PM Signal Map Worksheet
A map of every channel where customer and product reality flows into your org, what happens to each one, and where the signal dies. Most orgs do not lack signal. They lack routing. The PM who maps...
The template
PM Signal Map Worksheet
A map of every channel where customer and product reality flows into your org, what happens to each one, and where the signal dies. Most orgs do not lack signal. They lack routing. The PM who maps the routing in week two knows things at day 30 that tenured colleagues do not.
Time to fill: about 3 hours across week one and two, mostly spent asking people "where does X go?"
Part 1: The seven signal sources table
One row per source. Most products have all seven. Score without mercy, the gaps are the point.
| Source | Exists? | Captured? | Synthesized? | Routed to? | Owner | My subscription |
|--------|---------|-----------|--------------|------------|-------|-----------------|
| Support tickets | [Y/N] | [Where? Tool name, or "agent inboxes only"] | [Does anyone cluster/tag them? Y/N/Sort-of] | [Who sees the synthesis? "Support lead's monthly deck" / "nobody"] | [Name, or "unowned"] | [How I will read this weekly: saved view, digest, agent] |
| Sales call recordings | [Y/N] | [Gong/Fireflies/not recorded] | | | | |
| CS check-in notes | [Y/N] | [CRM fields / docs / heads] | | | | |
| Product analytics | [Y/N] | [Tool, and is it trusted?] | | | | |
| In-app feedback + NPS verbatims | [Y/N] | [Where do the text answers go?] | | | | |
| Churn/win-loss interviews | [Y/N] | [Conducted at all? By whom?] | | | | |
| Community/social/reviews | [Y/N] | [G2, Reddit, Discord, app stores] | | | | |
Column guidance
- Exists? Does the raw signal physically exist anywhere. Calls not recorded means the source does not exist, whatever people claim.
- Captured? Exists somewhere queryable, not just in someone's head or inbox.
- Synthesized? Someone or something turns the raw stream into themes. "The support lead kind of knows" is Sort-of, and Sort-of means the synthesis leaves when they do.
- Routed to? The synthesis reaches someone who can act. A dashboard nobody opens is not routing.
- Owner: A name. "The team" is not an owner.
- My subscription: The concrete mechanism by which YOU see this source weekly. Empty cells in this column are your to-do list.
Part 2: The gap-scoring method
Score each source 0 to 4, one point per Yes in: Exists, Captured, Synthesized, Routed. Then sort.
- Score 4: Healthy. Subscribe and move on.
- Score 3: Usually captured-but-not-synthesized. These are the cheapest wins, the raw material is sitting there. An agent pass over six weeks of tickets is an afternoon of work.
- Score 1-2: Structural gaps. Note them for your day-90 note, do not fix them all in month one.
- Score 0: The signal does not exist. Creating it (start recording calls, start exit interviews) might be your first visible contribution, but check why it does not exist first. Sometimes there is a body buried there.
The priority rule: fix the highest-scoring broken source first, not the most broken one. A 3 going to 4 pays off this month. A 0 going to 4 is a quarter of work and politics.
One more pass: for each source scoring 3 or 4, ask the owner: "What did this source say last month that nobody acted on?" The answer is usually your first bet candidate.
Part 3: The daily digest setup checklist
The map is only useful if the signal reaches you on a rhythm. Goal: one digest, 10 minutes a day, covering every source that scored 3+.
[ ] 1. Pick the destination. One place: a Slack channel to self, a note, an email
label. Not five tabs.
[ ] 2. Wire the easy feeds first. Saved views and native digests: support tool
daily summary, analytics weekly email, CRM saved search on churn-risk notes.
Under an hour total.
[ ] 3. Set up one agent pass for the highest-value unsynthesized source. Usually
support tickets or call transcripts. Prompt skeleton:
"Each morning, read yesterday's [tickets/transcripts]. Return: 3-5 themes
with counts, 2 verbatim quotes per theme, and any single item that needs
a human today. Under 300 words."
[ ] 4. Calendar the 10 minutes. Same slot daily. Reading signal is the job, not
a break from it.
[ ] 5. Keep a running themes file. One line per day: the theme that recurred.
After three weeks this file IS your discovery backlog, and it is evidence,
not opinion.
[ ] 6. Close the loop monthly. Tell each source owner one thing their signal
led you to do. Owners who see their signal used start sending you the
good stuff unprompted.
The deliverable
By end of week three you should be able to put a one-page version of this map in front of your manager and say: "Here is where our signal flows, here is where it dies, here is the one gap I'm fixing first." That single page does more for your credibility than any opinion about the roadmap, because nobody can argue with a map of their own plumbing.