Product management principles

Outcomes, not outputs

An outcome is the benefit or change users experience from the product.

An output describes the results of an activity. For example, if your service launches a new feature - this feature is an output. The output does not indicate what value the user or customer will experience.

Measuring value

We need to understand, and be able to articulate, what value we expect to achieve with the work we're doing. And we need to know if that value is actually added. What difference have we made? And is it making things better?

We need to measure our services

The Service Manual specifies 4 mandatory KPIs. You are not limited to these. If the mandatory KPIs are not relevant, you need to show you have considered them and justify why they're not.

Take the time to identify what key performance indicators (KPIs) and business metrics will be relevant for your product or service. Make sure your metrics are useful and support your service. Do not report on too many.

Remember that just because you're collecting a piece of data, it does not need to feed into a KPI.

Consider the repercussions of your service. Think about what bad looks like as well as what good looks like, and make sure you've got data on both.

Further reading

The benefits and pitfalls of outcomes over outputs, Inside Product