Why you should map outcomes to impact metrics

Put your outcomes in context

An outcome is a measure of human behavior. These behaviors don’t happen in a vacuum. Something happens before each one. Something happens after. As you set out to determine this quarter’s key results, consider creating a user journey map or user story map for the product or experience you have control over as a way to visualize the paths your customers take.

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you are visualizing the explicit connection between what customers do in the system and how the company makes money. You’re doing this without mentioning any kind of specific features or launches. The conversation you are mapping is focused exclusively on the customer, their actual behavior in the product and the various ways that impacts the organization’s impact metrics

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Many teams aren’t able to reliably predict specific customer paths through the product.

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If you find yourself in this situation you have at least two options:

Add a curious data scientist or business analyst to the team.

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Guess. Yep, that’s right. You know your product and your customer well enough to take a guess. You won’t be 100% wrong. You’ll likely not be 100% right either but it gives you a direction to explore.

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Aligning teams and stakeholders on outcomes

This exercise paints a clear picture of how to positively impact the success of the company. It removes any meaningful conversation around features and instead focuses both team and stakeholders on changing customer behaviors. When the teams have an approved set of outcomes to work towards they can write meaningful, relevant and achievable goals using OKRs.

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Posted on February 15, 2022