Vision Statement
What is it?
A vision statement is a concise wording of the project goals that helps team members pass the elevator test – the ability to explain the project to someone within two minutes. It helps teams remain focused on the critical aspects of the product, even when details are changing rapidly.
Who uses it?
The whole team is responsible for keeping the vision statement in mind during their work. Features and ideas that fall outside the goals of the vision statement are considered out of scope for the project.
For example, if a vision statement provided for a content management system that cannot run code on the server, then any feature that required that code run on the server would be considered out of scope for that project.
How It Works
A vision statement follows the form:
- For (target customer)
- Who (statement of the need or opportunity)
- The (product name) is a (product category)
- That (key benefit, compelling reason to buy)
- Unlike (primary competitive alternative)
- Our product (statement of primary differentiation)
Getting More Information
This post is an edited extract from Leah Buley’s site IA One Sheeters with contributions from Tom Dell’Aringa. I am using the One Sheeter concepts here to showcase what I do as an IA and show examples of my work.
