Stop Giving Product a Performance Pass

If your company sells software (or leverages software to make money), Product is not “support.” It’s part of the revenue engine and a fiduciary responsibility.

The fix is to treat Product like a responsibility center: define decision rights, define measurable outcomes, and run a governance cadence that forces stop/start decisions based on evidence. (OpenStax, 2019; Rogers & Blenko, 2006)

What to do (minimum viable reset):

1. Decision rights map for product bets (who recommends / inputs / agrees / decides / performs). (Rogers & Blenko, 2006)
2. Outcome scorecard that ties product work to business outcomes and customer outcomes. (Kaplan & Norton, 1992)
3. Outcome cadence: weekly learning + monthly outcomes + quarterly portfolio funding decisions. (McKinsey, 2023)

Want the full playbook + a completed vendor-ready RFI + a blank RFI template?
Book a working session with DrCPO.com and/or get the toolkit on Substack.

What this looks like in the business (symptoms)

You’ll usually see 6–10 of these at once:

• Product success is defined as shipping (roadmap throughput) instead of outcome movement.
• Requests arrive as solutions (“build X”), and Product is expected to comply—not evaluate value.
• Exec reviews celebrate “delivered” even when adoption/retention/revenue didn’t move.
• Decision-making is slow because “everyone gets a vote,” so Product becomes the compromise function. (Rogers & Blenko, 2006)
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• Teams optimize output metrics and unintentionally distort behavior (classic metrics failure modes). (Manheim et al., 2023)

How it impacts revenue and competitiveness

When Product gets a “pass,” you get compounding damage:

• Misallocated spend: funding continues without proof, because there’s no outcome portfolio discipline. (McKinsey, 2023a)
• Slow learning rate: fewer validated decisions per quarter → slower growth and weaker differentiation. (Thoughtworks, 2025)
• Accountability inversion: engineering gets blamed for business outcomes; Product claims “we shipped what was asked.”
• Operational drag: unclear ownership increases handoffs and delays. (McKinsey, 2024)

Why it happens (root causes)

This pattern is predictable when:

1. Decision rights are implicit, so Product can’t say “no,” can’t stop work, and can’t enforce tradeoffs. (Rogers & Blenko, 2006; BCG, 2021)
2. Product is treated as a cost center, but expected to deliver profit-center outcomes (phantom accountability). A responsibility system must match evaluation to controllable decisions. (OpenStax, 2019)
3. Goals exist without measurement hygiene, creating “scoreboard theater” and perverse incentives. (Kaplan & Norton, 1992; Manheim et al., 2023)
4. Teams lack outcome ownership, so product work fragments across silos. Stream-aligned teams are designed to own outcomes end-to-end. (Skelton & Pais, n.d.)
   
   

What you have to do (public, practical steps)

Step 1 — Declare Product a revenue engine and define the accountability model

Write a one-page “Operating Agreement” that answers:

• What outcomes Product owns (business + customer outcomes)
• What decisions Product can make without escalation
• What evidence is required before funding/priority decisions

Use goals that improve performance (specific, challenging, measurable) and avoid vague “do more innovation” mandates. (Locke & Latham, 2002)

Step 2 — Install decision rights (fast)

Use a RAPID-style map:

• Recommend: PM/GM for the product area
• Input: Sales/CS/Eng/Finance
• Agree: Security/Legal/Platform (only when needed)
• Decide: CPO for product bets; CEO only for portfolio-level conflicts
• Perform: the cross-functional product team

This reduces decision latency and makes accountability real. (Rogers & Blenko, 2006)

Step 3 — Replace roadmaps with “Bets + Measures”

Every roadmap item must include:

• Customer/problem + target segment
• Hypothesis
• Leading indicators + lagging indicator (baseline + target)
• Decision rule (what would make us stop / change / double down)

Outcome orientation is now standard guidance for digital programs because “shipping” is not “done.” (HBR, 2017; Atlassian, n.d.)

Step 4 — Build the product scorecard (business + customer + technical health)

A practical structure:

• Business outcomes: revenue expansion, retention drivers, conversion, margin
• Customer outcomes: time-to-value, activation, task success, satisfaction
• Technical health: delivery performance and reliability as enabling measures, not “success.” (DORA, 2024)
  Balanced Scorecard is a proven framing device to avoid “one metric to rule them all.” 
  (Kaplan & Norton, 1992)

Step 5 — Run an operating cadence that forces accountability

• Weekly: product bet review (evidence, learning, next decision)
• Monthly: outcome review (what moved, what didn’t, what we stopped)
• Quarterly: portfolio review (funding shifts, kill list, strategic pivots)

Mature product operating models explicitly tie teams to business outcomes end-to-end. (McKinsey, 2023b)

Step 6 — Use OKRs as a measurement tool, not a moral judgment

OKRs are meant to be measurable, public, and graded; low grades are data—not a crime. (Google re:Work, n.d.)

Our approach (DrCPO.com offer)

We help CEOs/CPOs/CTOs make Product revenue-accountable without creating bureaucracy:

• Decision rights + governance reset (fast, explicit, enforceable)
• Outcome scorecard + baselines + review pack
• Roadmap “bets + measures” standard + decision log
• Capability transfer so the system runs without consultants

Call to action: Book a working session + get the full toolkit on Substack ($25/mo) with a completed RFI + blank RFI + vendor scorecard.

References

Atlassian. (n.d.). Outcomes vs output: Driving value in product development.
https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery/resources/handbook/outcomes

Boston Consulting Group. (2021). Clarifying decision rights with the OVIS framework.
https://www.bcg.com/industries/public-sector/decision-rights-using-ovis-framework

DORA. (2024). Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2024.
https://dora.dev/research/2024/dora-report/

Google re:Work. (n.d.). Set goals with OKRs.
https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/set-goals-with-okrs

Harvard Business Review. (2017). You need to manage digital projects for outcomes, not outputs.
https://hbr.org/2017/02/you-need-to-manage-digital-projects-for-outcomes-not-outputs

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1992). The Balanced Scorecard—Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review.
https://hbr.org/1992/01/the-balanced-scorecard-measures-that-drive-performance-2

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey.
https://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/s-spire/documents/PD.locke-and-latham-retrospective_Paper.pdf

Manheim, D., Garrabrant, S., & Snyder-Beattie, A. (2023). Building less-flawed metrics: Understanding and creating metrics in complex systems.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10591122/

McKinsey & Company. (2023a). The big product and platform shift: Five actions to get the transformation right.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/the-big-product-and-platform-shift-five-actions-to-get-the-transformation-right

McKinsey & Company. (2023b). The bottom-line benefit of the product operating model.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/the-bottom-line-benefit-of-the-product-operating-model

McKinsey & Company. (2024). What makes product teams effective?
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/what-makes-product-teams-effective

OpenStax. (2019). 9.3 Describe the types of responsibility centers. In Principles of Managerial Accounting.
https://openstax.org/books/principles-managerial-accounting/pages/9-3-describe-the-types-of-responsibility-centers

OpenStax. (2019). 9.4 Describe the effects of various decisions on performance evaluation of responsibility centers. In Principles of Managerial Accounting.
https://openstax.org/books/principles-managerial-accounting/pages/9-4-describe-the-effects-of-various-decisions-on-performance-evaluation-of-responsibility-centers

Rogers, P., & Blenko, M. W. (2006). Who has the D? How clear decision roles enhance organizational performance. Harvard Business Review.
https://hbr.org/2006/01/who-has-the-d-how-clear-decision-roles-enhance-organizational-performance

Skelton, M., & Pais, M. (n.d.). Key concepts (Team Topologies).
https://teamtopologies.com/key-concepts

Thoughtworks. (2025). From features to outcomes: How product teams can deliver real business value.
https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-us/insights/blog/agile-engineering-practices/from-features-to-outcomes-how-product-teams-can-deliver-real-business-value