Impact Risk Matrix
Weigh customer impact against delivery and adoption risk.
Impact–risk matrix plots product bets by customer impact vs delivery/adoption risk — prioritising discovery experiments.
Teams pick exciting high-risk bets without impact, or safe work with no learning. Matrix balances discovery.
Customer validation phase, backlog grooming for uncertain features.
- List opportunities/solutions.
- Score impact and risk.
- Prioritise high-impact manageable-risk experiments first.
- Pair with opportunity solution tree.
- Time-box learning goals.
- Scores justified with evidence tags.
- Experiments named, not broad themes.
- Learning metrics attached.
- All bets high impact — grade inflation.
- Risk ignored for HiPPO ideas.
- No experiment time-box.
Northvale Systems impact-risk: automated rejection of incomplete files — high impact on throughput, medium risk of supplier frustration; pilot copy fixes first.
Acme Analytics high impact / medium risk: auditor export pack — ran 5-customer pilot before GA.
Riverstone Legal tested Slack advisory bot — medium impact, low risk — two-week trial with three retainers.
Clearwater Initiative impact-risk: public wall charts naming failed points — high community impact, social risk if shaming; frame as collective fix not blame.
/custval impact-risk-matrix, IDs IRM-01. Links OST and validation report.
Related techniques
Sources & further reading
- Torres, T. (2021). Continuous Discovery Habits. Product Talk LLC.