From Shipping Features to Value Realization: Bringing the “Impact-First” Mindset to Product Management in the Age of AI

For years, product teams have been told to focus on outcomes, not outputs.

Yet product teams in most organizations—even those with mature Agile and DevOps practices—still measure success by how much they deliver, not by what difference it makes.

Velocity charts improve. Roadmaps fill up. Releases go out the door. But the most critical question remains unanswered:

“Did any of this actually have an impact?”

This gap between what we do and what we achieve is exactly what product thought leader Matt Lemay calls out in his latest book, Impact First Product Teams. And it’s also the gap that ValueOps Insights was built to close—by making outcomes measurable, traceable, and predictable.

Now, as AI transforms how we build software, this shift has never been more urgent. When development cycles compress from months to days, and generative tools can deliver “working code” in hours, the question is no longer “Can we build it fast enough?”—it’s “Can we ensure it delivers the right value?”

1. The output trap—and why it’s so hard to escape

Shipping software is easy to measure; creating impact is not.

Teams count stories completed, deployments made, and tickets closed. These are tangible, trackable numbers that say little about whether customers are actually more successful or whether business outcomes have improved.

Teams fall into what Matt Lemay calls the “output trap”—mistaking motion for meaning. They celebrate throughput instead of transformation.

Here are some of the most common symptoms of output-driven cultures:

• Success stories sound like “we shipped on time” instead of “we solved a customer problem.”
• Product reviews revolve around backlog velocity, not behavioral change.
• Metrics focus on activity, not adoption.
• Teams equate faster delivery with greater success—even when value isn’t measured.

AI now risks magnifying this trap. As generative coding tools accelerate output, the temptation to celebrate “more” will grow stronger. But speed without direction just leads you to the wrong place faster.

That’s why Matt’s message—put impact at the center—matters more today than ever before.

2. What does “impact first” actually mean?

This all begs the question: How do we measure success of our product team based on the outcomes we achieve?

In Impact First Product Teams, Matt lays out a pragmatic path to refocus teams around impact—not intention, not effort, but evidence of real-world change. Here are some key principles of this approach:

A. Start with “what will change”

Before committing to any feature, teams must clearly define what change they expect to create—for users or for the business.

AI can generate code in minutes, but only humans can define why that code matters.

B. Make impact a shared language

Impact-first thinking isn’t the responsibility of product managers alone. It’s a shared contract across all functions. Everyone—from engineering to leadership—must know how success will be measured. In his book, Matt proposes the following model for how impact-first product teams can take responsibility for everything from delivery (output) to realization (impact):

   
C. Treat delivery as a hypothesis

Every release is an experiment, not a finish line. AI enables faster experimentation—but it’s still up to teams to close the loop, learn, and adapt based on what actually works.

D. Connect the dots between data and decisions

Impact-first teams rely on data—not to report activity, but to learn from outcomes. They integrate delivery data, usage analytics, and customer feedback to continuously validate that the work is creating value.

3. The challenge: How can our product teams make outcomes measurable and achievable?

It’s easy to talk about outcomes; it’s hard to measure them. Further, it’s harder still to connect outcomes to the messy, cross-functional reality of modern software delivery.

Here are just a few of the challenges:

• Fragmented data across delivery, analytics, and feedback systems.
• Lagging indicators like revenue or Net Promoter Scores (NPS) that surface too late, especially in business-to-business and business-to-employee contexts.
• Disconnected visibility between what’s built and the impact it creates.

This is where ValueOps Insights comes in. ValueOps Insights is a unified intelligence layer that connects strategic intent, execution, and impact realization across your digital ecosystem.

4. From impact intent to measured reality—with ValueOps Insights

ValueOps Insights operationalizes the “impact-first” philosophy by connecting the why, what, and what happened across strategy and delivery—using real data, in real time.

A. Define outcome metrics that matter

Start by identifying your lagging outcomes—the measures that define real success:

• Business outcomes: Revenue growth, customer retention, margin improvement, and so on.
• Customer outcomes: Adoption, satisfaction (NPS/CSAT (customer satisfaction) scores), and task success.
• Operational outcomes: Total time to value, deployment frequency, and flow efficiency.

These outcomes form the “North Star” layer within ValueOps Insights.

B. Map leading indicators that promote those outcomes

Next, define measurable leading indicators (LI) that signal progress toward outcomes. Using historical data, and machine learning techniques, ValueOps Insights automatically calculates the targets for LIs (based on mapped outcome targets), as well as the lead time between LIs and outcomes.  

Here are some examples of how these capabilities can be applied:

• To improve adoption: Track feature engagement, session depth, active users, and so on.
• To improve time to value: Track cycle time, flow efficiency, and deployment frequency.
• To improve retention: Track customer sentiment, support interaction volume, and usage recurrence.

ValueOps Insights connects these indicators to lagging outcomes, revealing which early signals predict success—or risk—before results show up in the lagging data.

C. Unify data across your product ecosystem

ValueOps Insights enables integrations across a variety of tools, such as:

• Rally and Clarity for delivery and investment alignment.
• Pendo, Adobe Analytics, and Google Analytics for digital experience and engagement.
• Salesforce, HubSpot, and Incorta for business operations data.
• TeamCity, Jenkins, and other DevOps systems for flow metrics.
• ConnectALL for connecting external value streams and data sources.

The result: one continuous view of how strategy turns into impact.

D. Predict success (or failure) before it happens

ValueOps Insights applies analytics and AI-driven modeling to generate predictive risk scores for each outcome.

By monitoring the variance between actuals and targets across leading indicators, the system highlights:

• Early warning signs for at-risk outcomes
• The strongest and weakest drivers of success
• Opportunities to adjust before outcomes slip

This represents proactive assurance—not reactive reporting. See the screenshot below, which provides an example of how ValueOps Insights uses leading indicators to predict business outcome confidence. 

5. A unified operating model for outcome-driven, AI-accelerated teams

Together, these capabilities form a closed learning loop—one in which delivery is guided by data, and impact is visible long before it becomes financial.

6. Why this matters now: The AI acceleration shift

In the age of AI, the rules of product development are being rewritten.

AI has already shrunk the time between idea and delivery. Code generation, test automation, and intelligent design tools allow teams to move from concept to release in a fraction of the time it once took.

But this speed introduces a new problem: If you can build faster, you can also fail faster—unless you can learn faster.

The new challenge isn’t delivery—it’s discernment.

When features can be created in hours, the differentiator isn’t execution speed—it’s knowing which ideas are worth executing at all.

That means real-time outcome measurement becomes critical. As AI collapses development cycles, it also compresses feedback cycles—meaning teams must be ready to measure and interpret impact much more rapidly.

Without a clear, continuous connection between outputs, outcomes, and value, organizations risk drowning in AI-generated work that delivers no meaningful return.

In other words: AI accelerates the “how fast”—but only outcome measurement determines “how well.”

That’s why the fusion of impact-first thinking and ValueOps Insights’ predictive intelligence is so powerful right now.

AI makes it possible to move faster than ever—but ValueOps Insights ensures that every step taken actually moves you closer to your goals.

7. Bringing it all together

When Matt Lemay’s Impact-First mindset meets ValueOps Insights’ outcome assurance platform, organizations can finally translate the speed of AI into sustained, measurable value.

You get the best of both worlds:

• The human clarity of purpose that defines what matters.
• The AI-powered insight that ensures every action has an impact.

8. Join the movement: Webinar invitation

To learn more about this new approach, please register for our joint webinar on this subject. This session will feature Matt Lemay, author of Impact First Product Teams, and the ValueOps Insights team.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How to escape the output trap and adopt an impact-first mindset.
• How AI is changing the product development equation.
• How to use ValueOps Insights to map outcomes to leading indicators and predict success.

9. Final thought

AI is making it easier than ever to build software. But building software was never the goal—making an impact was.

As Matt Lemay reminds us, “Impact isn’t a byproduct of great products; it’s their purpose.”

With ValueOps Insights, you can now make that purpose measurable, actionable, and predictable—even at AI speed.

Because in this new era, success isn’t about building faster—it’s about learning faster, adapting smarter, and realizing value sooner with greater confidence.

If you’re an existing Rally customer, you can check out ValueOps Insights by clicking the appropriate links below and entering your credentials:

• If you reside in USA/APAC:  vsi.rallydev.com

• If you reside in the EU: vsi-eu.rallydev.com

If you’re not an existing Rally customer, please contact us to set up a trial.