When Done Isn’t Enough: The Gap Between Delivery and Impact
From the Scrum Expansion Pack — pragmatic tools and patterns for modern teams who want more than rituals and velocity.
Most Agile teams are great at getting to Output Done.
The feature is built.
It meets acceptance criteria.
It’s deployed.
It’s marked “done.”
But here’s the catch: that’s just delivery—not impact.
Output Done vs. Outcome Done
Output Done means:
The thing was shipped.
The sprint goal was checked off.
The team can move on.
Outcome Done means:
The thing delivered actual value.
A real customer pain was solved.
User behavior changed.
The business saw results.
If we stop at Output, we’re just tracking effort—not effectiveness.
Agile was never about shipping for the sake of shipping.
It’s about delivering outcomes that matter.
A Better Question for Retros
Next time you wrap a sprint, try asking:
Did we finish the work—or did we make a difference?
Because “done” should mean more than code in production.
It should mean progress.