Closing the Gap Between Outputs & Outcomes

Can B2B product teams deliver value beyond features?

Reality is hard.

It takes a long time to ship features so they should be right, why bother measuring when you have a bloated backlog?

The challenge is that too many features fail to deliver value. The sooner you learn what doesn’t work, the quicker you make figure out how to make it work.

This episode addresses how to close the gap between outputs and outcomes. Our guest is Rasmus Makwarth, Founder & CEO of Bucket, he shares hands-on tips on measuring what matters before it’s too late.

Listen to the episode for more insights. For those busy to invest 45 minutes, here are the 7 key takeaways:

1. High Standards, Low Initial Success

The bar is high. Customers don't want crappy products. Yet, the first version of your new features will probably miss the mark, iterating it fast is necessary to drive value.

2. Whole Team Engagement

PMs often become a bottleneck to measure outcomes. That's suboptimal as it removes accountability and creates invisible walls. Everyone in a product team should continuously measure results beyond shipping features.

3. Feedback Cycle Shortcomings

Deploying a feature doesn't mean getting the job done. It means making it available to customers. That's when the challenges start with adoption, engagement, and value creation. Yet, this short feedback cycle isn't always present, distracting teams from what truly matters.

4. What Bucket Solves

Rasmus founded Bucket out of personal pain. In the B2B world, it's hard to measure value beyond features. Bucket captures and analyzes user feedback immediately after feature deployment, facilitating rapid iterations and improvements based on user responses.

5. Continuous Learning Curve

You won't know whether a feature drives value in a few days—it's continuous. Rasmus highlights the importance of ongoing interaction between the product team and its users. This interaction enables continuous improvement and adaptation of features based on real-world usage and feedback.

6. Encouraging Full Team Collaboration

No more proxy communication with users :)

It's time to encourage entire teams (including engineers and designers) to receive direct feedback. This approach will reduce translation loss and allow for more accurate improvement targeting.

7. Breaking Down Silos

Collaboration beats processes.

Creating products is about understanding problems and exploring solutions. That can only fly when silos are gone. The team should have end-to-end responsibility to ensure they drive value. For that, they need proper tooling to measure outcomes, not just outputs.

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Have a lovely day,

David

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