Outcomes engineering
Aren’t we all just trying to make things happen?
Whether you’re working on your startup, leading a team, or driving change in a large organisation, you’re engineering outcomes.
Outcomes engineering is the knack of wrangling the mess into progress. It’s about understanding the big picture, creating safe spaces, running lean, thinking deeply, adapting approach to fit, seeing the whole system, and most importantly, getting big stuff done. When done well, outcomes engineering creates clarity from ambiguity, identifies dependencies and impacts, builds shared understanding, and helps people to make informed decisions.
But, outcomes engineering isn’t exclusive and fancy, quite the contrary! Everything on this site can be used by anyone who is working to make things happen. Because if you’re trying to get things done, you’re doing outcomes engineering no matter what your email signature says.
Outcomes engineering is an approach, not a title (except for sometimes when it is).
Your title might be Business Analyst, product manager, service designer, UX designer, delivery manager, lead something, developer, or something else entirely — or even Outcomes Engineer. It doesn’t matter — if you’re trying to get stuff done — then you are welcome here!
What does an Outcomes Engineer do?
Well, obviously, the Outcomes Engineer engineers outcomes. As explained above, outcomes engineering is about seeing the whole picture while being ready to dive into any part of it. It’s knowing when to zoom out to service design, zoom in to analyse the details, or focus on strategy — and having the skills to do all three.
Think of an Outcomes Engineer as a Swiss Army knife for getting things done. We work across technology, delivery, design, and operations, drawing on skills from multiple disciplines: we might do service design on Monday, tackle thorny product decisions on Tuesday, and spend Wednesday knee-deep in delivery management. The focus isn’t on our role but on the objective and on bringing all our skills to bear.
It’s more than just wearing multiple hats — it’s about thoughtfully asking how can I help?
Then rolling up our sleeves to do whatever’s needed.
Um, didn’t you just make up a fancy new title?
Well yes! But also, no.
Titles are hard. When they work, they signpost what you do and make it easy for people to understand what you’re trying to do. When they don’t, they hem you in and encourage people to put you into a box.
Yes, most of our background is in the business analysis space, but for years that title has chaffed and we’ve largely ignored the traditional boundaries. The business analysis community is increasingly specialised, not big picture oriented, and frankly, far too cert-focused to be practical. We clearly don’t belong to the club, and we don’t want to make ourselves smaller to fit.
Other possible titles seemed just as problematic.
So like others, we decided to do our own thing.
Ready to get started?
Great! Start here!