What came first, the user segment or the key result?

For the last few months I’ve been back and forth in my mind on this question, I've changed my stance several times and I think I'm now getting to the bottom of it.

Back in January I attended a great Product uncoference, organised by Steve Messer , Matt Jukes and a team of other great public sector champions.

The first unconference session, pitched and hosted by Jessica B. was about Product visions. Jessica B. referenced the different frameworks she'd worked with and seen across Product Management, and opened the floor to the forum to discuss their challenges and approaches. Naturally, lots of questions followed - how do we improve them, what form should they take and a question that stuck with me because I felt very confident about it at the time - 'how do you select the user segment you focus on when you arrive at strategy?'. This question has subsequently led me to this blog post and several deeper thoughts about how I organise my Product vision.

How I’ve been organising my Product visions for the last few years has always included the user segment at a higher level than I’ve seen others arranging theirs more recently. This approach has always felt natural to me.

Typically we all start with 'why' followed by the 'how'. Its the order of the 'who' and the 'what', or strategy and user segments respectively, that I'm now questioning.

My reason for having users high up in my vision hierarchy is you’re going to select a user segment(s) to prioritise, typically based on what objective you want to achieve and the maturity of a product in its lifecycle. This should then steer your strategy and your key results should be measured against this user segments success, essentially solving problems for users will enable us to meet our objectives. This way, you’re working in a much tighter success and iteration loop and strategy is much clearer as the scope for variables across user segments is significantly reduced. Focussing on solving one user segments problem at time. I’ve always had a lot of confidence in this approach but after thinking about it more in depth, hearing and reading what others have to say, the answer definitely doesn’t feel as obvious to me anymore.

I’m a visual person so to best explain this further I’ve drawn out how I see the difference in approaches. The approach I’ve previously taken labelled A and the other version I'm talking about labelled B. As you can see in A, the key results stem from the user segments, which stem from the objectives. B is how I am now typically seeing others lay out their visions and strategies.

This will likely seem like a trivial difference for most people reading this, but for me it's vital when it comes to strategy and measuring success in Product. The next graphic should show how it makes a difference in practice. My Product visions are hierarchical, the lower items link into and are led by what sits directly above it.

Looking at it objectively, it feels like A has a much more user centred approach. What matters here is solving problems for users to meet objectives, which then dictates the 'what' or strategy involved. But does this come at a cost of only working in context of potentially a smaller group of users at one time? Or if you're only focussed on the key results for one user segment, could you potentially be negatively effecting another segment but not focussing on their results as well?

On the contrary, B has key results in the context of all users and leads the strategy. But, does this come at a cost of being 'set' when approaching a problem across multiple unique user segments? Is leading with strategy too closed minded to solving a bigger problem for users?

The other difference in practice is that when measuring key results for all users, if you have a large user base then small incremental metrics are harder to track. Impact should typically be easier to see when looking at metrics for specific user segments.

Ultimately, the question I have is should key results be contextual to specific user segments? Or should it not matter, as long as key results and objectives are being met.

Are these approaches just the same in the long run but different in the short term, as ultimately they are all leading to completing an objective?

Please accept my apologies if you've read this far and thought I was going to present an answer. In Netflix documentary fashion unfortunately I don't have an answer, but there will be a sequel. I'm hoping that this blog post will trigger some conversations and observations from other Product people working with similar challenges. If you have a view or anything to add, please comment away.

I'll be posting another blog shortly about how we put together our Product visions at Essex County Council, I will look to add any insights I get from this post into that.

Thanks!