{"id":1052,"date":"2020-03-26T07:58:16","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T07:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2020-03-26T07:58:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T07:58:17","slug":"why-you-dont-define-desired-outcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/26\/why-you-dont-define-desired-outcome\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you don\u2019t define desired outcome"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During multiple meetings this week (online, obviously), the same challenge came up: companies and their customers are extremely poor at precisely defining what the desired outcome is that they\u2019re looking to accomplish. At first blush, every person that I meet claims to know exactly what he or she is looking to achieve, but when push comes to shove and the individual is asked to define this more precisely, the lack of specificity rapidly starts to become apparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is, of course, far from the first time that I\u2019m exposed to this \nand the interesting thing is that there\u2019s a variety of words that \ncompanies will use to cover up the lack of specificity. Words like \ncustomer value, quality, speed, reliable and robust are often used as \ngeneric terms used to look good but that prove to be void of any real \nmeaning when investigated in more depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge is that not being clear on your desired outcome causes \nall kinds of problems for organizations. One is that prioritization in \nthe company tends to be driven by the loudest customer. Customers tend \nto create a lot of noise about something that they happen to care about \nat the moment, especially if it\u2019s not working well. The consequence is \nthat they contact the company with messages of deteriorating quality. If\n you haven\u2019t defined what you mean with quality and you don\u2019t have \nmetrics to follow up what the current level is, it\u2019s very easy to simply\n go along with the customer opinion and allocate significant resources \nto addressing this potential quality problem. The opportunity cost of \nthis is enormous as the proclaimed problem might be a minor thing and it\n might well be that using the resources elsewhere would have been much \nbetter for the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lack of precise definition of desired outcomes creates several \nissues inside the organization as well. First, it may easily lead to \nteams whose efforts are mutually conflicting due to different \ninterpretations of what success looks like. For instance, teams looking \nto improve customer value by developing a simpler, more intuitive user \ninterface will run into conflict with those that seek to improve \ncustomer value by developing additional features or more configuration \nand variants of existing features. The latter will need UI real estate \nto expose the user to the additional functionality and options that will\n easily undo the efforts of the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another aspect, which I\u2019ve written about before, is the inefficiency \nof development that\u2019s not grounded in precisely, or rather \nquantitatively, defined customer value. For a company allocating 5 \npercent of its revenue to R&D and an average FTE cost of 120 \nk\u20ac\/year, an agile team of 8 people working in 3-week sprints costs \naround 60 k\u20ac per sprint but has to generate 1.2 M\u20ac (60 k\u20ac\/0.05) in \nbusiness value per sprint. Vague statements about quality, speed, \nreliability and value do not help organizations to accomplish this \noutcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concluding, many organizations fall short in precisely defining the desired outcome for initiatives, projects, products, and so on. Resources are allocated because of loud customers, historical patterns, ingrained behaviors or internal politics, not because these resources are providing the highest ROI for the company. In our research, we work with companies on value modeling to overcome these challenges and help them get on the way of precisely and quantitatively defining desired outcomes. Contact me if you want to know more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During multiple meetings this week (online, obviously), the same challenge came up: companies and their customers are extremely poor at precisely defining what the desired outcome is that they\u2019re looking to accomplish. At first blush, every person that I meet claims to know exactly what he or she is looking to achieve, but when push … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1055,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}