Outcome Orientation

Jason Doherty, VP Product Management, Cloud Elements

Jason explains how features "are Outputs. They are what we create." However, modern product teams need to care about "whether the thing we just shipped had the desired Outcome."

Paul Adams, VP of Product, Intercom

Paul argues that the outcome vs. output conversation needs to expand to include inputs to complete the analysis of the system. Once we're paying attention to outcomes, we can learn more about which inputs produce which outcomes, at what rate of shipping (outputs).

John Cutler, Senior Product Manager, Zendesk

John explains how focusing on outcomes is not a best practice for the sake of a best practice; rather, it is a high-level framework for answering the question, "what will produce the best outcomes for a business?"

Dave Kellogg, CEO, Host Analytics

Dave warns how outcomes can become influenced by externalities, but that still makes a general rule of thumb possible for evaluating outcomes: "the quality of any performance should be judged on a relative basis to others performing a similar task in a similar timeframe / market phase."

John Cutler, Senior Product Manager, Zendesk

John explains how to share ongoing outcomes, and how to make it a regular part of the team’s cadence of rituals.