Why OBS (Outcome-Based Services)? Enterprises don’t buy kubernetes clusters or model weights, they buy outcomes. The OBS playbook encodes those outcomes before work begins. We tie SLAs and KPIs to ROI with a cadence that never goes out of date: before Daily Ops Reviews keep services green.
Monthly Business Reviews (MBR) connect tech health to cost and CX.
Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) rebalance investment to what’s working. Daily Ops Reviews keep services green. Monthly Business Reviews (MBR) connect tech health to cost and CX. Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) rebalance investment to what’s working. At my firm, this approach helped scale from a 50-person boutique to a 700-employee, 15-location enterprise serving 150+ clients—with run-ops costs down 25–35%, availability at 99.9%+, CSAT at 80%+, and $10M+ in renewals and expansions. Step 1: Encode Outcomes Define business outcomes: time-to-value, churn reduction, NRR lift, cost-to-serve.
Translate into SLOs and error budgets per service.
Document DoD (definition of done): tests, data quality, security, explainability, and acceptance criteria. Define business outcomes: time-to-value, churn reduction, NRR lift, cost-to-serve. Translate into SLOs and error budgets per service. Document DoD (definition of done): tests, data quality, security, explainability, and acceptance criteria. Step 2: Standardize the Ways of Working Reference architectures that 80/20 your stack decisions.
Migration runbooks with traffic-shift and rollback plans.
Analytics accelerators for common use cases (e.g., personalization, operational dashboards).
FinOps guardrails: rightsizing, autoscaling, lifecycle policies, reservations—reviewed monthly against value, not just cost. Reference architectures that 80/20 your stack decisions. Migration runbooks with traffic-shift and rollback plans. Analytics accelerators for common use cases (e.g., personalization, operational dashboards). FinOps guardrails: rightsizing, autoscaling, lifecycle policies, reservations—reviewed monthly against value, not just cost. Step 3: Operate, Review, Reinvest Ops telemetry rolls up into green/yellow/red summaries the CFO understands.
MBR/QBR focus on: What proved value? What missed? What do we stop, start, scale?
Funding shifts follow evidence, not opinions. Ops telemetry rolls up into green/yellow/red summaries the CFO understands. MBR/QBR focus on: What proved value? What missed? What do we stop, start, scale? Funding shifts follow evidence, not opinions. Field Notes from Real Programs Iconic global motorcycle manufacturer: Unified customer data + use-case analytics cut time-to-insight from weeks to days, enabling targeted personalization and new revenue plays.
Top-5 U.S. academic medical center: GCP modernization shrank data syncs 24h → 4–6h with 0 data-load failures and 99.9%+ availability, improving research reporting and grant compliance.
Global remittance & payments network: Portfolio SRE habits reduced MTTR and stabilized CX; reliability became a board-level dial through error budgets and change policy. Iconic global motorcycle manufacturer: Unified customer data + use-case analytics cut time-to-insight from weeks to days, enabling targeted personalization and new revenue plays. Top-5 U.S. academic medical center: GCP modernization shrank data syncs 24h → 4–6h with 0 data-load failures and 99.9%+ availability, improving research reporting and grant compliance. Global remittance & payments network: Portfolio SRE habits reduced MTTR and stabilized CX; reliability became a board-level dial through error budgets and change policy. Avoid These Traps Model Theater: fancy demos without DoD gates for data quality, drift, and cost.
SLA Soup: commitments that don’t affect behavior. If your SLA doesn’t change how you staff, deploy, or approve changes, it’s noise.
One-off Savings: FinOps is a habit. Guardrails + monthly cost-to-value reviews convert 15–20% savings into the new baseline. Model Theater: fancy demos without DoD gates for data quality, drift, and cost. SLA Soup: commitments that don’t affect behavior. If your SLA doesn’t change how you staff, deploy, or approve changes, it’s noise. One-off Savings: FinOps is a habit. Guardrails + monthly cost-to-value reviews convert 15–20% savings into the new baseline. What Good Looks Like An executive dashboard showing SLOs, error budgets, MTTR, CFR, unit economics, and a top-3 ROI narrative.
A catalog of outcome-priced services with clear acceptance criteria.
A culture where teams celebrate deleting unused resources as much as shipping features. An executive dashboard showing SLOs, error budgets, MTTR, CFR, unit economics, and a top-3 ROI narrative. A catalog of outcome-priced services with clear acceptance criteria. A culture where teams celebrate deleting unused resources as much as shipping features. Bottom line: OBS is how you make AI/Data/Cloud pay rent. Encode outcomes, standardize how you work, and run the cadence. The rest is commentary. pay rent

This story contains new, firsthand information uncovered by the writer.

dashboard

The OBS Playbook: How to Turn AI, Data & Cloud Into P&L Results

About Author

Comments

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN

Related Stories

Projects to Programs: A Client-Partner Playbook for AI, Cloud & Data That Actually Moves the needle

The Geographic Imperative: How CockroachDB Turns Maps into Architecture

Projects to Programs: A Client-Partner Playbook for AI, Cloud & Data That Actually Moves the needle

Crack Long-Form Blogs: Complete Guide & Experts' Insights

The Noonification: How Often Do NFTs Pass The Howey Test? (1/13/2023)

Darwin's Hybrid Intelligence to Align AI & Human Goals for Startups & VCs

Projects to Programs: A Client-Partner Playbook for AI, Cloud & Data That Actually Moves the needle

The Geographic Imperative: How CockroachDB Turns Maps into Architecture

Projects to Programs: A Client-Partner Playbook for AI, Cloud & Data That Actually Moves the needle

Crack Long-Form Blogs: Complete Guide & Experts' Insights

The Noonification: How Often Do NFTs Pass The Howey Test? (1/13/2023)

Darwin's Hybrid Intelligence to Align AI & Human Goals for Startups & VCs

Light-Mode

Classic

Newspaper

Minty

Dark-Mode

Neon Noir

Minty

HN StartUps