer Science, we want our younger generation to stand out. We will become not just an education platform; we will connect with mentors for budding problem solvers. The big plan is to help students in navigating their path in this digital maze where everything seems overwhelming"
Challenges we faced:
We were starting from the scratch we had noting but we just had an idea to improve the crossroads of Educations and Skills as we were ourselves the sufferer of this major problem which is embedded in the core system.
Crafting the vision (implementation):
We began crafting our vision by writing these questions a piece of paper and thinking about these questions, we took a long time answering these as the answers of these questions will form the core of our product.
The impact on development ...
This organized structure of thinking collectively with the team enabled us to form our core concepts and foundation about our product which helped us to navigate our way through the ambiguous clouds ahead us.
In Conclusion, having a vision transforms an idea into achievable steps, guiding our team through the complexities of development and beyond, it acts a motivating force and it promotes the user centric development. Always remember, a product vision without a roadmap is merely a dream, while a product vision with a well-executed roadmap is a journey to success.
"a product vision without a roadmap is merely a dream"
In case you missed... IMCODED: Edtech Platform
Continue further... Creating the Roadmap: Planning Out a Web App and Creating a Roadmap - A Guide to Success 🚀#2