Hey hey hey. What's good awesome people?
Welcome back to my channel. Joshua
Partogi here. Glad to have you back with
me again folks.
I hope you're doing well this week and
keeping excited.
So folks, in the last video we learned
about what a product is. If you haven't
watched that video, I suggest that you
watch that video first by clicking the
link up here
so that you can follow along with the
topic we will discuss on today's video.
Because today's video is the
continuation of that video.
As we know Scrum is a framework for
developing complex products.
And understanding product is the
fundamental to have an effective Scrum
implementation.
A successful product is the one that
brings outcomes both to the consumer and
also to the company who develops the
product.
Success in Scrum is about delivering
outcomes rather than delivering many
outputs. But what is the difference
between
outcome and output? I have found that
some people in some cultures think that
outcome and output is the same thing.
I have mentioned the notion of outcome
over output several times in my past
videos.
And I will continue to emphasize outcome
over output in my future videos.
So in today's video we will learn what
is the difference between outcome and
output
and why every Scrum team should use
outcome as the key success indicator for
every Sprint.
According to the Cambridge dictionary,
output is an amount of something
produced by a person,
machine, factory, country, etc, while
outcome is a result or effect of an
action, situation,
etc. We can say that output is what the
Scrum team produces.
The increment delivered every Sprint by
the Scrum team is an output.
The features in that increment are
considered as output also.
Now outcome is the effect that happens
to our business and to our consumers
after our consumers have used the
features in the product.
When there is outcome from the product,
there should be behavioral change from
the consumer.
This behavioral change should be
observable.
For example, consumer outcome is when the
consumer has ordered food from the
application
ten times more frequently after the
latest release.
Another example, outcome is when the
consumer has become more productive
and has increased their monthly sales
after using the features from the latest
release.
Both output and outcome are measurable.
The number of features the Scrum team
delivered every Sprint,
that's an output metric. The number of
wireframes delivered,
that's an output metric too. The number
of defects found,
that's an output metric too. Teams using
Kanban called these metrics as
throughput.
So you can say that throughput is an
output metric too.
Some teams who use story points to
estimate their Product Backlog items,
they measure velocity. So you can say
that velocity is an output metric too.
Teams doing waterfall and use project
mindset consider project timeliness as
one of the success criteria of a project.
So you can say that project timeliness
or project completion
as an output metric. When we talk about
outcomes, there are outcomes for the
consumer and also
outcomes for the company who develops
the product. Every product has different
outcome metrics because every product
exists in a different context.
Every product serves different consumers.
Now let's look at some examples
of some outcome metrics based on the
product that you're quite familiar with.
For a movie streaming product, one of the
consumer outcome metrics may be the
frequency consumers binge watching.
While one of the business outcome
metrics may be the number of customers
on family subscription packages.
For an online healthy food delivery
mobile application, one of the consumer
outcome metrics
may be the amount of weight lost since
joining the application three months ago.
While one of the business outcome
metrics may be the total sales of foods
ordered
per customer in a month. For an
international money transfer application,
one of the consumer outcome metrics may
be the increase of livability index
of the consumer's parents who live in
another country.
While one of the business outcome
metrics may be the average amount of
money transferred per customer.
There are so many outcome metrics. Every
product has different outcome metrics.
I cannot tell you all of the outcome
metrics out there.
It requires imagination to define all of
the outcome metrics for your product.
Your Scrum team needs to collaborate
together with everyone in the company to
define the outcome metrics that are
relevant for the product you are
developing.
Achieving outcome metrics is not just
the responsibility of a certain
departments in the company or only the
responsibility of the Scrum team,
it's a whole company's effort.
Now here is the most interesting part.
As you can probably conclude so far
output
does not guarantee outcome. Just because
the Scrum team completed many Product
Backlog items
or just because their velocity or their
throughput every Sprint is consistently
high,
it does not guarantee there will be an
outcome.
Even though we know output does not
guarantee outcome,
ironically many companies who use Scrum
still measure the Sprint success or the
Scrum team performance
using output metrics. Many companies out
there still use
output metrics for contract negotiation
with their clients.
In the past, as a youtuber, I mainly focus
on uploading as many videos as possible
every month to this youtube channel.
Number of videos uploaded per month
is an output metric. As I have shared
with you on my previous video, from now
on I have shifted my focus towards
outcome.
Because I focus on outcome, I may upload
videos to this channel less frequently
than before.
The two outcome metrics I use for this
youtube channel is, the number of people
who gain a better understanding about
Scrum
and the number of people who can
practice Scrum effectively at the
workplace after watching the videos I
uploaded to this channel.
Bianca van der Bergh who left a comment on
this channel,
told me that the videos on this channel
made her switch careers to become a
Product Owner.
Now that's an outcome folks!
When we use Scrum, we should use outcome
metrics as key success indicators for
every Sprint.
The number of features delivered or
velocity
or throughput for Sprint should never ...
it should never be used as the Scrum
team success or performance or
productivity indicators. The Scrum team
should state the outcome metric they
want to achieve
in their Product Goal and also in their
Sprint Goal.
So how about your Scrum team? Does your
Scrum team still use output metrics
like number of features or throughput or
velocity or timeliness as the key
success indicators?
Or have they already use outcome metrics
as the key success indicators?
If they haven't used outcome metrics as
the key success indicators,
what is their obstacle? what are you
going to do
to challenge the status quo in your
company?
If they have already used outcome
metrics, are there any adaptations
being made after inspecting these
outcome metrics?
As you already know inspection and
adaptation are the foundations of Scrum.
Alright that is all from me today folks.
I hope to see more Scrum teams in the
market using outcome metrics as the key
success indicators
and hopefully one of that Scrum team is
your team.
Thank you for watching today's video
folks, if you liked today's video,
go click that like button down below. See
you until my next video.
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make sure you subscribe to my channel so
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I will upload in the future.
Until then don't forget to stay awesome.
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