So you've started a new product role. How do you own your product vision?

Photo by Tatiana Niño on Unsplash

The first month of your new role is the perfect time to put together a working draft of your product vision.

Since you’re brand new and not yet in the weeds, you can more easily see the forest rather than the trees. The way that you’re going to understand the vision for your product, will be similar to the way that other teams and customers will appreciate it as well

As a product manager, it’s your role to be the evangelist of your product. It’s easiest to capture what excites you about your product when you’re looking at it with fresh eyes, and not yet focused on the weeds and problem solving that you’ll be doing later

• What is the vision for the product?
• What problem will the product solve?
• Why is this a worthwhile problem to solve?
• What excites you about the product - perhaps something that drew you in to take the role?
• How does it fit within the broader strategy and brand?
• What are the common use cases for your product?

From here on out, every time you meet with a new stakeholder, share this overview so that they can understand your vision and use it to guide how they work with you. Err on the side of over communicating – even if you think someone is familiar with your product, 9 times out of 10 they will still find it helpful.