AMA: Snow Software Executive Vice President Product, Becky Trevino on Product Management KPIs

To make a product team/organization more KPI driven, it is always best to start at the top. The Head of Product at your organization should provide the broader PM organization with the strategic context of what business objectives are essential for your team to hit.  From there the PM team can take that business objective and break it down into their own objective and key result. If you are a product leader seeking to make your organization more KPI driven, what I would do is identify what metri ...Read More

Oftentimes, I find that Product Management teams are focused on getting the product to market that they forget that their #1 job is building a business. As a business leader, you can't be simply focused on the "speeds & feeds" or what next feature needs to be on the roadmap. You really have to understand the product's core value proposition: why would a customer choose your product over the existing way the problem is being solved today? And from here, how do you plan to monetize and scale t ...Read More

When working with products that are not monetized, it is actually more critical to measure business impact to show the value of your work. Why? Often products that are not monetized, are the first ones to get resources removed when the organizaiton finds itself in a bind. This can be a very big mistake for the organization and why it's critical to get this right. In this scenario, I'd go back to "what value does your product to your business?". And I would then tie KPIs to that value. Let's say ...Read More

A good framework I use follows the product adoption lifecyle curve: At Introduction (think MVP) the main objective is establishing product-market fit. At Growth you need to shift objectives to focus on maximize growth & share. If you're not profitable at this stage, focus on getting to profitability. At Maturity, maximize profit and aim to extend the lifetime of the product through diffentiation or adjacent products/segments. At Decline your focus is to remain profitable and transition cusot ...Read More

Great question.  To create a powerful partnership between Product Marketing (PMM) and Product Management (PM) it's essential for you to have a common set of KPIs that help you understand whether your work is generating the intended results.  Warning: For this to work best, it's great for these KPIs to be established as early as you can in the product lifecycle. PMs who wait until the last-minute (think 1-2 sprints before a feature/product will be released) risk not getting the most from this par ...Read More

When defining the proper KPIs for a specific product and product team, I tend to do the following: 1. Understand the company's broader business objectives. This may require a conversation with your manager. 2. Once I understand the company's broader business objectives, I then find a way to tie my product and team's work to those objectives. This typically leads to a handful thing 3-6 objectives that I want to reach. 3. I then break down those objectives and form key results that would show how ...Read More

When it comes to product launch, I make Product Marketing responsible for KPIs related to enabling Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. Proroduct Management is then responsible for owning all KPIs related to ensuring Sales Engineers and Support are enabled.  I also expect Product Marketing to hold cross-functional launch sessions with these key groups to ensure all items from the launch plan are completed prior to launch. I would encourage PM to develop a similar launch checklist so that PM a ...Read More

A good framework I use follows the product adoption lifecyle curve: At Introduction (think MVP) the main objective is establishing product-market fit. At Growth you need to shift objectives to focus on maximize growth & share. If you're not profitable at this stage, focus on getting to profitability. At Maturity, maximize profit and aim to extend the lifetime of the product through diffentiation or adjacent products/segments. At Decline your focus is to remain profitable and transition cusot ...Read More