Outputs & Outcomes

Overview

I judge an engineer on what they ship on a steady cadence (outputs) and on what changes because of it (outcomes). Engineers show complete value to users every week, and they build the safety net that lets the team keep moving fast.

Outputs

• Weekly demos, at least. Each week you push a new component to production that gives a user independent value. It may be held for a larger release planned with product marketing, but you can show complete value to a user at least once a week. You demo it in a team meeting with a live demo, or in a recorded video. The demo must be in production, though it can be behind a flag or dark launched.
• Daily merges. Every engineer averages at least one merged pull request per day. A merge counts when the PR has passed review and checks.
• Breakdown, estimation, and planning. Engineers complete breakdown, estimation, and planning on at least one piece of work every week.
• Automated test coverage. The team has automated tests that catch everything we can think of, and more. How we measure this is still to be decided.

Outcomes

• Velocity. How quickly the team turns plans into value in production.
• Quality. Bugs, security measures, speed, and similar.
• Scalability. The system keeps working as usage and the business grow.
• Shared product outcomes. The ROI engineers share with the rest of product: vision, quality, adoption, and economics.