If Peter Drucker taught us how to think about management in the industrial and knowledge-work eras, Mik Kersten is helping define management for the Age of AI. Output to Outcome combines systems thinking, software delivery, and organizational design into a clear playbook for leaders who need to harness AI without losing control, accountability, or purpose.
Gene Kim, , researcher and WSJ bestselling author of Vibe Coding, The Phoenix Project, and Wiring the Winning Organization
In a world where AI can amplify output endlessly, many organizations risk optimizing the wrong thing. Mik Kersten provides exactly what’s missing: An operating model that keeps value creation and measurable outcomes at the center. Timely, insightful, and highly actionable.
Ralf Waltram, Head of IT Global DevOps Hubs, BMW Group
Technological revolutions reshape not only economies and industries but also the way organizations must adapt to succeed. Output to Outcome is a timely and thought-provoking contribution in a period of information technology and AI-driven socioeconomic transformation.
Carlota Perez, Author of Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital
Output to Outcome presents a radically new model of how a complex organization can take full advantage of the rapid rates of improvement that can take place when AI agents are fully integrated into a company’s organizational design.
Carliss Baldwin, Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, Harvard Business School
With Output to Outcome, Mik defines the next critical shift for enterprises in the age of AI—moving from activity to measurable impact. Building on Lean principles and decades of transformation insight, he provides a clear, practical roadmap for leaders who need to compete and win. This is a must-read—and a call to action—for every software-driven organization.
Dean Leffingwell, Creator of SAFe
We are in a chaotic environment driven by a rate of change that current systems and businesses cannot absorb. The climate crisis, pandemics, and wars disrupt business plans and supply chains, and the pace of AI- driven development means that tools are obsolete before they stabilize. We have to reorganize to focus on outcomes, and rebuild everything to deliver them using new tools that are building themselves. This is the definitive guidebook for that transition.
Adrian Cockcroft, Tech Advisor, Formerly AWS and Netflix
Everyone in the software community feels something big is happening. AI is revolutionizing how product development works…[Mik Kersten’s] approach is both refreshing and based on solid experience. As we look to the future, [Output to Outcome] is an excellent guide, encouraging a thoughtful, empirical approach to what lies ahead.
Dave West, CEO and Product Owner, Scrum.org
Mik does it again! This time, with the advent of the Age of AI, Output to Outcome provides a unique and comprehensive strategy that can drive companies to best surf the promising AI wave. This book is a starting point in the launch of a new movement. This movement is the Operating Model for the Age of AI.
George Kadifa, Cofounder, Sumeru Equity Partners
At Vanguard, we’ve seen firsthand that meaningful transformation requires more than new technology. It requires a data-driven operating model that improves how we create and deliver value. In Output to Outcome, Mik Kersten provides a practical framework for establishing that robust data-driven operating model, allowing you to scale up in a world increasingly shaped by AI.
Michael Carr, Chief Technology Officer, Vanguard
After transforming how we measure and manage software delivery with the Flow Framework in Project to Product, [Mik Kersten] is now guiding enterprises through the deeper AI transition. In Output to Outcome, he provides the vocabulary, models, and practical frameworks needed to turn AI into a genuine operating system for the enterprise—not just another feature. If your company is serious about surviving and thriving in the AI era, Output to Outcome is essential reading.
Pieter Jordaan, Group Chief Information Officer, TUI Group
The tech industry is currently falling into a massive trap: assuming agentic AI will solve our problems by making employees faster. But as a systems thinker, I know that individuals are rarely the bottleneck—the system is. Output to Outcome perfectly captures this reality. Mik brilliantly demonstrates that AI capacity gains are wasted without a fundamental organizational redesign. Among other brilliant insights, his call to shift from a tangled Matrix to Modularity is exactly what leaders need to hear right now: We must engineer our organizations with the same high cohesion and low coupling as our best software. A masterful guide to unlocking AI’s true ROI by fixing the system itself.
Justin Watts, Director of Transformation and Business Design, John Lewis Partnership
In the Age of AI, the constraint has shifted from producing outputs to delivering outcomes.
As AI automates knowledge work at unprecedented scale, most organizations remain trapped measuring the wrong things—lines of code, features delivered, and other outputs that AI can now produce almost for free. The real constraint has shifted to organizational structure and the ability to turn strategy into measurable business outcomes.
Dr. Mik Kersten—bestselling author of Project to Product, creator of the Flow Framework, and independent technology strategist and researcher—reveals why AI productivity gains are failing to materialize for most companies and provides a comprehensive operating model to unlock AI's transformative potential. Drawing on data from over 8,000 value streams, Kersten shows that success in the Age of AI depends entirely on how effectively organizations can connect inputs to outcomes through continuous feedback loops.
The book introduces the Product Operating Model built around the Outcome Loop that connects strategy to results, the Outcome Tree that scales this approach across organizations, and seven critical shifts, including moving from functional silos to flow-optimized value streams, from vanity metrics to meaningful measurement, and from chaotic structures to unified planning cadences.
With detailed implementation guidance including Flow Metrics, Outcome Roadmaps, and practical tools for restructuring organizations into modular value streams with clear ownership, Output to Outcome provides both the strategic framework and tactical playbook executives and technology leaders need to transform their organizations from output factories into outcome engines—before their competitors do.
Dr. Mik Kersten is an independent technology strategist and researcher best known as the creator of the Flow Framework and author of the bestselling book Project to Product and the new book Output to Outcome. Mik founded Tasktop and led the company as CEO until its acquisition by Planview in 2022. Mik started his career as a Research Scientist at Xerox PARC as part of the team that created the first aspect-oriented programming language. He then completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, where he pioneered the integration of software development and collaboration tools. That work became the foundation for Tasktop and helped shape the emerging field of Value Stream Management. Before shifting his focus to flow, outcomes, and organizational modularity, Mik wrote more than one million lines of open-source code that are still in use today. His work now focuses on helping leaders transition from output- driven management to outcome-driven operating models, enabling organizations to harness the power of AI in a human-centric way. For more information, please visit the book‘s website at https://outputtooutcome.org/ .
