direction — vision
Vision
A Vision answers one question: what does the world look like for real people if this product fully works? Not what the product will do — what changes for the people it serves. The difference is not semantic. A product description can justify any feature. A Vision rejects most of them.
The test for a working Vision: can a developer use it to decline a feature request without asking a product manager? If yes, it is functioning as a filter. If not, it is functioning as decoration.
The same proposal — two Visions, two entirely different answers without a meeting
Proposal: build a standalone exam tool in Google Forms — faster to ship than the in-platform solution.
✗ Vision: "We help educational organisations work better with technology."
Everything passes through this. Nothing is rejected. The proposal gets scoped. Three months later someone asks why the learning platform and the exam tool are disconnected. Nobody has an answer, because no answer was ever required.
✓ Vision: "Every student's learning journey is fully connected — assessment, practice, progress — visible in one place, for every teacher in the school."
The proposal fails on contact. A disconnected tool moves away from this Vision. The answer is no, before anyone has to argue.
The Vision in the second example is the starting point of the chain: every feature decision is tested against a specific description of the world the team is working toward.
How to apply this
- ✓ Write it from the person's perspective, not the product's. Start: what changes for Gal, for the school coordinator? The product is the means. The change is the Vision.
- ✓ Test it against a real proposal that should fail. If the Vision cannot reject anything, it cannot protect anything.
- ✗ Do not write language that everything passes through. "We help teams do better work" is a category, not a Vision. A category has no filtering power.
- ✗ Do not update the Vision quarterly. If it changes every quarter, it is a Goal, not a Vision. The Vision is the stable origin of the chain.