How to Identify
|
Dear Reader,
An Impact is a metric that describes the achievement of a company- or department-level priority. It's a lagging indicator that changes as a result of multiple compounding efforts, but is not linkable to one individual feature or activity. Most Impacts fall into one of five categories:
The specificity of your Impact determines how clear the starting context for structuring the lower-level elements of your Impact Map is. "Increase revenue" is unspecific and doesn't help a team narrow its options. They could consider every user segment and would have to work with very broad explorative questions in qualitative interviews.
"Achieve +34% margins from self-service Australian agency customers," however, is more specific and gives teams a concrete starting point about the target market and the business shift that should be achieved. The team would have a specific target audience they could recruit for interviews, surveys, or analytics reports. They would focus their initial exploration on the additional services or tools these customers use, and they could start exploring which additional features to offer in their own product to increase margin from existing customers.
Your Impact provides a strategic starting context that guides how you'll adapt your Discovery approach. It doesn't matter whether this context emerges from a fully formed strategy document or a pressing business need—what matters is that it orients your Discovery decisions and helps you adapt your methods to what truly needs to be learned.
The Impact keeps Product Discovery targeted by giving teams segmentation criteria for the following Actor level of an Impact Map, so that they don't get lost in exploring every possible segment.
These exemplary Impacts can kickstart your inspiration:
When you're ready to define your Impact, two practical sources can provide immediate clarity:
Product Strategy Statements often contain implicit Impact metrics. For example, if your Product Strategy says "We break into the market of Asian SMEs by improving the self-service capabilities for setup and integrations," you could derive an Impact like "Increase completed self-service integration setups by Asian customers by 25%."
Company or Department OKRs frequently contain metrics that can serve as Discovery Impacts. For example, if your Company OKRs include "Reduce time from lead to demo by 50%," this could be adopted as-is for your Discovery Impact you're contributing to.
Remember that your Impact doesn't need to be perfect to be useful—what matters is that it provides enough specificity to guide your next Discovery decisions (like which user segments to consider for problem exploration). You can always refine it as you learn more.
Did you enjoy the newsletter? Please forward it. It only takes two clicks. Creating this one took two hours.
Thank you for Practicing Product,
Tim
PS: My coffee discovery of the week was this amazing creation by elbgold, which I was able to pick up and enjoy in person this week, just before an all-day Metrics Tree workshop in Hamburg.
Learn 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.
Learn more about my Discovery Consulting |
As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.
I focus on 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.
This is the last newsletter before my annual summer writing break. I will be back in your inbox on August 17. Have a wonderful summer! ☀️ Product Practice #370 My 2025 Mid-Year Review READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jul 4, 2025 READING TIME 4 min & 06 sec Dear Reader, What I focused on in the first half of 2025 Writing and Editing My Book After a big writing push from February to April, I was able to share the first complete draft of my book Real Progress - How to Connect Product Strategy, OKRs,...
Product Practice #369 Product Discovery Triangulation READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 29, 2025 READING TIME 4 min & 47 sec Dear Reader, To get to an informed conviction through Product Discovery, product teams often need to be creative. It can be challenging for Product Discovery collaborators to make real progress, especially when they lack an environment that provides the right amount of guidance without being too constraining for Adaptable Product Discovery.That’s why today’s newsletter is...
Product Practice #368 How a Product Vision Board saved my Strategy READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 20, 2025 READING TIME 3 min & 53 sec Dear Reader, I once led a newly formed product team that aimed to develop a product to increase the monetization of a specific user segment. I co-led a long Discovery effort that validated and scoped this product. At one point during our Delivery journey, my boss approached the team while I was on leave and asked them what they were trying to accomplish....