Recently I got a book from my colleague Noha Shafik. It is ‘outcomes over output’ by Joshua Seiden. The message is very much about what I talk and write about often:

  • high productivity in terms of output is important to deliver fast
  • however, going fast in the wrong direction makes no sense
  • hence, outcomes are what it is all about for an organisation

An outcome can be for example a change in customor behaviour that you want to achieve. For this you need to deliver features, but just delivering these features is not the goal. The features you deliver need to contribute to the outcome you want.

To measure output, you can use the 4 DORA metrics:

  • lead time for change (speed)
  • deploy frequency (speed)
  • change fail rate (stability)
  • mean time to resolve (stability)

To measure outcome, use the key takeaways from the book that I summarized for you on this 1-pager. You can download it by clicking on the image.

summary-outcomes-over-output