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Landing Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
Summary
Key Insights
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Current market turmoil and AI emergence make demonstrating research impact crucial for job security.
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Lack of visibility and CEO buy-in heavily limits research influence in product organizations.
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"Agile fall" describes organizations that follow agile ceremonies superficially but skip true test-and-learn practices.
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Product managers and requirements engineers often conduct research inadequately, introducing bias and devaluing insights.
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Embedding researchers within product teams builds trust and domain expertise but is vulnerable to shifting priorities and leadership noise.
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Strong collaboration with product owners is essential for research to influence prioritization and roadmaps effectively.
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Aligning research activities explicitly with business KPIs and outcomes increases organizational impact.
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Using diverse research methods—not just usability testing—tailored to the right stage improves insight quality and timing.
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Maintaining accessible, updated research repositories tied to KPIs helps increase team and organizational awareness of research value.
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Researchers must be nimble, scrappy, and proactive advocates to position themselves strategically in complex organizations.
Notable Quotes
"The sum is greater than the parts—how qualitative and quantitative research play together."
"I think the world we’re in is definitely not antagonistic to research, there’s a huge opportunity right now."
"We’re capturing requirements usually without research, design has to be 100% baked before development starts."
"It’s either too late in the product cycle and we’re wasting money because we find usability issues after development."
"Product managers are often prioritization focused, so they can bias themselves in research decisions."
"At Meta, one product partner said quality doesn’t matter because we’re bringing in $90 billion a year."
"Research is seen as an adjunct to design, often missed in road mapping and strategic planning."
"Every report should say this research is tied to this KPI, here’s the outcome we want to address."
"Analytics and research should work closely to explain what is happening and why it is."
"Being nimble means sometimes you have to throw out academic rigor and just do what’s practical at the moment."
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