Outcomes Terminology
When referring to outcomes, a reasonable level of precision is required in its definition of its terms:
Baseline: The condition against which a project or service performance target is compared. The baseline is usually either a pre‑existing condition or a projection of what would have happened without a given project or service intervention.
Customer: Customers are people who directly interact with an organisation's product and its staff (the providers). This interaction is intended to bring about a change in customer behaviour or condition, in line with organisational outcomes and aims.
Impact: The term generally refers to the broader or cumulative effect that accrues from the achievement of outcomes for individuals.
Intermediary: A person, in an agency or other organisation outside your direct control, upon whom you rely for direct access to customers or any other key ingredient of your product. These may include those who refer customers to you, or in some other way play a critical role.
Input: The resources that go into a service, including staff time, facilities, equipment, materials and management overhead. Inputs also may refer to service activities like counselling, training programmes, etc. Essentially inputs are all the things that define the organisation and what it offers.
Investment Criteria: These are the guidelines used to make investments. They focus on understanding what is to be achieved, the probability it will happen, and the degree to which an investment opportunity represents the best possible use of resources. Investment criteria are very different from the traditional "review process" which focuses on the adequacy of a proposal and its compliance with requirements.
Investor: The person or organisation allocating resources to achieve a specific set of outcomes. Funds and other resources are invested in implementers who commit to achieve a performance target directly linked to the investor's outcome. The investor's responsibility includes defining the outcome statements and performance target areas that connect to those outcomes.
Learning: The methodology of looking at experience in such a way that it leads to behavioural change. Many different styles and data forms are appropriate. Learning is generally driven by learning questions: questions to which someone wants an answer and is prepared to show how it will be used.
Market: Those people, agencies or other organisations that could reasonably benefit from the products, programmes or services.
Milestone: A critical point that customers must reach to ensure that a project is on course to achieving its performance target.
Outcome: In some cases it is used to describe projected positive changes in condition, behaviour, attitude or status of an individual or group served by a project or service. It can also describe what has been already been accomplished. In organisational terms outcomes can reflect the core purpose or mission or its vision for success. Outcomes are the bottom-line results for a programme, service or organisation.
Outcome statement: The result which the investor seeks (generally an end state) to which all performance targets must contribute. For example: a school with no drug‑dependency, or to prevent the spread of HIV. Outcomes are both visions and specific states or conditions that can be understood to be caused or at least influenced by the achievement of performance targets.
Outcome Funding: The methodology developed by The Rensselaerville Institute to enable investors and those in whom they invest to define and achieve results.
Output: The end-point, good or service that is produced by a given process or activity. Outputs are generally not individually client specific, but are described in overall volume terms. While outputs have clear outcome implications, they are not the same as outcomes. Outputs answer the question what tangible evidence is there that your service was delivered?
Performance Target: A projected level of outcomes established at the start of a programme or service. The specific result a provider commits to achieve. It is tangible in the sense that it can be verified, and narrow enough to be directly achieved by the implementer. It almost always represents a change in behaviour for the customer of a programme. An example 25 of the 50 families receiving counselling will reduce anxiety symptoms to a defined level and maintain the improvement for 6 months
Product: A programme or service with specific core features that is offered to a customer. In Target Planning, a product is described in terms of benefit or value to a customer.
Product Step: Those actions taken by the provider organisation to meet milestones and, in turn, a performance target. Taken together, the product steps (including the strategy to deliver them) comprise the product. In some cases, they may be positioned within a chain, as in: send out information...respond to those interested ...do training, etc.
Result: The identifiable change in a customer as a consequence of the product. A performance target is the specific result sought. In a broader framework, an outcome ‘results' from the achievement of performance targets.
Target Plan: A plan prepared by an individual or organisation seeking investment. The plan focuses on what is being bought (the Performance Target) and the likelihood that it will be delivered (the product and the people who deliver it).
Verification: Establishing that the things claimed in the Target Plan do in fact occur. In Outcome Funding verification replaces measurements. It is kept as simple as possible and is used to answer the question ‘Did it happen, yes or no?' rather than to measure small differences. Verification is typically applied to the accomplishment of milestone and performance targets.
