When creating a product vision how far in advance do you plan?

Love this question! Planning for product vision is usually done in 3 horizons: 10 years, 3 years, and 1 year.

The 10-year vision is your guiding, north-star approach that will help guide all other investments overtime. The 3-year vision is a little more actionable and will help shape what the execution plan needs to be. 1 year vision is execution based on what can be accomplished in that current year.

I like to think of the vision to be at least a 5 year plan.

I start thinking about product vision FIRST. Right away. As soon as there is a thought of a product at all. That's why I like the Amazon PRFAQ template - it helps craft an outside in view before focusing on the features and product requirements. Otherwise, why are you building anything at all?

It depends on the maturity of the company, the product, and whether there is product-market fit.

At GitLab, for instance, we had a long-term vision that spanned 10 years, serving as a general statement of the direction we wanted to achieve over that time. This was a high-level guide, offering broad direction. Bringing this down to a more tangible level, the section directors focused on a 3-year plan, still high-level but with specific metrics (like revenue targets) that we aspired to reach. For yearly goals, group managers consolidated the vision for their stage, and individual product managers (ICs) created yearly, quarterly, and monthly plans for their groups. We frequently updated the monthly direction to ensure transparency and keep us on track. You can see more about this approach here.

For smaller startups that haven’t yet found product-market fit and may need to pivot often, such a structured process may not be necessary. It’s crucial to have a long-term vision that gives the team a sense of mission and purpose, but a detailed 3-year plan can be too rigid. Instead, the vision should focus more on milestones - such as securing the next funding round, reaching general availability (GA), or hitting key growth targets - rather than fixed timeframes.

However, even for startups, it is still important to set quarterly goals and metrics. These shorter-term objectives provide focus and allow teams to track progress more effectively. Quarterly goals help ensure the company is moving in the right direction, even if the long-term vision might evolve.

As the company matures and gains stability, the vision can evolve to incorporate longer-term goals and more precise timelines. Flexibility is key in the early stages, while structure becomes more valuable as the company and product mature.