PV125™

Defining product vision

I created PV125™ to help guide the product vision planning process because there was no other commercially available vision engineering tool out there. What started out as a tool to help my own team has now been used by companies around the world.

It can be used to define overall product vision and strategy for entire organisations or it can also be used to refine individual product features with the depth and breadth required for successful launch.

It’s a democratic, strategic, deep methodology and comes with the right balance of flexibility and rigidity in order to be relevant to different organisations and stages.

How it works

Played like a card game, in a workshop setting, the PV125™ model is based on three parameters:

  • 5x key ‘contexts’ - What, How, Who, Why, and Where

  • 5x key ‘interrogations’ per context, specific to strategy creation

  • 5x key timeline ‘lenses’ per interrogation - Now, Next, Later, Eventually, and Never

The ‘fives’ combine (indeed, they are cubed, which is where the ‘125’ comes from) to form a robust set of 125 considerations, actions, and decision points that lead to the definition of actionable product vision and strategy.

The workshop is best conducted with Product, Design, Engineering, Product Marketing, and Customer / GTM teams represented but it can be tailored for various participant mixes.

Getting started

Facilitated workshops

I regularly facilitate PV125™ sessions with teams / companies looking to create, reinvigorate, or even completely renew their product vision. They can be run in a few different ways:

  • At your office, offsite as part of an already-planned leadership event, or at a dedicated external venue designed for collaborative working

  • I recommend a minimum of two whole days, with an optimal timeframe of three full days (or four in the event of an entirely new product vision / for an entirely new company, product, or team)

  • As a one-off or as a recurring annual strategic check-in

Buy a DIY kit

Where you have an experienced Product leader and / or an experienced workshop facilitator in-house, the PV125™ session can be run by them. I can provide a kit containing everything you need for success:

  • The full deck of PV125™ cards (five themes x five questions x five timelines)

  • A further 125 blank cards for the commitments / decisions made

  • The PV125™ Worksheet document template

  • The PV125™ Themes template for post-session analysis and execution

  • Full instructions for leading the workshop successfully

“We just ran the PV125™ session this week. We set aside 3 days with our product, design, and UX teams and we honestly accomplished about a month’s worth of work in that one session. Thank you for such a great structure. It pulled out all of our thinking and really helped us get to where we needed to be. We’ve gone from having no clarity on product vision and how we’ll get there - to a full vision and strategy that will serve us over the next 12, 24, and 36 months. Anyone considering using the PV125™ method should 100% do it.”