In this episode, Matt Williams talks about building a product vision and getting stakeholder buy in. He also covers 'managing up' and how to navigate within your organization, whilst fostering an understanding of vision and user empathy with engineers.

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8. Matt Williams
TONIGHT’S SPEAKER

9. Building a Product Vision
Matt Williams
Product Manager, Spotify
Data & Monetization

10. What We’ll Cover Today
A bit about me
Building blocks of a product vision
Frameworks & Tools
Key Takeaways & Summary

11. A bit about me

12. A bit about me

13. Why Vision is so Important @ Spotify
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the
men [and women] to gather wood, divide the
work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to
yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

14. Vision Building Activities
● Workshop your opportunity space
● Define your product principles
● Build personas & empathy maps
● Craft a vision statement
● Develop good communication habits
● Measure success against KPIs

15. Visualizing the Opportunity Space

16. Defining Product Principles
Principles are a set of beliefs and intentions that reflect your team’s values and vision. They
can be solidified in a charter focused on ways of working, agreed upon by the team
Some examples might include:
● Customer-centricity
● Mobile-first
● Accessibility, Inclusivity, Social Impact
● Ethics (e.g. AI & ML)
● Failing fast and iterating
● Collaboration
● Scalability & Interoperability
● Observability
● QA Mindset & Test Ownership

17. Crafting Personas & Empathy Maps
Personas are a great way of contextualizing your end-user and building empathy. They can
be static documents or physical artifacts:

18. Writing a Vision Statement
Often expressed as
● North Star Goal or Mission Statement
● Something that fits into the organization’s broader
mission
IS NOT
● A list of features, bug fixes, and/or tech debt
Helps the team
● Prioritize
● Map tactical and strategic decisions to a broader goal
● Stay motivated and on-task
● DREAM BIG!
Reiterated in the
● Roadmap
● Sprint Objectives
The Product Vision Statement describes the purpose of a Product, the intention with which the Product is
being created and what it aims to achieve for customers and users

19. Examples of Great Vision Statements
"Our vision is to be earth's most customer
centric company; to build a place where
people can come to find and discover
anything they might want to buy online."
“Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm,
use business to inspire and implement solutions to
the environmental crisis.”
“To organize the world’s information and
make it universally accessible and useful.”
"To unlock the potential of human creativity—by
giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live
off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to
enjoy and be inspired by it."

20. And some that need work...
Disclaimer: Please don’t work as hard as Elon Musk, it’s not healthy

21. Formatting the Vision Statement

22. Our Squad’s Vision Statement
“To build an attribution engine that delivers actionable insights in near-real time to
artists, businesses, and Spotify. Those insights create a better UX for our
customers, and help artists and marketers make smart choices about how to
promote themselves on Spotify.
Product Key Benefit Competitive Advantage
Target Customers Opportunity
Statement of Need

23. Practicing good habits
Make sure the vision is visible and always up to date.
Reiterate it during:
● Sprint planning
● Retrospectives
● Demos
● Product Planning Sessions
Ensure that roadmaps, features, tactical and strategic
decisions are working towards the vision statement
and target customers. Set realistic goals and measure
them!

24. Measuring Success
Craft a set of visible, relevant, and measurable KPIs to track success. A vision without
measurement is just that...a vision.
Invest in:
● Publicly accessible dashboards for
○ Growth tracking
○ Trend analysis and inflection points
○ KPIs that map to a broader company objective, i.e. acquisition, activation,
retention
Constantly reiterate progress often in scrum rituals (sprint plannings, demos, retrospectives,
etc)

25. Key Takeaways
● Don’t take changes to the vision lightly. Make sure any change in direction is
clearly communicated and discussed
● Words matter....a lot. Make them punchy, compelling, and inspiring
● Walk the talk. Live up to your vision and product principles
● If you can’t explain the vision in a simple way, you don’t quite understand it
● Codify it into your daily work

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