The product vision is a critical element of a development project. A written statement is one thing, but it won’t be effective if it’s not communicated to stakeholders in the most effective way. 

How to communicate? 

Whilst people prefer to consume information in different ways, communicating a vision is all about engaging with people using powerful words, strong images and perhaps telling stories to help them understand. 

As you can see, there are what’s known as ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ ways of communicating which relate to the richness of the communication channel and the effectiveness of the communication. Perhaps unsurprisingly, where a product vision is concerned, the options that are ‘modeled’ are generally more effective than those that are ‘documented’. 

Crossing the chasm 

As a Product Owner, you need to be an evangelist for the product and the vision and, as part of this, accept that some stakeholders will engage with the product quicker than others. 

The ‘Crossing the Chasm’ concept can help to explain this challenge. 

It works by putting customers (or stakeholders) into different categories depending on how quickly they adopt new products. Some people love new things and want to use them as early as possible – think about the queues when new Apple products are released. However, others are more pragmatic, and only become interested as the products move into the mainstream and they can see a larger group using them. 

This model defines a chasm between the early adopters of the product and the early majority. Visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations and this is one of the challenges you’ll face in getting everybody on board and understanding the product vision. 

Here’s a video that helps to explain the concept of ‘crossing the chasm’. It shows a great example of perseverance at the Sasquatch festival in 2009. You’ll see the presenter – Geoffrey Moore – presents it as a consumer market example but it’s just as relevant to stakeholder communication. 

From time to time I’m asked, does the crossing the chasm phenomenon apply to consumer markets and the answer is in some parts ‘yes’ and in some parts it plays out a bit differently. I want to show you a video which shows you the dynamics of how chasms play out in consumer markets in a way that it really does accord with the original theory. So, let me start by starting the video here – this is of a dancing man at the Sasquatch Music Festival in 2009 and had some 550,000 downloads on YouTube and let’s just look at it as an opportunity to test out the chasm theory. 

So, here we have our man dancing in the middle of a field. Then you can see he’s trying to get people involved – this is an entrepreneurial action, and he’s demonstrating how one can really get into this music, admittedly through his own personal interpretation but he’s definitely doing it. You’ll notice the people around him, they’re studiously ignoring him; girl walks by him and makes no eye contact, another person – nothing. So, he’s doing it, he’s not stopping – he’s trying to recruit somebody here “you guys coming to play?” – “no”. 

That was an entrepreneur being rejected and, does he hang his head in shame? Does he quit? No, look at him; he’s absolutely committed to his entrepreneurial exercise. This is the right thing to do, he believes in himself, he believes in what he’s doing; but nobody is buying his act. But he’s not stopping, he’s got other moves, he’s working it. 

We’re almost a third of the way through the video. Think about this if you’re an entrepreneur; you’ve had to stay true to yourself for a third of your entire effort and nothing’s happened. 

Now, look here, all of a sudden, we’ve got a second person. This is his first customer – probably a technology enthusiast, if you notice they’re equally gifted at dancing – both of them are more with the head than with the body – but they’re doing it and the second guy is in, he’s like many early customers, he’s at least as enthusiastic as the entrepreneur and he’s even copying some of the moves. And we’ve got another one. 

This is still nerds, frankly, where this sort of thing, like Big Bang theory for three people. No actual women involved yet but we’re doing something and this guy’s so excited. Here come two more – so now this is beginning to look like a party. 

And now, look. Two women come into this thing and here comes some more. This thing is definitely getting some early market momentum. Notice the people in the foreground aren’t buying anything, they’re just still looking, don’t know what’s going on over here – still pre-chasm. But you can feel that things are starting to break, people are running in, they don’t want to start getting left out – that the pragmatist herd. Pragmatist people want to stay out until it’s safe to go in and then they all rush in. 

And now what we’re watching is the actual transition from a chasm to a tornado, in which case more and more people start pouring into the field, it gets harder and harder to be the people sitting down – they’re now realizing they’ve actually missed out here – they’re still being true to their conservative roots. 

Look at the crowds of people coming in here and, all of a sudden, we now have the equivalent of a whole new market that never existed. People on the other side are noticing them. This is the entire market fruition and this is what entrepreneurs dream of creating and they go forward in life and, remember, the first third to a half of this phenomenon took place with just one guy dancing in a field, trying to get people to buy in. And now you can’t even see that guy; it’s become a mass movement or, as the video says, ‘it just takes one person to get the party started’.   

You’ve got an important role to play in ‘getting your party started’ and the way you communicate the vision is a critical part of this. 

The elevator pitch 

You might have heard about this as a sales technique – you’ve got as long as you’re in an elevator to explain your product to a stranger.