AMA: BILL Senior Director of Product Management, Tara Wellington on Product Management KPI's

There are lots of frameworks, templates, and communication channels you can use to create ongoing communication about past launches. I usually find the biggest issue with this type of communication is not a lack of framework or tools, but usually either (1) remembering to do it or (2) keeping people’s attention post launch. For remembering to do it, I would just set calendar reminders for yourself and hold yourself to it. That is what I personally do. For keeping folks' attention, I would suggest starting a cadence of regular updates BEFORE the product launches - then you can get people into a rhythm of updates. They will know when and where to expect the information. Then once you get past launch, you can adjust cadence but keep the content and the channels the same con continuity. This can help people to have a mental model to receive this info, even well past launch. A framework that I like to use for these types of updates is: wins, learnings, next steps. This is a good way to keep people focused on the impact of the work, and may also encourage more attention if you are good at highlighting learnings that can be shared more broadly with other teams. 

This can sometimes seem like an impossible task - but there are some core change management principles we use at BILL that you can use to help people get excited about the idea of making the move. Step 1: Prep the organization for the change You have to get people to move from their current beliefs and behaviors to the desired beliefs and behaviors. You can do this in a few steps (1) Understand what their fears and concerns with the change, (2) Share a clear vision and strategy to address concerns and feedback, (3) Get buy-in to try it, (4) Set clear goals and share how success will be measured, (5) Share a detailed plan for how the change will work. Step 2: Implement the change This is usually the hardest step for moving to be more KPI driven - since it usually requires investment from teams to get their products instrumented. This can sometimes feel to teams like they have wasted product development cycles building in a bunch of metric measuring, but understanding current baselines is the first step to getting more data driven. This is also the most challenging part - since many teams assume measuring alone = KPI driven. You will likely need to provide training, templates, etc to help teams understand the KPIs are about using the KPIs as the data to inform the decision making process. If this is overwhelming to start - you can always start piloting with one team. Step 3: Embed the Change Once you implement the change and get people to start being more data driven - you need to make sure it sticks. You can do this by celebrating wins, highlighting it in team meetings, and consistently reenforcing the message. Step 4: Review and Evaluate the Outcomes Once you have some cycles under the team, to ensure that the change sticks, make sure to communicate widely the wins and the learnings from the change. This ensures that there is transparency in the change and people can see the positive effect of it on the company.

There are two ways to think about what the right KPIs are for your product and product team. One is to use a general model of customer lifecycle and the other is to align closely with your company’s overall goals and north star metrics. For the general customer lifecycle framework, a good place to start is defining metrics for each lifecycle category: discovery, acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, revenue (if applicable). Now not every product has every category, but this will get you a good place to start. This framework works for internal and platform teams as well - I know since I use it with our platform teams at BILL. While you can start with this lifecycle framework, you will want to make sure to align to the company’s core KPIs. You will want to make sure any metrics that you select within the customer lifecycle framework roll up well to the overall metrics the company is trying to move. This will help ensure that all of the metrics you are monitoring are aligned with the company direction. I will also call out that defining the right KPIs to understand and monitor day-to-day is not the same as setting goals. KPIs are intended to help you understand how your product is performing overall. Goals / OKRs are your commitments to specific ones that you want to move or change. So defining KPIs are a very important first step to get visibility into product performance, then you can get a clearer picture of where you want to focus your roadmap to make meaningful changes. 

I would start by separating out measuring product health from goal setting. First, every PM needs to have a clear understanding of the key metrics for their product area. This is a baseline set of KPIs so a PM knows how their product is currently performing and which specific KPIs are under or over performing. A good place to start when building a baseline is to use a general lifecycle model and define metrics for each category: discovery, acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, revenue (if applicable). Now not every product has every category, but this will get you a good place to start. Once you have a baseline set of the overall key performance indicators you want to monitor day-to-day, you can get a more holistic view of how your product is performing. From there, you can decide on which KPIs you would like to set goals around. Whether you use an OKR framework or some other framework, you should make sure the goals that you set are not only aligned with where you can make improvements in the product life cycle, but also what the CEO and company is looking to drive. Once you create this visibility into current performance - it becomes much easier to align the CEO to the goals you would like to set - and in turn it also gives the CEO visibility into how you are going to measure impact and a way to for the team to have accountability to move a specific set of metrics vs. accountability to move all of them at once.