Outcome Discovery Canvas: Define Desired Business Outcomes

The Trap of the "Feature Factory"

It is a common story in product development. Teams work hard to ship features on time. They launch, they celebrate, and then... nothing happens. Users don't care. Metrics don't move.

This happens when we focus on outputs (what we build) instead of outcomes (what value we create).

The Outcome Discovery Canvas (ODC) acts as a strategic pause button. It sits right before your roadmap. It forces teams to align on the "Why" and the "What" before they get lost in the complexity of the "How."

What is the Outcome Discovery Canvas

The Outcome Discovery Canvas (ODC) is a strategic thinking and planning tool designed to help product teams, business leaders, and innovators shift their focus from delivering features to delivering outcomes.

It provides a structured way to explore and align on what success looks like — not just what you’re building, but why you’re building it and what change it aims to create.

Relationship Between ODC and OBR

ODC and the Outcome-Based Roadmap (OBR) work as a pair in an outcome-driven product process.

Outcome Discovery Canvas comes first, and it defines the “Why” and “What”

The ODC helps you discover and define the outcomes you want to achieve in the early planning process. This is the foundation where clarity around outcomes is generated before anything is built.

Outcome-Based Roadmap comes next and it defines the “How” and “When”

Once you used ODC to clarify your goals and success criteria, you can build an Outcome-Based Roadmap which organizes your initiatives, and provides a timeline or sequence of steps to achieve the outcomes.

In short, The Outcome Discovery Canvas helps you define your desired outcomes, while the Outcome-Based Roadmap helps you plan and deliver work to achieve those outcomes.

Outcome Discovery Canvas Deep Dive

Problems & Opportunities

Describe the problems/opportunities that your existing or prospective users/customers have today that your program intends to address.