“Product Goals are measurable stepping stones designed to push the threshold of knowledge towards our Product Vision.” — Product Samurai
One of the more challenging aspects of Product Management. Product Goals are the chief mechanism that helps Product Owners create a tangible relationship between the work we do today and the business strategy.
Where the Business Vision is often holistic and describes a moonshot, the Business Strategy serves to make that more concrete:
Many companies use Objective and Key Results (OKRs), Key Result Areas (KRAs) or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to forecast and set business goals.
Akin to that, Product Goals provide measurable guidance towards the Product Vision. If your company only has a single product or service, these will be very much alike. Product goals connect the work on the Product, (as recorded in the Product Backlog,) to the Product Vision.
Each Sprint Goal should contribute some value, a step, toward the Product Goal. Metrics from Evidence Based Management (EBM) will help Product Owners to see the impacts they're making and provide evidence that their investments of the team's time is making the difference the business strategy asks for.
Who are we building this for?
What problem does it solve for them?
What proof do we have for this?
Why do we care?
What assunmptions do we have?
How will we measure the change in persona behaviour and the impact we have when we solve this problem?
A Product Owner may have multiple objectives, but the product overall should have only one goal at a time. This provides focus for the team. If the goal is found to be unatainable or the market changes and the goal is no longer relevant or valuable, then it's time to set a new Product Goal.
Lukassen, C. (2020) Product Goal. Online at: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/product-goal
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