Strategy map concepts
Learn the concepts of how to map you strategy in DoubleLoop.
On this page, you can learn the concepts underlying DoubleLoop's strategy map tool. If you'd like to jump straight to understanding the details of the tool interface, go here.
Now let's dive into the concepts...
DoubleLoop's tool for mapping your strategy was inspired by Amplitude's North Star Playbook by John Cutler and Jason Scherschligt. The framework provides a model for how work and metrics relate to each other:
Adapted from Amplitude's North Star Playbook
The first step to using DoubleLoop is mapping your strategy in a format like the above. Your strategy is your theory for how your team's actions will impact the business. In concrete terms, "mapping your strategy" consists of making connections between your work and metrics.
"Metrics" and "workstreams" are two fundamental concepts in DoubleLoop.
Metrics are quantifiable measures of your product and business success.
Workstreams are initiatives, projects, or any collection of work activities.
In DoubleLoop, you can indicate when a workstream is intended to influence a metric or when a metric is believed to influence another metric.
Here's an example of what a strategy map looks like in DoubleLoop. This is our own strategy! Your strategy might be way simpler, or more complex. It might cover the work of just your team or of your entire company.
A strategy map in DoubleLoop.
There are three types of metrics in DoubleLoop that live on a spectrum from leading to lagging indicators:
- Input metrics. Input metrics are leading indicators that can be influenced by work, like the percent of users that perform a certain action during a session. By themselves, they don’t equate business success.
- North Star metric. Your North Star metric is how you measure the value you're delivering customers. If you grow the metric, you'll make your users and happy and grow your business. It's the bridge between your leading and lagging indicators. A rule of thumb is that you should have one North Star metric per product at your company.
- Business KPIs. Business KPIs are lagging indicators that matter for your business; things like revenue and customer retention. Because they are lagging and subject to external forces, they often can't be impacted directly by work.
For background on how the top companies think about their metrics, see our post, Metrics-driven product development is hard.
While DoubleLoop's first focus is product development, product initiatives are just one type of work activity that can influence your company's metrics. DoubleLoop lets you build a comprehensive picture of how different types of work contribute.
- Product workstreams. Changes to the product like new features, UX improvements, or bug fixes. Product workstreams might be organized by epic, project, initiative or team.
- Engineering workstreams. Code changes that are largely invisible to the end user like back-end refactors.
- Marketing workstreams. Activities to acquire new customers like paid advertising, social media, newsletters, or blog post.
- Sales workstreams. Activities to convert potential customers into actual customers, like product demo meetings.
Are there other types of workstreams that you think we should include? Let us know via Intercom in the bottom right.
Each link in your strategy map is an assumption that could be wrong or go wrong. Thus your map must be dynamic, not static. Expect to come back to the tool to make changes often!
Last modified 6mo ago