Yes, empirical process control helps but what is empirical process control?

I was talking to my friend last night about a meetup that she hosted yesterday. I asked what was expected outcome from there? Her reply was not clear to me so I was worried and tried to dig it deeper and found meaning of DONE is not clearly defined. Meaning process as well outcome is not transparent enough to see through what's going on. Is it OK to say that setting expectation from each and everything what we do is not good? I believe NO because if we don't set expectation and measure result then may not be motivated to do it again or improve it further.

Transparency is key for empirical process control and defining DONE helps in making outcome transparent. Since DONE is not defined so it will also become difficult to inspect outcome. If we cannot inspect then will not change plan and adapt it. 

If we are doing something then we should know why we are doing? What is expected outcome? Can I measure outcome? If not then is it worth doing? What is opportunity cost? Good to struggle with these questions rather than just executing something that can't be measured.

Last year we sponsored an event and we were expecting to have 300 people attending but there was only 50 people so we decided to stop sponsoring such events in future and figure out other way of promoting it. Spent same amount this year to host an event rather than sponsoring. Result is better than last year but still have to review as team to identify improvement areas or may be totally new things.

Yes it is very much important to set DONE criteria for what we do in order to improve ourselves. Things will not improve until we review and retrospect. Hoping it will improve automatically over the period sound very adventurous but talk to people those are on adventurous journey, they review outcome much frequent than others.