In Sharktower you can add an outcome to the end of an activity, this is also known as a project milestone. Outcomes allow you to track key parts of the project; they appear on the Project Overview page allowing stakeholders to see what is important at a glance, and can be linked to Objectives to depict the connection between high level business objectives and the actual work being done.

Creating an outcome

Ensuring you are in Edit mode, use the toolbar on the left to select Outcome mode (or press "o" on your keyboard). Click the node at the end of any activity or group of activities and a flag will appear. 

The Outcome modal will then appear to allow you to add the details and save the outcome. Outcomes need to have an assignee (this helps with accountability). 

Note that the outcome will not appear anywhere else in Sharktower until you have published the plan.

Linking an outcome to an objective

Outcomes represent the link between projects and high level business objectives. Click here to read more about objectives. To link an outcome to an objective, you must first navigate to the Objectives area of Sharktower. From there, within a specific objective, you can click the LINK OUTCOME button at the bottom of the page to search for your outcome and link it.

As per the note above, your outcome will not appear in this list unless the plan has been published.

Outcome properties

An outcome:

• Inherits the status of the activity it is associated with; to update the outcome status you need to update the activity status. If there are multiple activities leading into the outcome, Sharktower will use the "worst" status, i.e. if there are 2 GREEN and 1 SLIPPED activities, the outcome status will be SLIPPED. 
• Should always have an assignee - this is the person responsible for this outcome.
• Has two different types:
  • Project Milestone - this is to capture key deliverables during the project, typically managed by the project manager. 
  • Business Outcome - this is to capture the ultimate reason for the project - as well as e.g. a system going live, it's important to capture the original reason for the system - what business benefit is being driven by this project? This type of outcome would typically be managed by business change. 
    • You can also associate a value with this type of outcome - you can use this to capture the business value you expect (either quantitative or qualitative)
• Can be linked to more than one activity.