Stop Leading With Tickets. Start Leading With Impact.

I talk to product leaders every day—execs, VPs, directors with 10–15 years in the seat.

The common pattern: world‑class execution.
Jira tickets. Epics. Backlog wizardry. Sprint roadmaps that run 10 weeks deep.
They can show me exactly what’s being built.

Then I ask: “How would you explain this $3M investment to your board in four slides?”
…and I get a pause.

That “missing middle”—the muscle that connects what we’re building to why it matters—is weak in most orgs. It’s okay to admit it. Agile trained us to move fast, not to narrate impact.

It’s time to fix that.

What Great Looks Like

As a product leader, you need three things:

1. Translation: Break a complex program into 4–6 strategic capabilities that leadership instantly understands.
2. Metrics: Tie those capabilities to business outcomes with clear measures (and timeframes).
3. Confidence: Project impact—with ranges and assumptions—and then measure it.

“Writing a number down” isn’t scary. It’s the job. The business is investing to grow. We own the story that shows how the work creates ROI.

The best leaders I know own the outcomes. They project. They measure. They tell a story that connects their roadmap to growth.

If you feel stuck in execution mode, it just means you haven’t built this muscle yet.

The Four‑Slide Board Pack (Use This)

Slide 1 — Why Now / Business Goal

• The strategic objective in one sentence.
• The customer problem in one sentence.
• Investment summary: “$3M over 12 months.”

Slide 2 — Capabilities (4–6 “chapters”)
Name them in business language, not features. For example:

• Reduce Checkout Failure (payments reliability, retries, 3DS improvements)
• Grow Self‑Serve Expansion (usage‑based pricing, in‑product upgrades)
• Lower Cost‑to‑Serve (automation, policy engine, deflection)
• Improve Data for Decisions (event quality, attribution, reporting)

Slide 3 — Impact Model (with ranges)
Tie each capability to measurable outcomes. Use ranges and timeboxes. Example:

• Checkout failures ↓ from 3.2% → 1.8–2.2% in 2 quarters → +$1.2–$1.8M ARR
• Self‑serve expansion rate ↑ +1.5–2.5 pts → +$800k–$1.4M ARR
• Cost‑to‑serve ↓ 15–20% → $400–$600k annual savings
• Decision latency ↓ from 14 days → 5–7 days → faster GTM, lift TBD (hypothesis)
  Assumptions: baseline volume, seasonality, pricing; note data gaps.
  Confidence: Low / Medium / High per line item.

Slide 4 — Plan, Risks, and How We’ll Measure

• 3–4 milestones with dates.
• Top 3 risks + mitigations (e.g., dependency on billing provider).
• Measurement plan: dashboards, owners, when we’ll report, what triggers a course correction.

That’s it. Four slides. No 20‑page slide dump. No 200‑ticket safari.

How to Build This in a Week

Day 1: Inventory → Capabilities
Group the 15 epics / 200 tickets into 4–6 capabilities stated as outcomes (“Reduce Checkout Failure”), not components.

Day 2: Map Metrics
For each capability, pick one primary business metric and one supporting metric. Add a timeframe.

Day 3: Draft Ranged Projections
Best / Expected / Downside. Write your assumptions next to each number. You’re not promising perfection; you’re promising a plan to learn.

Day 4: Risks & Proof
List top risks, what would derail impact, and how you’ll know early. Add 1–2 customer quotes or support patterns that anchor the “why.”

Day 5: Tighten the Story
One sentence per box. Kill jargon. Replace feature labels with customer language. Practice out loud.

Quick Checks (and Fixes)

• If it reads like a feature list → rename to capabilities tied to outcomes.
• If there are no numbers → add ranges and assumptions. Imperfect > vague.
• If timelines are fuzzy → add milestones with dates and exit criteria.
• If success is “shipping” → redefine success as a metric moving.
• If you have 12 priorities → you have none. Force 4–6.

Common Pushbacks (and How to Answer)

• “We’ll be held to the number.”
  Great. Hold us to the learning plan and the range we committed to. We’ll report, adjust, and keep moving.
• “We don’t have clean data.”
  Then “Improve Data for Decisions” becomes an explicit capability with its own metric (data completeness/latency) and near‑term milestones.
• “This is too simple for a $3M plan.”
  Simple is the point. The board funds outcomes, not Jira.

Where This Leads

Our job isn’t just to ship. It’s to drive impact through technology—to explain what we’re building so the business understands it, to project outcomes, and to measure them.

If you’ve been living in execution, that’s fine. Build the new muscle. You’ll stand out fast.

Go get them. Good luck.

P.S. Want a head start?

If you’re looking for an operating system that helps teams do this translation every week—not once a quarter—Iteright can help you turn epics into capabilities, wire metrics to outcomes, and track impact over time. It’s a lightweight way to keep the four‑slide story current while the teams execute.