The Art of Project Management

4.4. The key points to cover

At the heart of a vision should be answers to many of the following questions. It's common for these topics to be major headings in a vision document or listed at the end as part of a Q&A section. (Although, when these questions are not addressed in the core document and are made into an appendix, expect to see engineers flip to the last pages, which implies something negative about the strength of the writing that preceded it.)

Answering many of these questions demands involvement from marketing, customer research, product design, or other experts who are available to you—and this should not be an afterthought. Some of the following questions are intentionally similar to questions asked in the previous chapter on planning. The difference is that these questions are angled heavily toward priorities and decisions, rather than context and understanding. During planning, there was room for exploration, but the vision is obligated to take a stand and be decisive.

• What is the one sentence that defines this specific release of this specific project? (This is often called the vision statement, or for the cynics on the team, the visionless statement. Examples for this are offered shortly.)

• How does this project contribute to the goals of the organization? Why is this project more relevant than others that also might contribute to the goals of the organization?

• What scenarios/features for customers are essential to this project? (Priority 1.)

• What scenarios/features ...