How do you translate business objectives to product objectives?

Business objectives help the broader team and business understand if they've achieved the intended impact but are difficult for a product team to use sprint to sprint for a few reasons:

• Revenue isn't super actionable for the team: if it goes down or up, it's not immediately obvious what actions the team should take in response.
• Business outcomes are often lagging metrics: length of sales cycles, churn, and expansion all impact revenue, and this takes time. It doesn't enable the team to take new actions in response to these sprint by sprint.
• A complete focus on financial metrics might cause unintended behavior: We've all heard about the Wells Fargo example where they had a KR of selling eight products to every customer, which led to teams signing up customers for products without their knowledge. With business outcomes or financial metrics as the only objectives given to product teams, they could be pulled into short-term thinking to hit revenue growth instead of focusing on the customer behaviors they need to change. With so much revenue not controlled by the product team itself (sales cycle, pricing, discounting, renewals, expansions), teams should be looking at sub-metrics that are more leading and actionable. 

To translate business objectives to product objectives, I'm a big fan of Josh Seiden's book, Outcomes over Output as a helpful framing. In this book, he defines an outcome as a change in customer behavior that drives business results. 

Using this framing, teams can ask these questions to find product objectives and associated metrics:

• What are the user and customer behaviors that drive business results?
• How can we get people to do more of those behaviors?
• How do we know we're right?

1. First, you need to have a clear understanding of the business objectives. This includes understanding the mission, vision, and values of the business, as well as any specific goals or targets that the business is trying to achieve.

2. Data annotation can also play a critical role in achieving the product objectives. For example, if one of the product goals is to develop a machine-learning model that can accurately identify objects in images, then data annotation will be necessary to provide the labeled data needed to train the model.

3. Once you have a clear understanding of the business objectives, you can identify the product goals that will help the business achieve those objectives. This involves identifying the key products or services that the business offers and determining how those products can help the business achieve its goals.

4. Once you have identified the product goals, you need to determine the metrics that will be used to measure progress toward those goals. These metrics should be specific, measurable, and tied to the business objectives.

5. Once you have identified the product goals and metrics, you need to prioritize the product objectives based on their importance to the business. This involves determining which objectives are critical to achieving the business objectives and which ones are less important.

6. Finally, you need to create an action plan that outlines how you will achieve the product objectives. This should include specific tasks, timelines, and responsibilities for each objective.