The industry is racing onto a pricing model whose hardest part, measuring and defending the outcome, almost no firm has solved. The ones that win it are the ones that can see their own delivery.

Clients stopped wanting to buy your hours, and for once that is good news. The catch is that getting paid for the result means owning the cost of every hour you overspend, which only the firm that can see itself can safely do.

Outcome-based pricing is arriving in IT services from the top down. The firms that can price it are the ones that can see their own utilization.