PipeBurst identifies water pipes likely to burst and helps a city prioritize their replacement. Who would use it, and for what—is this a mystery awaiting a visionary? Building beyond a prototype already requires a concept of the end user’s goal.
Pitching the product involves another kind of symbolic manipulation. In the budget office, the product manager presents PipeBurst as fiscal responsibility: fewer expensive emergencies, more money for something else.
At an environmental organization, it is conservation. Treated water should reach people rather than disappear into the ground.
At a foundation, it is an opportunity to address unequal infrastructure reliability. Whose service keeps failing? Whose repairs keep getting postponed?
At the mayor’s office, you had better align with “government that delivers.”
In the vendor’s presentation to a turnaround SEAL team, PipeBurst speaks the language of digital transformation. The pipes are old, but the intelligence is predictive.
The product manager is solving a problem too: which benefits of PipeBurst matter to this audience, and how should they be expressed? That requires a model of the audience, a vocabulary, and judgment about what will work. The “why” is being translated through another “how.”