Many software teams put a lot of energy into talking about output – things live velocity, story points, burndowns, or even just counting tickets. However, the thing that most businesses really need, the reason that software is worth investing in, is outcomes.
Output is all about how much gets done – but outcomes are about what happens as a result. The difference is vitally important!
Examples of outcomes might be things like “users like our product and we’re getting better feedback ratings”, “the number of users is increasing” or “the performance is different”. What these all have in common is that they are measured in the real world. You and your team made some changes, and you can see a change as a result. You made a difference!
To be successful from building software, you need both outcome and output. It’s pretty simple: if your output is low, then you’re not able to get things done, while if however much output you produce, there isn’t the outcome you’re hoping for, then chances are you’re either not getting your output out to actual customers, or that you’re spending time (and money) building things that they don’t care about.
So if you’re talking more about output than outcomes, there’s an easy opportunity to make things better! A great starting point is to think about what your real objective is – what’s the end results that make your efforts worthwhile? Once you have some clarity on that, what can you measure that would show progress against it? Now you can have a real measure of how great a job you’re doing, by watching that value change as you deliver software!