don’t ship features. ship outcomes.
2025-06-20
good engineers ship features. great ones move metrics.
another sprint. another batch of tickets. button color tweaks. feature toggles. “add analytics.”
devs ship a lot of features. users see very few outcomes.
a feature is a checkbox. a visible thing you can point at in a changelog. an outcome is the effect it has. faster logins. fewer dropoffs. more users who stick around.
too many engineers stop at the feature. "i built it." and sure, the ticket's closed. the ui looks good. but what changed?
i’ve shipped a feature that didn’t matter. it was scoped, specced, even celebrated. then the numbers came in: flat. nothing moved. the user didn't care. the business didn’t care.
so now, i care about outcomes.
an outcome forces you to ask better questions: why does this exist? what does this improve? how will we know it worked?
if those answers aren’t clear, you’re not shipping a product. you’re shipping a placeholder.
sometimes the outcome is speed. sometimes it’s clarity. sometimes it’s “this no longer breaks.”
whatever it is, it should be felt. by the user. by the team. by the metrics.
if not. was it really worth building?
features are output. outcomes are impact.
and impact is what we’re paid for.