Output over outcome is one of the principles of Lean UX. But it is also a great principle that product managers or anyone who’s responsible for a product, like product owners and startup founders should apply.
Usually, the product and development sprints are measured in output. That is, it measures how many features were launched at the end of the sprint.
But this is a very product and process centric way to measure results, and the reality is that this measurement tells us very little about the business impact of all the work we’ve done for the last 3 weeks (or however many weeks your sprint has).
So instead of measuring output, a more business centric way to build and manage a product is by measuring our efforts in terms of outcomes, not output.
When we measure outcome, we measure the impact that the new features had on the users and the bottom line of the company. When we measure output we use features, but when we measure outcome we use KPIs.
So every time we spec a feature, we also need to spec a metric by which we’ll measure the success. Are we expecting this feature to increase engagement? Sell more? Decrease calls or customer inquiries?
The same goes with design: every new design or design change should have a rationale and a KPI attached to it. Otherwise, we’re changing the design merely based on what? Our taste? If we can’t measure the effect of the change, how can we justify our work?
Measuring output over outcomes is like measuring our efforts in terms of lines of code deployed instead of money earned.
And it is important to stop measuring output and start measuring outcome because if we don’t bring money in, there will be no features to build.
