What is mean by Agile Vision Statement

In my previous articles i have given the information about the different phases of Agile process and Sprint Zero of Agile scrum process. In this article i would like to give you the information about the Agile Vision Statement with multiple examples of how to write Agile Vision Statement in detail. The Vision statement is most important step for Agile development project because without vision statement we cant start work on the project. It will give the base path for project initiation and completion. The Agile Vision Statement is part of initiation process for scrum zero.

Sprint Zero : Starting with Vision Statements :

As i have already explained about Sprint zero process in detail . After we complete the on-boarding of team we require to start with vision statement. It is most important part or starting point to kick off the project. So we have question in mind that what exactly mean by vision statement and why this is so much important to kick off or to start the project?

Project Vision : The Project vision statement is important statement which will give us quick summary about how the project or the product will support the company or organization. You can say that it is the statement which will give you information about the goals of product or project.

The vision statement simply gives us idea about the project in one simple statement where we can explain the best meet the needs of multiple stakeholders. Every project wants to go with proper direction in initial phases. That will be the best way to succeed your project. The Vision statement always guides us for choosing current and future course of action in high level.

Initiation phase for Sprint Zero :

Steps to write vision statement :

In this section i would like to give you multiple steps to write vision statement. The product owner is responsible for knowing the project about the goals of the project or product.The vision statement will give us “what we are trying to achieve” so that all the teams like development team,scrum master and stakeholders.

Kindly check the following important guidelines to create a vision statement :

1. Vision Statement always should be unambiguous.
2. Vision statement will be easy to understand and clear.
3. Vision Statement should give information about organization culture and its values.
4. Vision statement should  be rational / realistic.
5. Vision Statement should be shorter so that they are easier to memorize.

The following are different stages to create a vision statement

1.Understanding the project and develop the objective of project :

The first and important step to create a vision statement is to understand the project objective. We require to check multiple questions related to product or project. The questions are as follows :

1.How will the project or product will benefit the company?

2.Who are the end users and stakeholders of the project or product?

3.How is this product/project similar to already existing products?

4.How is this project or product different than already existing products/projects and how company will get benefit of it?
 

Example :

Lets take previous example where we require to build E-Commerce website for the Nordics countries.So we require to analyse and ask the questions given above. The analysis will be as follows :

1.How will the project or product will benefit the company?

–We are creating E commerce site first time for the company so all third party dependencies for Nordic clients will be removed by this.

2.Who are the end users and stakeholders of the project or product?

-All Nordic clients and users are the users and stakeholders we have not yet got any.

3.How is this product/project similar to already existing products?

-We have website for Asia so we can use skeleton for that website so that we can reduce the cost of designing.

4.How is this project or product different than already existing products/projects and how company will get benefit of it?

-The Website will get all the clients from Nordic countries.
 

2.Create a simple draft version of vision statement :

Once you ask the multiple questions related to project or product second step is to have good understanding of vision in first go. We require to create multiple vision statements and we need to discuss direct with customer.Here face to face communication is more important.In this section i would like to give you draft of vision statement ; you can say that as skeleton of vision statement.

Template :

For: «The customers we are targetting»

Who: «needs the product or project»

The: «product/project name»

Is a: «product/Project category»

That: «product benefit. Reason to buy»

Unlike: «competitors»

Our product: «differentiation or value proposition»

At the end we require to write company strategy and how it will be beneficial to the organization in following format :

This supports our company strategy to «insert name or description of strategy»

The above is standard template to design the vision statement.

3.Revise,validate the vision statement :

This is another important step to create the vision statement for the project. We require to give the time to multiple teams to think on the vision statement correctly and they also have right to contribute in vision statement.In this phase we require to send draft version to multiple teams like : 1. Project stakeholders 2.Scrum master 3. Team lead 4.Scrum team 
Find out what other people think; Whether the statement is clear, if they understand the objectives of the products or project and if they have any additional input.
 
Take the feedback and revise the vision statement accordingly. Do this as many times as it takes until everybody is clear about what you want to convey.
 

4. Finalize the vision statement

After your final revision is done and dusted, print it out (or write it down) and hang it up somewhere prominent where you and the scrum team can see it. Depending on your organizational structure you may need official sign-off from a senior manager. However, this shouldn’t be a problem if the last step was executed well.
 
Example :

For the Ecommerce project we have created following statement as vision statement ,

“We intend to provide our customers across Nordics with the best online shopping experience end to end, with a smart website compatible across different mobile devices, easy-to-follow instructions, clear and secure payment methods using mobile money ensuring excellent customer experience. Unlike contemporary online stores, we will offer huge variety of products yet unique collections. We also accept orders for customized products at competitive prices.   With our effective distributed warehouse, we are able to take the products to the customers at an optimal time and cost. We want to reach the $5 million mark by 2022 and want to be the “most reliable” e-commerce portal. We also want to capture to the all Europe market including baltics and eastern Europe by 2025”

Hope the above vision statement will give us clear idea about the vision and what we need to achieve in future.

Following are multiple things scrum team needs to recommend ,

Let’s look at the Scrum’s recommendation about the vision statement.

• Scrum master will make sure that the statement is shared with all stakeholders and product owner.
• Face to face communication or video conferencing meeting will be the best way to launch the vision statement.

Hope this article will help you to create a vision statement in agile environment.