Great question. Oftentimes customers’ requests for added capabilities or improvements to current features are already in your product roadmap. When customer feedback corresponds with your product plan, use the volume of requests for a certain feature to prioritize stack and rank, perhaps bumping one feature up and another one down as you plan upcoming releases.

As your company grows and you receive increasingly more feedback from your customers, it can be difficult to decide what’s really worth implementing. Look for recurring requests from customers to cut through the noise.

Your product vision should not be a plan that shows how to reach your goal. Instead, you should keep the product vision and the product strategy – the path towards the goal – separate. This enables to change your strategy while staying grounded in your vision. (This is called to pivot in Lean Startup.)

At the same time, a vision is the prerequisite for choosing the right strategy. If you don’t have an overarching goal then you cannot decide how you best get there with your product team.