Connecting Product Outcomes to Business Outcomes

Using Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Trees

Photo by Simon Fitall on Unsplash

This week we talk about product teams and outcomes. Although these are common topics, they were are top of mind recently due to a podcast from The Product Experience. In it, they interview Nacho Bassino, formerly of Spotify, now a product leadership coach. Access the complete pocast, here.

You won’t be surprised to hear me say that we need to move beyond “product management theater,” which is often more project management — managing requests and finding a way forward — than product management.

The role of a product manager is to consider the impact we can have with our team, thinking from a business perspective and focusing on outcomes over output, Bassino argues. To do this, we should draw a clear connection between the team’s outcomes and the organization’s business outcomes. I agree.

To do this, we must:

• Have role clarity. The difference between a product manager and a project manager must be clear. (And clear to everyone, not just the people in those roles)
• Avoid letting frameworks like SAFe put the focus exclusively on execution. Instead, we need to provide another way to think about or discuss our work.
• Build our storytelling around how a feature or an effort…