| name | pm-vision-strategy |
| description | Produce or critique a product vision and/or product strategy — an aspirational destination and the deliberate, trade-off-driven choices to reach it — not a buzzword poster or a feature list. Distinguishes the vision/strategy/roadmap/mission artifacts, ladders product vision up to company vision, forces a focused segment + differentiation + explicit "won't do", and sets the stability rule (stubborn on vision, flexible on strategy). Applies the always-true core and gates context-dependent decisions (which strategy framework, vision communication format, single vs. multi-product, B2B vs. B2C, new vs. existing, depth). Trigger when asked to write/define/critique a product vision, vision statement, product strategy, strategic themes, positioning/where-to-play/how-to-win, or to tell vision from strategy from roadmap. |
| license | MIT |
| metadata | {"author":"uxcel","version":"1.0.0"} |
Product Vision & Strategy Skill
How this skill behaves (read first)
This is a generative skill, and vision/strategy is where an AI assistant produces its most confident, least useful output. Two default failure modes dominate:
- The inspirational poster. Asked for a vision, Claude writes a buzzword sentence — "be the world's most loved, best-in-class platform that delights customers with seamless experiences" — that sounds good and guides zero decisions. If any feature can be justified by it, it's too vague to be a vision.
- Conflation and feature-listing. Claude treats vision, strategy, roadmap, and mission as interchangeable, and writes "strategy" as a list of features to build rather than a set of deliberate choices about where to play, how to win, and what not to do. Strategy that targets "everyone" and skips trade-offs isn't strategy.
A real vision is a specific, stable, user-centric destination; a real strategy is a focused set of interconnected, trade-off-driven choices grounded in evidence and tied to outcomes. So this skill gates:
- Establish context — vision, strategy, or both; company shape; product stage; market type; altitude.
- Apply the always-true core — the artifact distinctions, the laddering, the focus-and-trade-off discipline, the stability rule.
- Surface the context-dependent decisions (which framework, which communication format, portfolio/B2B/stage/depth) with trade-offs, and let the user choose. Running every framework at once is the failure mode.
Then it hands off to pm-okr-metric-validity-audit (the success metrics it names), pm-prioritization-rigor-audit (the themes/focus areas it sets, which drive what gets built), and pm-assumption-rigor-audit (the market-demand and competitive bets the strategy rests on).
Scope: this skill owns the vision artifact and the strategy artifact, and the choices inside them. It defers the competitive/market analysis that feeds strategy to pm-competitive-analysis, the research/insight-gathering to pm-discovery, problem framing to pm-problem-statement, the prioritization decision itself to pm-prioritization, the OKR/KPI artifacts to pm-okrs-kpis, the roadmap artifact and sequencing to pm-roadmap, pricing to ux-pricing, and go-to-market to pm-gtm-plan.
Step 0 — Establish context before writing
Ask if not known; state the assumption if proceeding without an answer:
- Vision, strategy, or both? They're different artifacts at different altitudes (see the core below). Writing one when the user needs the other — or blending them into mush — is the first mistake. If they ask for "a strategy" but have no vision, flag that the vision is the anchor strategy derives from.
- What's the company shape — single-product or multi-product? A single-product company's product vision nearly equals its company vision; a multi-product portfolio needs each product's vision/strategy to ladder up to the company vision without colliding with siblings.
- New product or existing/pivot? New products derive vision from market research, problem interviews, and a small founder/early-team group; existing products have real usage data, feedback patterns, and a broader stakeholder set to draw on.
- B2B or B2C? B2B strategy serves multiple stakeholders (end user, champion, economic buyer), longer cycles, higher switching costs; B2C weights individual decision-makers, viral acquisition, and network effects.
- What altitude / scope? A feature-area vision shouldn't span the whole company; a company-wide product vision can be broad. Scope determines who must align and which decisions the vision governs.
The always-apply core (true for any vision or strategy)
Keep the four artifacts distinct (and ladder them)
- Don't conflate vision, strategy, roadmap, mission. They form a hierarchy at decreasing altitude and increasing change-frequency: company vision → company strategy → product vision → product strategy → roadmap/features. Vision is the aspirational destination (stable for years). Strategy is how you'll get there (the choices; evolves every few quarters). Roadmap is what and when (changes often). Mission is why you exist today; vision is the future you're creating. When vision is absent, roadmaps become disconnected feature lists; when strategy masquerades as vision, you lose the inspirational anchor.
- ❌ "Our vision: ship AI search, a mobile app, and SSO by Q4." (That's a roadmap.)
- ✅ "Our vision: every analyst finds the answer in their data in seconds, without writing a query." (A destination; many strategies could reach it.)
- Derive product vision from company vision. Identify which slice of the company vision your product makes tangible; it should read as a natural, more-specific extension. Translate company strategy (markets, positioning, business model) into product choices (which problems, which users, which capabilities first).
Make the vision specific, user-centric, and memorable
- Three traits: user-centric, simple, future-facing. Describe the changed user future, not your feature set, in language anyone can recall and repeat without the doc.
- ❌ "Use integrated data systems to drive optimized wellness outcomes."
- ✅ "Help people track their health in one simple app." / LinkedIn: "Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce."
- Ban empty superlatives. "Best-in-class," "world-leading," "seamless," "delight" sound impressive and mean nothing. Use concrete user outcomes instead.
- ❌ "Empower teams to collaborate." ✅ "Help remote teams make decisions without meetings."
- The decision-filter test. A vision works only if it can reject a feature. If someone can justify any feature with it, it's too vague — tighten until a feature idea clearly aligns or conflicts.
- 3–5 year horizon. Shorter than ~3 years is a roadmap, not a vision.
Make the strategy a set of focused, trade-off-driven choices
- Strategy = interconnected choices, not a feature list. Name the winning aspiration (vision), where to play (segment + market), how to win (differentiation), the capabilities/resources required, growth mechanism (product-led vs. sales-led + channels), and key metrics — and check the elements reinforce each other.
- Pick ONE primary segment; "everyone" means no one. Define the target by the job/outcome they seek and their constraints, not just demographics. Win one segment and reach product-market fit before expanding (Instagram → iPhone users sharing photos fast, not "all mobile users").
- Choose a differentiation path and defend it. Cost leadership, unique value, or focus — not "better at everything." Back it with a barrier (proprietary tech, network effects, data, brand, partnerships). Apply the "can't or won't" test: competitors either can't copy you (real barrier) or won't (it conflicts with their model).
- State the trade-offs — what you deliberately won't do. This is the part Claude omits and the part that creates focus. "We won't serve enterprise," "we won't build native fidelity first," IKEA won't pre-assemble. No trade-offs = no strategy.
- Set 3–5 focus areas, max. More than that spreads teams thin and executes nothing well. Focus areas flow from the segment/problem/differentiation choices.
- Tie strategy to outcomes, and ground it in evidence. Frame goals as outcomes ("increase retention 10%") not outputs ("launch a loyalty program"), and connect each to a metric. Build it on real customer insight and competitive/market analysis, with assumptions flagged for testing — don't strategize in a vacuum (defer the analysis and research to the skills named above).
Set the stability rule
- Stubborn on vision, flexible on strategy. Vision should hold 3–5 years and survive bumps; strategy is reviewed (at least) quarterly and changes as you learn. Distinguish a vision pivot (the problem itself doesn't matter to customers — rare, serious: Burbn→Instagram) from a discovery pivot (a different path to the same destination — frequent, normal: change monetization, growth tactic, or feature focus).
- Define change-criteria up front so the call is evidence-based, not emotional: what validation signal would prove the problem doesn't matter (vision), and what metric/learning would prove the approach isn't working (strategy). Persisting too long wastes resources; pivoting too fast never lets a good idea prove itself — most teams give up too soon, not too late.
The context-dependent decisions (surface, don't auto-apply)
Present each with its trade-off and a recommendation tied to Step 0; let the user choose. Applying every framework and every communication format at once is the failure mode.
| Decision | Apply when | Avoid / adapt when | Default recommendation |
|---|
| Which strategy framework | Playing to Win (5 cascading choices) for a full strategy; Porter's Five Forces for industry attractiveness/defense; Blue Ocean to create uncontested space; Kano to classify must-have/performance/delighter features; Three Horizons to balance now/next/future; Product Strategy Canvas to capture it all on one page | Running all of them as ritual — "framework theater" that buries the actual choices | Pick the 1–2 that answer the question; Product Strategy Canvas as the documenting container |
| Vision communication format | Written statement as the foundation; story/storyboard to make the user journey tangible; video for all-hands/investor emotional pitch; visiontype (idealized prototype) to show a 3–5-yr future when teams need a concrete north star | Using one format for every audience, or polishing a video before the statement is even clear | Start with the concise written statement, then adapt to the audience; reinforce the same core message across formats |
| Vision statement form | Template — "For [target] who [need], [product] is a [category] that [benefit]. Unlike [alternative], we [differentiation]." — when you want rigor and comparability | Forcing the template when a one-line narrative ("entertain the world") lands harder | Draft with the template to force completeness, then cut to the most memorable phrasing |
| Single vs. multi-product laddering | Single-product: vision ≈ company vision, keep them tight | Multi-product: each product needs its own vision/strategy that ladders up without overlapping siblings; watch for products competing for the same users | Make the product↔company link explicit either way; define clear product boundaries in a portfolio |
| B2B vs. B2C emphasis | B2B: multi-stakeholder value, champions, integration/security/scalability, longer validation | B2C: individual decision-maker, viral/network effects, fast iteration | Match the strategic emphasis to the buyer reality; don't apply a B2C playbook to an enterprise product |
| New vs. existing/pivot inputs | New: market reports, competitor scan, problem interviews, small group (6–8), workshop or week-long sprint | Existing/pivot: usage analytics, feedback patterns, broader cross-functional stakeholders | Match inputs and the group to the stage; keep the core vision group ≤8 for decisiveness |
| Depth — full doc vs. summary | Full strategy doc (segments, value prop, differentiation, focus, trade-offs, metrics, rough timeline) for alignment; 2–3-sentence summary for daily internalization | Producing a long document nobody reads, or a one-liner with no rationale | Write both: the short version teams remember + the detailed version with reasoning and assumptions |
A few contexts flip several defaults at once: a multi-product B2B company needs portfolio laddering and multi-stakeholder strategy and a documented full strategy; a pre-PMF startup wants a tight written vision, one segment, one differentiation bet, and a lightweight strategy it expects to pivot.
Validate the result (orchestration)
Hand-offs name each lens by its installable skill name. Invoke one only if that skill is installed; if it isn't, this skill's own core already carries these rules — proceed without it rather than blocking.
After producing or revising the vision/strategy, hand it to the audit lenses rather than declaring it done. These are candidate lenses — posture per docs/orchestration-policy.md, or route the whole artifact through pm-product-review. Here assumption-rigor is the always-relevant lens (auto-runs) — strategy is bets; the other two are offered, tied to what the artifact actually contains. If the user invoked this skill for one specific thing, respect that scope.
pm-assumption-rigor-audit (auto-runs) — strategy rests on bets about market demand, the target segment's problem, and the durability of the differentiation: are those load-bearing assumptions evidenced or asserted? Flag the riskiest for testing.pm-okr-metric-validity-audit (offer — if it names metrics) — the success metrics, KPIs, and North Star: valid outcome measures tied to the strategy, or vanity/output metrics? (Build the OKR/KPI artifacts themselves with pm-okrs-kpis.)pm-prioritization-rigor-audit (offer — if it sets themes/focus areas) — the 3–5 focus areas are prioritization choices that decide what gets built: evidence-based and traceable, or a feature-factory wish list / HiPPO pick? (Run the prioritization decision itself through pm-prioritization.)
Composition (per docs/orchestration-policy.md §9): this artifact sits high on the PM ladder and mostly feeds from upstream inputs and feeds into downstream artifacts rather than building them — the competitive analysis (pm-competitive-analysis), problem (pm-problem-statement), and discovery (pm-discovery) are upstream inputs; the roadmap (pm-roadmap), OKRs (pm-okrs-kpis), and pricing/GTM (ux-pricing, pm-gtm-plan) are downstream (offer to produce next, don't auto-generate). If the audits surface a conflict, resolve back toward the purpose: a vision exists to guide and reject decisions, and a strategy exists to make focused trade-offs — if the vision can justify anything and the strategy says no to nothing, neither is done.
Common do/don't patterns
| ❌ Don't | ✅ Do |
|---|
| Write a buzzword poster ("best-in-class, seamless, world-leading") | Name a specific, user-centric, memorable destination that can reject a feature |
| Treat vision, strategy, roadmap, mission as the same thing | Keep the hierarchy distinct and ladder product → company |
| Write "strategy" as a list of features to build | Make deliberate choices: where to play, how to win, what you won't do |
| Target "everyone" | Pick one primary segment by job/outcome, win it, then expand |
| Claim you're better at everything | Choose one differentiation path with a defensible barrier ("can't or won't") |
| Omit the trade-offs | State explicitly what you deliberately won't do — that's the focus |
| List 10 focus areas | Hold to 3–5; more spreads teams thin |
| Run every strategy framework as ritual | Pick the 1–2 that answer the question |
| Use one vision format for all audiences | Start with the written statement, adapt to the audience |
| Change the vision every quarter | Stubborn on vision (3–5 yrs); flexible on strategy (quarterly); know vision-pivot vs. discovery-pivot |
| Ship vision/strategy unchecked | Hand off to okr-metric-validity + prioritization-rigor + assumption-rigor |
Source lessons (Uxcel)
