Using Impact Mapping to Navigate Product Discovery

Product Discovery is rarely straightforward—let alone predictable. There’s no universal playbook for doing it “right.” Because of that, product teams need to build a strong sense of adaptability. They need to know how to pick the right tools, apply the right techniques, and adjust on the fly.

In most organizations, Discovery methods vary depending on team structure, culture, and goals. But one theme comes up again and again when you talk to product managers about what’s holding them back:

Connecting insights and evidence to decisions that lead to real product impact.

Discovery requires a high degree of flexibility—and structure. This article shows how Impact Mapping can give you both.

What You’ll Learn in This Article

• Navigating the Uncertainty of Product Discovery

• Starting Your Impact Map with WHY This Discovery Matters

• Identifying WHO Has a Problem Worth Solving

• Mapping HOW You Need to Change Behaviors

• Prioritizing WHAT Solutions Might Drive That Change

• Validating Solutions to Build Confidence in Success

• Connecting the Dots Across Discovery with Impact Mapping

Navigating the Uncertainty of Product Discovery

At its core, Product Discovery is about surfacing new user segments—and getting clearer about existing ones. It’s about understanding user behavior and turning insights into action through iteration and learning.

But even if you’re doing all that well, there’s still a challenge:

Keeping it structured when things get messy.

So, what if there were a way to organize all those moving pieces—insights, goals, behaviors, solutions—in a way that:

• Aligns your team and stakeholders

• Reduces noise from premature feature debates

• Helps you document evidence and decision paths

• Keeps the focus on understanding the problem before building the solution

One of the most effective tools I’ve used to do exactly that is Impact Mapping.

Jumping straight from business goals to feature lists is one of the fastest ways to derail meaningful Discovery. The five-level structure of an Impact Map gives teams just enough constraint to stay outcome-focused—without getting boxed in.

It encourages you to map the inputs and insights of your discovery work, align on what comes next, and build from a clear understanding of the problem space first.

Why Impact Mapping Works for Product Discovery

Impact Mapping is a practical bridge that helps product teams connect two things stakeholders care deeply about:
progress toward business goals and specific feature ideas.

The original concept has been around since 2012—and builds on foundations that go back even further. What I’ll focus on here is a version adapted to better support problem-focused Product Discovery.

It’s a framework that’s helped me and many teams bring clarity to the chaos. And like any great tool, it builds on the work of others—most notably, Gojko Adzic and those who came before.

The Five Levels of an Impact Map

Let’s break down the five levels of an Impact Map and how they guide product teams through Product Discovery.

1. Start with WHY This Product Discovery Matters

This first level is all about defining the context and purpose behind your Discovery work. It helps the team tie their actions back to a broader business goal.

This is where I use the term impact—because the metric at this level should reflect how success looks for a specific strategic priority at the company or department level.

You can usually derive this from:

• Product Management OKRs

• Product Strategy decisions

• Or in some cases, your Product Vision

Ideally, this gets captured in a shared alignment tool—like a Mission Briefing—so everyone understands why this Discovery effort exists in the first place.

To get this right, it’s essential to understand the difference between a Product Strategy and a Product Vision. Confusing the two leads to vague goals and unclear priorities.

Because impact metrics are often lagging indicators—and take time to reflect change—they’re not ideal for guiding day-to-day work. That’s why product teams also rely on Outcomes: measurable behavior changes in users or stakeholders that indicate you’re heading in the right direction.

These Outcomes give you something more immediate and actionable to track—so you can actually see whether your work is moving you closer to that high-level impact.

This metric should help the team frame its mission around a current strategic priority. After all, Product Discovery isn’t something you do just to stay busy—it should serve a clear business purpose.

2. WHO Has a Problem That Matters to Your Discovery?

Once you’ve established the impact, the next step is to identify the actors—the people or roles who are experiencing a problem that’s holding back progress toward that impact.

It’s usually easy to list a few obvious ones right away. But the real value comes from uncovering second-degree actors—those that aren’t immediately visible but still affect your product’s success.

These could include:

• Relatives or companions of your users

• Admin or support roles

• Read-only or passive users

• Internal stakeholders

You don’t want to limit your view to just customers or end users. Internal roles may be just as relevant depending on the problem you’re solving.

That’s what makes actor mapping useful—it creates a structure that pushes you to look beyond power users and identify adjacent actors who might influence outcomes.

This should always align with your strategic audience segments, as defined by your Product Strategy. That’s what helps you filter and focus on the problems that really matter right now.

The concept of differentiating power users from adjacent actors comes from several practitioners at Reforge. From a Discovery perspective, it highlights a common issue:

You can’t look ahead because you're too focused on your current, most important user segment.

That’s where adjacent actors come in. They represent how user roles can evolve—whether through product usage, monetization behavior, or shifting needs.

While not every actor in your Impact Map needs to be an adjacent actor, identifying two or three can unlock important insights—especially when you can quantify how users move between roles or states.

This level, along with the upcoming HOW level, can serve as a map of your problem space. As new user behaviors or roles emerge, the question of whether to pursue them can be answered by evaluating them against the structure of your Impact Map.

3. Mapping HOW You Have to Change Behaviors

This level answers a core Discovery question:
What user behavior needs to change to help us move the needle on our impact?

Here’s the catch—there’s no shortcut for this.

You won’t find a list of perfect outcomes to choose from. Outcomes are surfaced through research—both qualitative and quantitative—and interpreted through the lens of your product context.

Users won’t tell you how they need to behave differently so your business can grow. That’s your job to figure out.

To get there, you’ll need to understand:

• Current user workflows

• Pain points and inefficiencies

• Goals and motivations

But don’t try to solve everything. Focus only on the behaviors that are likely to influence your defined impact.

As Josh Seiden puts it,

“An outcome is a change in human behavior that creates value.”

Your impact metrics won’t shift unless the right behaviors do first. Outcomes are how you define and track those specific changes.

It’s okay to start rough—listing general directional changes like “faster,” “less frequent,” or “more consistent.” But as you refine your Impact Map:

• Narrow it down to the most meaningful Outcomes

• Assign measurable values

• Track them as part of your Product Management OKRs

The real strength of defining Outcomes at the HOW level is that they can double as prompts for the next stage of your Impact Map. Try rephrasing each Outcome as a “How might we…” question for your ideation sessions:

“How might we [team goal] [actor] [outcome]?”
Example: “How might we enable real estate agents to create a real estate exposé from their smartphones?”

This also works as a quick check: if your statement already sounds like a feature, you’ve probably drifted away from an actual Outcome.

Once defined, these Outcomes become the foundation for tracking your product team’s progress. You can use them when co-creating OKRs with your team and cross-functional peers.

Because of its structure and ability to reveal gaps in user understanding, your Impact Map can also be a valuable input when setting product team OKRs.

4. Creating and Prioritizing WHAT Solutions Could Drive Behavior Change

This is where most people tend to get excited—but ironically, it’s also one of the least critical levels of the Impact Map.

The purpose here is simple:

Identify potential solutions that could drive the behavior changes defined earlier.

It’s where you step into the solution space—but with guardrails.

To get the most from this level, run cross-functional ideation sessions with your core team, stakeholders, and any collaborators involved in Product Discovery. Focus on remixing ideas and building on one another’s input. If you’re doing it right, this level will fill up fast.

But here’s the catch: just because a solution shows up on your Impact Map doesn’t mean it should be built.

Think of this level as a sandbox—a place to explore options, not commit to them.

When you wrap up ideation, it’s worth explicitly stating that inclusion on the map doesn’t equal green light. Managing expectations here can save you a lot of friction later.

What does matter is prioritization.

You’ll always have more ideas than time. Use lightweight prioritization tools like ICE scoring to help decide what to test next—and what to park for later.

Adding a structured prioritization method—like the Idea Validation Grid or similar tools—gives your team an objective yet flexible way to decide which ideas are actually worth testing. These tools focus on the value of the idea itself, not just whether the test is easy to run.

5. Validating Solutions to Determine Confidence in Success

The ideas listed on the WHAT level of the Impact Map aren’t promises. They’re possibilities. That’s why it’s important to close every ideation session with a reminder:

Just because something made it onto the map doesn’t mean it’s getting built.

This final level is where you test those ideas—not based on instinct, but through experiments.

The purpose here is to answer a single question:
Should we pursue this solution at all?

Customize this level of the map to match your experiment structure. Be clear about:

• The assumptions you’re testing

• The evidence you need to move forward

• And how you’ll document your results

This applies to both qualitative and quantitative experiments. Once you’ve validated enough ideas, use that insight to filter down the list of WHAT items—and focus on the ones that truly show promise.

At this stage, I recommend that teams zoom in on validation using structured tools—like the Idea Validation Grid or any other framework focused on testing ideas, not just listing them.

Connecting the Dots of Product Discovery Through Impact Mapping

Here’s a simple test to evaluate any new feature idea against your Impact Map:

Can you clearly tell the story of why this idea matters—across all five levels?

That means being able to explain:

• How the idea supports a strategic business priority

• Which actors it targets to move that priority forward

• What specific behavior changes it’s aiming to create

• And what evidence you have that suggests it’s likely to succeed

Your Impact Map also works as a reference check. Use it to ask questions like:

• Does this idea support a behavior change we’ve prioritized?

• If not, should we test it first? Add it as a bet on the WHAT level.

• Has a new user segment emerged through research? Expand the map to reflect that—and discuss whether it should become a new team priority.

The flexibility of Impact Mapping is exactly what makes it so useful for navigating and structuring Product Discovery. It supports a wide range of scenarios—whether you're kicking off a new initiative, exploring a newly uncovered user segment, or validating a specific idea.

Keep your Impact Map visible and accessible. Use it as a living artifact—something your team can revisit regularly to:

• Reflect on what you’ve learned

• Highlight open questions

• Track which ideas have been validated

• Expand as new evidence emerges

Because at the end of the day, that’s what Product Discovery is about:

Collecting the right evidence to support better decisions.