Everyone in product circles nods when we say we focus on outcomes, not outputs. It sounds right. It signals maturity. Yet when the sprint boards fill up and deadlines loom, many organizations slip back into outputs, features shipped, story points burned, demos completed. The intent is good, but the execution gets hijacked by the process.

There is so much to unpack here, I’m expecting several more posts in this series. Let’s set the table first.

Outputs vs outcomes, a quick reset

Outputs are the things we build: features, code, campaigns, and deliverables. Outcomes are the changes that happen because of those outputs: increased retention, reduced churn, higher engagement, and revenue growth. Melissa Perri labels the trap clearly in Escaping the Build Trap, teams measure success by delivery, not impact.

Why do organizations default to outputs? They are visible, easy to count, and often tied to how teams are evaluated. It is harder to measure whether a customer’s behavior changed or a business goal moved.

What goes wrong when outputs drive the work

When outputs dominate, teams drift into the feature factory. New features land, adoption stalls, impact is negligible. Rob Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test shows how this happens when we build on untested assumptions, ask flattering questions, and hear what we want to hear.

Rigid frameworks can compound the issue. If the team becomes a servant of process, velocity charts, ritual checklists, and framework compliance crowd out customer outcomes. Leaders celebrate that the process is followed, while the business needle does not move.

What true outcome focus looks like

Outcome orientation is practical, not philosophical. It shows up in day-to-day choices:

  • Set goals in outcomes, not features. Replace “launch the new onboarding flow” with “increase activation rate by 15 percent.”

  • Practice continuous discovery. Teresa Torres offers usable tools like the Opportunity Solution Tree to connect desired outcomes to customer opportunities and candidate solutions. I like the forcing function in this exercise to think deeply: benefits and practice.

  • Measure what matters. Track customer behaviors and business impact, not just delivery speed. Did the change increase adoption, reduce support tickets, and create measurable value?

  • Empower cross-functional ownership. When product, design, and engineering jointly own outcomes, process becomes a tool that serves a purpose.

Thinking in bets, decide like a portfolio manager

Thinking in Bets reframes product decisions. Every priority call is a bet with opportunity cost. Choosing one initiative means not choosing another. Outputs that do not generate impact are not neutral; they are losses: time, talent, and budget that could have gone elsewhere. Treat decisions as bets, ask what evidence supports the expected payoff, and size stakes accordingly.

Practical rules of thumb:

  • Make small bets first. Use cheap experiments to update your beliefs before big builds.

  • Compare payoff to cost and timing. Use cost of delay to make urgency explicit; a simple quantification guide.

  • Learn from losses without blame. Improve decision quality and portfolio ROI over time.

Product Managers: Be confident in your research, but have a healthy dose of skepticism about your hypothesis. Validate your bets as soon as possible: weeks to a few months, no longer. Adjust and pivot as necessary.

Healthy tension exists between product, engineering, design, and project or program management. Product optimizes for impact, engineering for quality and scalability, design for usability, and program management for predictability. The goal is not to erase tension but to align it to a north star, a clear outcome that transcends silos. Strategy translates to execution through that lens, and execution informs strategy as the team learns. Amplitude’s North Star framework is a practical way to codify this shared focus.

I have hosted several North Star workshops, and they are well worth it. A compelling way to think about what’s important, and what inputs go into it to make it happen. Then, ideate on shaping the roadmap to move the needle with those inputs and, in turn, the north star metric.

The leadership question: how do we provide confidence without sliding back to output theater?

Executives need confidence in delivery: “Will we deliver within cost and schedule?” Output metrics feel safer because they are easy to track. Outcome-based development can and should provide strong KPIs and forecasts that leaders can trust.

A dual lens scorecard

Pair outcome KPIs with delivery health KPIs. Both are necessary.

Outcome and customer value

  • North Star metric and inputs tied to value creation, for example, activated users, weekly active teams, and repeat purchases. Use Amplitude’s guide; no need to reinvent the wheel.

  • Behavioral and financial outcomes, retention, task success rates, conversion, revenue, or margin contribution.

  • Learning velocity, validated opportunities per quarter, experiments that changed a decision, and track as a leading indicator of de-risked roadmaps.

Delivery health and predictability

  • DORA Four Keys, lead time for changes, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and time to restore service. These correlate with org performance and give a reliable read on delivery capability. Great references: Accelerate book and Google’s Four Keys, plus more guidance.

  • Flow metrics, visualize value stream flow and bottlenecks across features, defects, risk, and debt to balance investment and protect throughput using Flow Framework or something similar.

  • Quality and reliability, customer visible defects, escaped defects trend, availability, and error budgets if you use SLOs.

Put both lenses on one executive dashboard. Leaders see whether the system can deliver, and whether delivery is creating the intended impact.

High integrity commitments, used sparingly and kept

There are moments when a specific date is non-negotiable, a customer commitment, a regulatory deadline, or a launch dependency. Make those promises sparingly and treat them as high-integrity commitments, with explicit risk plans and fast escalation. Marty Cagan’s guidance is clear on making and keeping this kind of promise while running continuous discovery in parallel. A concise pledge to executives.

Guardrails that increase delivery confidence without choking discovery

  • WIP limits and small batch sizes to keep the flow smooth.

  • Definition of ready and definition of done that include instrumentation and rollout plans, not only code complete.

  • Release regularly to reduce risk and cycle time, your DORA metrics will improve.

  • Program management focuses on removing cross team blockers and dependency risk, not just date policing.

Example executive dashboard, one page

A simple structure you can implement in any BI tool.

  • Outcome progress, North Star, target, current, delta, plus two or three input metrics.

  • Delivery health, DORA scores versus last quarter, trend arrows, flow time by work type, WIP, and queues.

  • Quality and reliability, availability, error budget burn, escaped defects.

  • Forecasts, next major objective with P50 and P90 delivery windows, and assumptions are listed in a sidebar.

  • Learning and risk, experiments run this quarter, percentage that changed a decision, top three risks with owners and mitigation dates.

This combination gives leaders the confidence that the system can deliver, and that delivery will likely produce the intended impact.

Making the shift from saying to doing

It is not enough to declare we are outcome-driven. Make concrete shifts that leadership will recognize.

  • Change the language. In planning or reviews, ask what outcome we are trying to achieve, how we will know, what our bet is, and expected payoff.

  • Adopt dual dual-track working. Keep discovery and delivery running in parallel to reduce risk while maintaining cadence.

  • Tie bets to the cost of delay and constraints. Rank initiatives by expected impact divided by duration, adjust for urgency.

  • Right-size the process. Agile, OKRs, and portfolio rituals are tools. Use only what increases clarity and flow. Drop the rest.

The trade-offs and tensions

Outcomes are harder to measure and sometimes fuzzy. Some stakeholders prefer the predictability of outputs. The shift requires cultural change, not just new templates. Balance discipline with flexibility, enforce evidence, and keep the north star visible in every review.

Closing thought

Outputs matter only as a means to outcomes. The question is not what we shipped, it is what changed because of it. Thinking in bets reminds us that every choice carries opportunity cost. Pair outcome metrics with delivery health, make high-integrity commitments only when needed, and forecast with probabilities. That is how you earn confidence without falling back to output theater.