Companies Win When They Focus on Outcomes Not Outputs
TL;DR At the end of the day, the whole purpose of product development is to deliver value to users and customers. Most of the time we don’t know exactly what is going to deliver that value though. To think that we can come up with the right solutions up-front, sometimes a year in advance without iterating on it, is pretty unrealistic.
One of the biggest challenges a product manager will face in an organisation is trying to elevate thinking and culture from a project level to a product level.
A Project Mentality
The focus of project thinking is delivery. This could be the delivery of a new product, features, or really the delivery of anything. And because the focus is delivery, the primary measurement is simply the time it takes to be shipped. Project management is specifically focused on the output, and is measured by how accurately we were able to estimate the timeline beforehand and then deliver the specified output on that schedule. Success is largely defined as taking the requirements of something beforehand, setting up a schedule with milestones all along they way, and then effectively hitting those dates.
A Product Mentality
With an emphasis on product thinking you end up focusing on the outcome and not the output. There is a huge shift of mindset compared to project thinking. Rather than focusing on timelines and dates, you focus on the goal you want to achieve or the jobs to be done. Because you’re focused on the outcome rather than the output, it is much more difficult to put time constraints around the delivery, at least up front. Primarily because you don’t really know how you’re going to accomplish the goal beforehand.
This kind of thinking can be quite the shift for large corporations, especially for those that have budgeted projects the previous quarter or year. Many firms are uncomfortable with the uncertainty of not having structured timelines and schedules that they can monitor on a regular basis.
With a project mindset, you assume at the beginning that you already know how to achieve the desired outcome (customer wants X and so we need to build Y). Working from that assumption, you create a plan full of requirements and milestones, then begin execution on that plan. If you’re right, and what you assumed at the start turns out to be the right solution, then you’re in good shape. You just execute the plan and achieve the outcome.
But what if we discover something along the way? What if the solution we identified to be built isn’t going to achieve the desire outcome we hoped for?
That is where project thinking gets us into all sorts of trouble. The bigger the project, the more moving parts and more ways it can go off the desired track. For those larger companies to pivot and change directions. Project thinking doesn’t allow for flexibility when a plan has been agreed and timelines have been set.
On the flip side with a product mindset, you are able to learn and adapt as you go. Dates and milestones essentially go out the window, and focus is on learning and achieving the outcome. If something doesn’t work out along the way or customers don’t respond well to something you’re validating, you can take that into account, make changes, and still work towards the outcome you had set out.
