How to Connect User Problems to Business GoalsโDear Reader,โ Most people mistake Impact Mapping as a framework. As something they โhave toโ fill out. I encourage teams to treat it as a visual aid. Hereโs what it can do for you but what it relies on to be useful:
Here are five proven practices that improve your way of connecting business goals to user problems through Impact Mapping immediately: Use Specific ImpactsIt's easy to default to generic KPIs to set your Impact. But this will rarely help a product team with guiding their decisions. Instead, use specific Strategy Choices to define clear Impacts: Accelerate inventory through private sellers โ X% Inventory share from Private Sellers (instead of "Inventory Growth") Connect it to other PracticesImpact Mapping should guide the decision-making of existing practices, not start a parallel universe. The various levels of the map connect to various Discovery practices like Strategy/Alignment to frame the Impact and Actors, Research to arrive at proven Outcomes, and Ideation + Testing for the Output and Experiment levels. Another loose mapping is that the Impact should link to Company KRs or Annual Team KRs, whereas the Outcomes should inform your Quarterly team-level KRs Adapt and Bend itAlmost no way of working adds value to your work "out of the box." Modify it in whatever way possible. Like trying to reverse-engineer the gaps in your understanding by starting at the bottom (Outputs) and "mapping up." Or by adding more layers to the individual levels: One client added another overarching grouping of actors to group similar Actors by Geography. Treat it as a Range of Options, Not PromisesNeither the Outcomes nor the Outputs items on an Impact Map should be seen as promises. Instead, they outline the options you have. For the ๐๐ค๐ต๐ฐ๐ณ๐ด, that describes the possible groups of people for whom you ๐ค๐ฐ๐ถ๐ญ๐ฅ solve a problem. For the ๐๐ถ๐ต๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ด, that describes the options you have to improve the life of the various Actors. For the ๐๐ถ๐ตp๐ถ๐ต๐ด, that describes the ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ด๐ด๐ช๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฆ solutions you could pursue to drive the identified Outcomes. Prioritize Actor Outcomes over Business OutcomesThere's nothing wrong with aiming to improve a revenue target. But that doesn't mean a valid Outcome is to "put more items in my shopping basket." That's what the business wants. Instead, you have to understand what is in the userโs way of completing the actions that will contribute and lead to business success. "Continue shopping without having to leave the basket view first." โ Thank you for Practicing Product, Tim PS.: My thinking on Impact Mapping stands on the shoulders of giants like Goijko Adzic, through whom I uncovered this approach about 10 years ago and have iterated on it ever since. How to Dive Deeper into Product DiscoveryLearn how I helped companies like Deutsche Telekom and Forto hone their Product Discovery practices. I closely work with product organizations through workshops and coaching to introduce and adapt Product Discovery.
What did you think of this week's newsletter? As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the progress of their evidence-informed decisions. I identify and share the patterns among better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery. |
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
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