Focus on outcomes newsletter
INAUGURAL NEWSLETTER
For a number of months, I having been writing stories as part of the publication ‘Focus on outcomes’. For the last few years, I have been exploring some specific ideas and practices which can enable better decision-making by framing planning and progress tracking around outcomes with precedence over initiatives or other activity-oriented planning. And for longer still, most of my career has featured explorations into efficacy, measurement and focusing on outcomes of various incarnations.
To get a sense of the broad themes of my writing start here :
Practices which increase the focus of outcomes in continuous planning and implementation are increasing and will inevitably supplant activity-focused planning as the new orthodoxy in terms of where software product development teams apply their effort. This is the theme of this publication outlines why this is important.
https://medium.com/wioota/a-new-orthodoxy-awaits-us-2e8144bc08db
This newsletter will highlight both my own writing on this topic and curated posts on relevant themes. Join me on this journey following the evolution of the practices in our software product development industry.
Some reading that has influenced this publication
Stacey Barr shares how to start replacing action-oriented goals, which can’t be meaningfully be measured, with result-oriented goals:
https://www.staceybarr.com/measure-up/replace-your-action-oriented-goals-with-result-oriented-goals/
Hope Gurion explores, along with examples from top companies, what makes for a vision that inspires and aligns people:
Teresa Torres writes about Opportunity Mapping, one of a variety of practices emphasising the importance of understanding the relationships between goals and opportunities — a topic I will also cover in detail in ‘Focus on outcomes’:
https://www.producttalk.org/2020/07/opportunity-mapping/
Jeff Weiner outlines with examples the elements of defining your organisation’s core:
Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints remains relevant today and brought awareness to the limitations of localised efficiency improvement.
https://www.tocinstitute.org/the-goal-summary.html
I am Daniel Walters, an experienced product development professional, with over 20 years in software product development in both practitioner and leadership roles across software development, quality, content and product management responsibilities. Most recently, I spent 5 years as CTO for Seek’s leading job sites in South East Asia (JobsDB, Jobstreet, WorkAbroad) where I was based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — my home for 10 years. I now reside in Auckland, New Zealand with my wife and 2 year old son.
