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A new decision-making framework called Outcome-First has been introduced, which guides organizations to evaluate ongoing initiatives based on their current outcomes and costs, rather than past investments or emotional attachment.

Outcome-First is designed to address the common problem of organizations maintaining projects that no longer deliver value, often due to sunk costs and emotional biases. The framework employs a ‘Worth Filter’ that judges each initiative solely on its present outcome versus its ongoing cost, leading to one of three verdicts: keep, change, or kill.

It is open-source under the AGPL-3.0 license and emphasizes local-first, provider-agnostic implementation, allowing organizations to review and decide frequently without significant cost. The framework aims to institutionalize the discipline of stopping, which is often overlooked despite its high leverage for efficiency.

Why Outcome-First Decisions Impact Organizational Efficiency

This framework matters because it offers a structured approach to pruning ineffective projects, freeing up resources and focus for more valuable initiatives. By making the decision to kill easier, organizations can reduce hidden costs of maintaining dead projects, such as diverted attention and opportunity costs, ultimately improving agility and strategic alignment.

The Challenge of Maintaining Dead Projects in Portfolios

Many organizations accumulate a long tail of ongoing projects that neither succeed nor are actively terminated. These initiatives continue to consume attention, capital, and effort, often justified by sunk costs or emotional attachment. Traditional evaluation methods tend to focus on past investments rather than current value, leading to inefficiencies. Outcome-First aims to change this by focusing solely on present outcomes and costs, encouraging regular pruning.

“The hardest decision in any portfolio isn’t what to start. It’s what to stop.”

— Thorsten Meyer, creator of Outcome-First

Limitations and Risks of Outcome-Based Judgments

It remains unclear how effectively organizations will implement and adhere to Outcome-First, especially in cases where outcomes are slow to materialize or difficult to measure. There is also concern that the framework could lead to premature termination of projects with long-term potential, or that outcome metrics could be gamed or mismeasured.

Adoption and Integration into Organizational Processes

Organizations interested in Outcome-First are expected to pilot the framework, integrate it into regular portfolio reviews, and refine their outcome metrics. Further development may include tooling support for automated outcome assessment and broader community feedback to address challenges in measurement and decision-making.

Key Questions

How does Outcome-First differ from traditional project evaluation?

It focuses solely on current outcomes versus ongoing costs, disregarding past investments and emotional attachments, to make clear kill/change/keep decisions.

Is Outcome-First suitable for all types of projects?

It is designed for portfolio management but may require adaptation for projects with long-term or slow-to-materialize outcomes.

Can Outcome-First prevent organizations from prematurely killing valuable initiatives?

While it emphasizes outcome-based judgment, careful metric selection and contextual judgment are still necessary to avoid premature termination.

Is the framework open for modification?

Yes, it is open-source under AGPL-3.0, allowing organizations to adapt and extend it as needed.

Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com