Accelerated by the publication of the first PISA results in 2001, the term competence found its way into the educational system in Germany. The paper depicts important stages on the way to competence-oriented teaching practices. For this purpose we start with a brief elaboration of relevant findings from the Programme of International Student Assessment and outline the development of national educational standards. Subsequently we look closely on tasks as connecting link between outcome-oriented reform programs and everyday teaching routines in classroom situations. Within the context of psychometric models of competencies, tasks describe different levels of difficulty and exemplify the overarching framework. Based on empirical findings from the SINUS-Programme we show that well-constructed tasks are useful not only for performance diagnostics but also for the development of competence-oriented teaching activities.