Outcomes Over Output
About this book
A brief book built on one distinction. Output is what you build and outcome is the change in human behaviour that follows. Seiden gives three questions for defining an outcome, describes the Magic Machine exercise for connecting behaviours to business results, and covers running a team against an outcome target rather than a delivery date. Short enough to read in a sitting and largely free of framework overhead.
Description via Product Digest.
Topics
Related concepts
- Benefits realisationThe discipline of obtaining the improvement for which the money was approved, which is a different thing from delivering the output, and which mostly happens after the project has closed.
- How to Write Product OKRs with Measurable Outcomes and GuardrailsWrite objectives and key results that connect to strategy, define baselines and avoid confusing delivered features with customer outcomes.
- Evidence-Based ManagementScrum.org's framework for measuring value, built on four Key Value Areas and a goal structure that turns strategy into a sequence of experiments.
- Product metric frameworksAARRR from Dave McClure in 2007 and HEART from Google's research team in 2010, what each one was built to solve, the Goals Signals Metrics process that sits underneath HEART, and the honest criticism of both alongside the north star.
- Measuring valueValue is established by evidence rather than assertion, and the Increment is what makes it inspectable.
- Outcome and outputOutput is what the team produced. Outcome is what changed for someone because of it. A product owner is accountable for the second and is usually measured on the first.
- Leading vs Lagging Indicators: Choose Product Strategy MetricsConnect early signals to customer and business outcomes, define metric denominators and time lags, and avoid treating correlation as proof.
- Goodhart's law and metric gamingCharles Goodhart's 1975 observation, the three ways a product measure gets gamed once a team is judged on it, why most gaming is done by people acting in good faith, and the defences that keep a measure honest under pressure.