Understanding Purpose

Purpose is composed of three elements: a product vision, a team mission, and a set of mission tests. The product vision describes the desired future your product will help to create. The team mission describes how your work contributes to creating that future. Mission tests help assess the team’s progress toward that future. Taken together, these components provide inspiration and meaning for the work.

Product Vision

Your organization and your team need a reason to do the work. The product vision provides a shared picture of the desired future when your customer is using your product or service. It serves as the focal point for making a new reality. An inspiring product vision amplifies the significance of the work and engages the team. In contrast to an organizational vision that sets business direction, a product vision applies only to a single product and describes an external view of the product’s impact, including:

• How the product will change the user’s world: customer service representatives will experience their work as highly productive and no longer engage in wasteful, tedious work.

• What problem the product solves or what benefit the product delivers and to what people: customer service interactions will continuously gain customer loyalty and market share.

• The reason for the team and its work effort to exist and the overarching impact you want to manifest: our highly productive customer support representatives create customer loyalty and repeat business through the quality and speed of their interactions.

A product vision illustrates the ultimate expression of customer value. It’s why you support this work.

The product manager creates and owns the product vision, and sponsors, funders, and strategic decision makers support the product manager in this work. This group might develop the product vision by following the next steps on the product roadmap. It might envision something new to disrupt the marketplace. In any case, the product manager drives the effort.

Team Mission

The team mission describes your team’s unique contribution toward achieving the product vision. If the product vision clarifies why, the team mission clarifies what the work is. It follows the agile maxim of just enough documentation by providing just enough information to achieve focus.

A useful mission establishes five critical pieces of information:

• The product’s customers: for XYZ Company’s customer service reps.

• The team’s actions and outcomes: the CSR project will develop and deploy.

• What the product or service the team will deliver: a software system for tracking customer interactions and concerns.

• The differentiating attributes of the product or service: the product will increase the speed of satisfying service to customers.

• The value of the product to the customer: this new system will enable customer service representatives to focus on customer interactions and gain greater ability to connect customers with the solutions they need.

Each team mission is unique. It describes how this team will turn the product vision into reality. It clarifies boundaries for the work the team will perform. It does the same for everyone associated with the effort. It clarifies the most important nonfunctional requirements. It both directs and limits tactical choices. The mission evolves over time as the team and others learn more about customer and business needs. The team commits to accomplishing the mission.

A group of key product decision makers develops a rough draft of the team mission. The group bases the draft on its understanding of what it’ll take to please customers and help the business thrive. The team knows the most about the effort and skill it’ll take to do the work. The product manager and team share ownership of the team mission. In collaboration, they define the first draft and all later versions as they evolve.

Occasionally, many teams contribute to a common product vision. The unique missions of these teams combine to achieve the vision.

Mission Tests

Mission tests specify the indicators of progress toward successful mission achievement and identify the critical few indicators of progress. Mission tests itemize the qualitative and quantitative intentions that help define progress toward being done.

The team and product manager execute mission tests on predetermined dates. Through the tests, everyone examines assumptions and hypotheses about the work of the mission. For example, mission tests can measure:

• Productivity improvement

• Strengthened capacity or capabilities

• Reduced turnover costs

• Other cost-reduction measures

• Other contributions to the bottom line

Mission tests can assess internal or external progress. Internal tests describe what the team will gain or learn as a result of the work. For example, internal tests might measure:

• Downward trends for defect rates released into production

• Increases in team members’ reports of overall job satisfaction

• Higher satisfaction with iteration and release product demos, reported by the product manager and stakeholders

External tests focus beyond the boundaries of team authority and responsibility. For example, eternal tests might measure:

• Instances of the product in use

• Customer satisfaction rates

• Market penetration

• Public perception of the brand

• Revenue goals

• Other top-line improvements

• Cost savings

Examples of specific external test markers include:

• 20 percent reduction in support calls for the product by FYE

• 10 percent increase in customer satisfaction ratings by Q3

• $25K savings over the first quarter by eliminating wait-time waste while CSRs look up information for customers

Like the product vision and team mission, mission tests clarify understandings about desired outcomes. Core teams use mission tests to inform decisions about their work. When teams check their mission test results, they take the time to learn and plan. They can plan for continuing on the same path, or choose to adapt based on the new information.

In the team chartering workshop, the product manager proposes rough-draft mission tests. Product managers, the core team, and stakeholders share ideas and refine the tests. Team members consider their collaborative capacity and capability. The team decides if it can commit to the mission tests as ongoing metrics. The team and the product manager jointly own the mission tests.