Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success

In the old days, when we made physical products, it wasn’t so hard to set project goals. But in today’s service and software-driven world, ’done’ is less obvious. When is Amazon done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, services powered by digital systems are never done. So how do we give teams a goal to work towards?Most of the time, we simply ask teams to build features - but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that don’t create value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to work towards. Using outcomes creates focus and alignment. It eliminates unnecessary work. And it puts the customer at the center of everything you do. Setting goals as outcomes sounds simple, but it’s often hard to do in practice.