When deciding to come up with metrics to measure, it is helpful to distinguish between activities and outcomes and their associated metrics. One leads into another and one is best assessed in the context of another.

Summary

This post posits that:

• One is or should be accountable for outcomes, not activities
• It is good to measure both (outcomes and activities)
• It is good to start with measuring outcomes
• Measuring outcomes will lead to measuring activities (and activity measures are best understood in context of outcome measures)
• Activity metrics can serve as leading indicator to outcome metrics (that are lagging indicators)

Measuring Both Outcomes and Activities (but Outcomes First)

Since activities are meant to lead to the desired outcomes, it is good practice to measure both:

• Measuring outcomes: this ensures that the desired outcomes are being tracked and achieved
• Measuring activities: this helps answer questions about whether and to what degree outcomes are being achieved

As such, both are important but one leads to another.

Measuring Outcomes Leads to Measuring Activity

Measuring outcomes only will lead to questions that measuring activities can help answer. It also helps to assess the effectiveness of an activity with regards to outcomes.

For example, let’s take our sought-after outcome to be: finishing a 5k run below a certain time (as part of a broader outcome of being healthy). The associated activities can be:

• Running 1 hour every day
• Eating carbs sometimes before the run
• Sleeping well at night

Measuring the time to complete the 5k run, may inevitably lead to asking about the associated activities:

• How much carbs would be good to help reduce the time to complete 5k? How long before the run?
• How many hours of sleep is adequate?
• Should I run 2x 30min or 1 full hour? At what pace? Should I have some rest days in between instead of running every day?

Problems with Measuring Activity Only

If we only measure activity, without measuring outcomes, it is difficult to know whether the activities are producing the intended outcomes. Furthermore, it is hard to know the degree to which each activity contributes to the desired outcome.

In the example above, it would be akin to measuring hours of sleep and running every day and the carbs consumed without measuring how long it takes to complete the 5k run. How would we know if we are getting closer to our goal?

Build Org Outcome and Activities

Applying this to the build organization, we can distinguish between the various outcomes and activities:

• Outcomes: value delivered to customers, satisfied customers, more (engaged) customers, more revenue, more engaged employees
• Activities: planning processes, management (1:1s, performance reviews, competency assessment), review processes (MBR, QBR) and product development (discovery, shaping, design, implementation, testing, production, support), and further breakdown of development between ‘new feature work’ vs ‘maintenance’ of existing functionality vs ‘foundational work’ to enable future new value

Ideally we should be measuring both outcomes and activities. This way we can answer questions about whether we are achieving the desired outcomes, in addition to which of the activities are influencing the outcomes and to what degree.

Hierarchy of Outcomes

As articulated elsewhere, outcomes (and their associated metrics) tend to follow a hierarchy. This is especially important in the context of services teams: teams that serve internal teams that deliver value to customers. The outcome for these services teams is the success of the internal customers. That however, only indirectly contributes to the higher level outcome.

As such, it is similar to (but not the same) as the outcome and activity measurement: it is best to measure the higher level outcome, but often this will lead to measuring the outcome of the services teams (that serve internal customers)

Outcome vs Activity

For most activities, there are a set of desired outcomes. It is helpful to distinguish between these. Activities are intended to lead to the desired outcomes. Examples:

In the ideal situation, we desire the outcomes and are held accountable to them (by ourselves and/or others).

[ Guest post from Mojtaba Hosseini ]