Early in my consulting career, I had a colleague who had a handful of very useful questions she turned to again and again. She called them magic questions, because they work like magic every time. These questions are my magic questions for finding outcomes.
What are the user and customer behaviors that drive business results? (This is the outcome that we’re trying to create.)
How can we get people to do more of those behaviors? (These are the features, policy changes, promotions, etc that we’ll do to try to create the outcomes.)
How do we know that we’re right? (This uncovers the dynamics of the system, as well as the tests and metrics we’ll use to measure our progress.)