Before Business Requirments you need a Vision statement

This past week I sat down with a co-worker who took over an hour to describe a feature of an application we are building. After the download I was really impressed, this feature was the "killer app" and a high priority item in a product we were building. But I realized something was missing. We needed a way to distill his 40+ page document (filled with loose business requirements and wish list items) and his required 1 hour explanation to something more easily digested. What was missing was the Vision! I've talked about this process in the past and used the term "Definition statement". I was first turned onto this approach at Apple Tech Talk conference that discussed building applications for the iPhone.

The process was at times frustrating but it really forces you to step back and think about what you want to build, which features are important and where you need to make compromises. Our end game was to develop a one page definition or elevator speech that described our feature to the project team. The vision would guide development of this feature and serve as a mission statement or something to hold ourselves accountable to. Interestingly I just finished reading a blog around user experience, which referenced this approach was employed by the team developing Google Calendar (see screenshot above). Creating a Vision statement can be painful, but overall it is a really rewarding process that helps to get everyone on the same page.