Business outcomes vs. Product outcomes vs. Customer outcomes vs. Desired outcomes

“Outcomes over output” is essential for any PM. But there is no single definition of outcomes.

Let’s simplify this. There are three types of outcomes every PM needs to know:

1. Business outcomes

Those are metrics related to the organization’s goals:

• increase revenue

• lower costs

• grow market share

• grow profit margin

• reduce churn rate

Business outcomes allow the company’s stakeholders to track the company’s progress, for example:

• profit margin grows by 5%

• churn rate was reduced by 10%

Business outcomes are lagging indicators. On top of that, product teams typically cannot influence them directly, so they need to be translated into product outcomes.

This definition is consistent with Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres.

2. Product outcomes

At the product level, we may decide that a way to decrease the churn rate (impact a business outcome) is to increase customer engagement, measured, for example, as the total number of hours customers watch videos every month.

As Joshua Seiden noticed in Outcomes over Output, these outcomes are always associated with a change in human behavior. He defined outcomes as “a change in human behavior that drives business results.”

An example of the product outcome may be the following metric change:

• Customers spend, on average, 30 minutes more watching videos every month.

• Activation rate is 10% higher.

This definition is consistent with Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres.

3. Customer outcomes (needs)