The Guiding Phrase of Product Success: “So They Can…”

Completing the phrase: “So they can…” forces alignment with customer outcomes—the real value a product must deliver.

It’s not a slogan. It’s the essential connective tissue linking every discipline involved in bringing a product to market through research, product vision, strategic planning, prioritization, validating product-market fit, road mapping, development & testing, messaging, and go-to-market activities. “So they can…” describes the outcome your product will deliver.

If you don’t know what it must deliver, there is nothing to build and no way to sell it.

This article explores how “So they can…” functions as a throughline across each key domain in the product journey.

1. Research: Understanding Needs, Not Just Gathering Data

Product research often drowns in demographics, statistics, or vague persona attributes, not to mention assumptions about what is of value to customers. But the best research answers a simple question: What are customers trying to do?

Whichever research techniques are used, and however insights are broken down (EG: via the Jobs-to-be-Done method), the purpose of market research is to discover what important, underserved needs customers have. They need a solution so they can accomplish those important, underserved needs.

Complete that phrase and you’ve identified opportunity.

2. Product Vision: Inspiring With Purpose

A compelling product vision isn’t about a feature list. It’s about painting a picture of what users will be able to do that they couldn’t before. In Amazon’s “Working Backwards” process, product concepting begins with a press release—not of what the product is, but what it enables. This forces teams to articulate the “So they can…” outcome before a single line of code is written.

When used properly, “So they can…” also becomes a rallying cry for the entire team, transforming vague aspirations into focused product intent.

3. Strategic Planning: Choosing Outcomes Over Activities

Strategy often becomes a battle over roadmaps and departmental headcount. But true strategic planning answers the question: What are the outcomes we are enabling—and for whom?

The “So they can…” framing forces product and leadership teams to look outward, not inward. Instead of planning “to expand into new verticals,” they plan to build for orthopedic surgery teams so they can coordinate instruments and staff with 90% fewer interruptions. This reframing creates sharper alignment between product investments and business growth.

Without a crisp “So they can…” at the strategic level, you're just chasing opportunity noise.

4. Prioritization: Anchoring Decisions in User Value

When everything is a priority, nothing is. That's where "So they can..." becomes a key sorting tool. Leveraging Dan Olson’s opportunity framework allows the team to prioritize around needs by assessing how important and well satisfied they are. Where there is the greatest gap between the importance of a need and current satisfaction signals the greatest opportunity. The most important “So they can…”

5. Validating Product-Market Fit: Can They Do What They Need To?

Product-market fit is that moment when you prove that your product reliably helps customers do something they need to do. The “So they can…” phrasing becomes your compass during iteration. Did the user get to do the thing? Can they now generate the report, find the anomaly, or book the appointment easier?

Without such proof, usage metrics are merely vanity metrics.

6. Road mapping: Designing for Measurable Outcomes

Modern roadmaps (outcome-based), aren’t built around features. They’re built around objectives. “So they can…” statements shape these objectives into user-centric milestones that lets the team adjust their specific approach to a solution as they learn throughout development rather than merely building features designed prior to those learnings.

For example:

• Q1 Goal: Enable charge nurses to reassign surgical staff mid-shift so they can reduce overtime and fatigue

• Q2 Goal: Give patients real-time prep status updates so they can reduce check-in anxiety and no-shows

Every roadmap initiative then has a success condition built in—and it’s tied to real-world value, not speculative demand.

7. Development & Testing: Building for Outcomes

The foundational element of Agile product requirements is the user story. It follows the format:

As a (user type)

I want to (desired capability), and ends with the statement:

So I can (desired outcome)

Use of that final phrase in the user story conveys vital information to the engineering team, while also giving them increased latitude in solving for the desired outcomes. Instead of having to adhere to prescriptive requirements, the team can use their creativity to find better ways to deliver on the So I can promise.

Likewise, when testing a product the critical measure is not whether it works as designed, but whether it delivers on the So I can promise.

8. Messaging: Speaking the Customer’s Language

If your marketing copy can’t finish the sentence “So you can…,” you’re not writing benefits—you’re listing features. “Advanced reporting engine” is meaningless unless it ends with something like: “…so you can spot surgical delays before they impact recovery time.”

Good messaging is simply product empathy spoken aloud. “So they can…” becomes your test for resonance. It’s also the key to breaking through cognitive overload in buyers. When you tell them what they can do, they listen.

9. Go-To-Market Activities: Selling the Benefit

In your GTM efforts—from advertising, to demos, to sales playbooks, and onboarding, “So they can…” is the glue that keeps the product story intact. It ensures Sales isn’t pitching faster loading times, but fewer missed handoffs. It ensures onboarding doesn’t just show where to click, but how to complete a key task without backtracking.

Because when you go to market it’s what your product delivers that counts. A compelling solution so they can…

Final Thoughts

“So they can…” is not just a turn of phrase. It’s the sharpest tool you have to keep your team grounded in what matters. It pierces through internal noise and guides you back to your user’s world. If your research, planning, design, development, and marketing can all answer the question—what are we enabling users to do?—you’ll likely deliver on that promise.

Without it, you’re just building features in a vacuum. With it, you’re building solutions that matter.

By Bill Haines, Partner