Outcomes over Output
Book Overview
"Outcomes over Output" by Joshua Seiden is a concise guide that challenges traditional output-focused product management approaches. It advocates for focusing on the behavioral changes (outcomes) that drive business results rather than simply delivering features (outputs).
Key Concepts
The Outputs-Outcomes-Impact Chain
- Outputs: The things we build (features, products)
- Outcomes: The behavior changes in customers/users that create value
- Impact: The business results that follow from outcomes
The Three Magic Questions
- What are the user/customer behaviors that drive business results?
- How can we get people to do more of these behaviors?
- How do we know if we're right?
Outcome-Based Planning
- Focus on the changes in human behavior that you want to see
- Manage a list of hypotheses with expected metrics, not features with deadlines
- Roadmaps should be centered around sets of outcomes, not feature delivery dates
Application to Product Management
Output vs. Outcome Mindset
- Output-based thinking: "We need to build feature X by date Y"
- Outcome-based thinking: "We need to increase behavior Z by amount W"
Outcome Examples
- Increase the number of users who complete their profile
- Reduce the number of support tickets for a specific issue
- Increase the frequency of a core action in the product
Prioritization
- A basic problem of output-based planning is not knowing what value each feature brings
- Outcome-based prioritization evaluates ideas based on their expected impact on user behavior
Planning with outputs is like promising to cross a desert of unknown size by a specific date, which is impossible to guarantee.
Example Reframes
- Output: "IDP redesign"
- Outcome: "Boost sales by 10% from IDP"