Product Management KPI's

Be adaptable to change - don't be afraid to try different things or change a process that is no longer working for the team. For a team that is growing quickly oftentimes process gets ignored because the team is so focused on delivering/executing that they feel process may slow them down. In some cases little to no process can be a good thing, but for a team that is scaling it can be detrimental. What I try to do is understand how they are using product management processes today and then try to understand where product can add the most impact short term and demonstrate early wins to help b...

I'm a strong believer in "just enough" process, so my answer to questions like this is always some version of "it depends"! The one piece of process that every team must have is a way to reflect on, and incrementally improve, they way they work together. You can call this process whatever you like - "reflection", "retrospective", "after-action review", "post-mortem" - but it is imperative to building an effective team.  This practice will inform the way you introduce and evolve processes as your team grows. Here's the lightest-weight retro format I've ever used, which is a great wa...

The partnership with Product Marketing is one of the most important functions when it comes to rolling out a successful product. Don’t read too much into the last part of that statement though, a Product Marketing Manager (PMM) is a crucial teammate to include from the start, not just at launch time. If I know who I will be working with in advance, I tag them in Product Requirements Documents or other important materials. Sharing context from the beginning is so important!  As far as the KPIs go, we are really talking about how you measure the success of a product, and Product Management a...

While there are different specific metrics that marketing and product teams track for product launches, what's critical is the alignment between the two and agreement on the metrics to track prior to the launch. Some examples of metrics tracked by each team: * Product team: Satisfaction, usage by users and individual accounts, full funnel from a user trying the feature to actually using it * Marketing team: % of reps enabled on the new product, leads generated, competitive win rate changes * Metrics that require deep partnership: Number of customer stories/references for the c...

* Just like Shared KPI's between Engineering and Product Management, a similar shared KPI framework between Product Management and Marketing is a great way to build high quality products that bring customer delight and high ROI. This also builds camaraderie and encourages teamwork towards a common goal between these teams. * Generally PM's would own Company, Business, Acquisition, User Engagement and User Satisfaction KPI's. Examples are: MRR, Churn rate, Number of users, DAU/WAU/MAU, Number of sessions, Session duration, Churn rate, NPS or CSAT etc. * While Marketin...

I love this question because it's something I'm currently involved with at CookUnity. At a B2C company the marketing team is a Product Manager's best friend, especially in the early startup days. You can build the greatest product in the world but there are only so many Field of Dreams "if you build it they will come" success stories. You need someone out there telling your product's story and building awareness, hence the PM's need for a great relationship with the Marketing organization.  Launching a new product, a new major feature release, or even a rebrand requires a collaborative d...

Oooohhhh, this is a good one and something I spend a lot of time balancing. Product owns the product and at the end of the day both gets unearned credit and unearned blame. It is your neck on the line for the end to end experience. Thinking through the experience that users get both in product and out of product (traditionally the domain of marketing) is well within Product's scope. That being said, as you expand your career and scope you'll find more and more that you don't scale. Not just in terms of time but in terms of expertise. Figuring out a structure that lets you contribute t...

I generally think in terms of OKRs rather than KPIs, so here let's agree that we are talking about some shared measure of success! On our teams, Product Marketing is responsible for all communication about the product or feature to people outside the Product-Eng-Design org. They're our liaison to the outside world! That includes: * Creating campaigns and collateral for customers * Developing positioning documents * Developing and rolling out enablement materials for go-to-market teams * Implementing campaigns and marketing events (eg, webinars, content marketing, etc) In terms o...

Interestingly enough I see two trends in the types of KPIs product teams miss.  1) Aligning with the larger's organization or business goals - Ensuring that your product roadmap is actually impacting the success metrics (OKRs, KPIs) of the business itself is critical to knowing if you are investing in and prioritizing the right work. 2) Capturing "technical or engineering" metrics - Any work that your team spends time on should be impacting some metric. Even metrics that are technical (the most common one being latency) should be captured, reported on, and measured over time. 

* In terms of KPI's shared between product and engineering, I would say "Effective Resource Utilization" can be missed primarily because it can be hard to track and measure across projects/teams. * "Internal team satisfaction" is another one that PM's may not include but this is an extremely important metric that provides a good idea of the health of the team and organization. This should not be missed.

Many product organizations focus on delivery, Net Promoter Score, and user counts. One metric that I think is important to always consider is your availability and consistency of user experience in the performance of the application (latency). Using Error Budgets and thinking about uptime critically as a Product Manager helps put into tangible terms the cost to the user when your offering does not meet a performance or uptime standard. If you are offering mission-critical software, it is essential to be responsive and reliable. Lack of responsiveness and reliability can erode your base over...

This is a good one. I think there are two that often get missed and largely it is because they are hard to measure and expensive to move. 1. Product excellence. How do you measure customer delight in an impactful way? CSAT and NPS have lots of opportunities to be gamed and are frankly easily ignored. Some of the best products I've used focus on finding the right critical user journeys and continuously measure the success rates of those quantitatively and qualitatively 2. Product health. Cold boot, warm boot, latency for critical actions, crashes, uptime. All of thes...

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 the solution? Several PMs, like me, have engineering backgrounds. This is great because engineers a...

This is a hard one as I am sure there are a ton of layers to unpack here. Whenever there is a question around metrics, I would first look to the customer and understand what customer pain points your product area is solving for. Then see how those needs and your business goals align, and how your specific area can help solve for that. If it is a matter of stakeholder management that is a different story, but engineering, product and design should really have shared KPIs.

Usually I would begin with understanding 1. What are the key customer pain points that I am trying to solve for your customer? Those are my metrics in 9 out of 10 cases 2. Why is my product team funded? What problems am I solving for the business?  Once I have the initial list, just like all things product management I PRIORITIZE. What matters the most vs what is not as important.  Now for every item in the list its also crucial to think through what are the counter metrics. A crude example would be, I want to have more paying customers but a counter metric will be revenue from t...

Here is a rough process I would follow but it really varies a lot depending upon each business: * Understand Company Objectives and Goals * Have a clear Product Vision and Strategy that aligns with these goals/objectives * Create higher level OKR's that can map to KPI's * Determine the top KPI's the company is interested in driving/moving. Examples are: Business Performance KPIs: Customer counts, Customer / user acquisition, Retention Rate, Churn Rate, Revenue etc. * Make a prioritized list of these KPI's you can measure. Example Revenue would map to MRR and so on * Pick ...

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 cusotmers to what is next.

This could really range based upon the company, your users, your target goals, where you are in your business lifecyle, etc. The most basic ones are: acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, referral You could also be measuring customer lifetime value.  Again this will really depend upon what type of business you are in.

Objectives and Key Results are meant to encourage cross-functional alignment and collaboration. In product management, it is essential to think of OKRs as a method for prioritizing scope that will help drive the top business KPIs, so that your product roadmap has a built-in mechanism for considering how to help the business succeed.  The below example is one I have seen work well:  * Top Level Business Objective: Increase enterprise ARR by 20% * Product Key Result: Deliver paid feature X to help compete and close 3 sales pipeline deals * Product Key Result: Implement use case docu...

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 cusotmers to what is next.  That said, the best OKRs for PMs are to tie Produc...

Such a great question! When you first set a KPI especially if you are in a new market and/or in a new product/customer space, it can feel uneasy. The best way I have learned is by setting something and tracking it over time, seeing if there is any measurable change. If not start by marking out the customer's journey (no matter who they are) and see if you can collect data on their interactions along the way. This may reveal some hidden trends you weren't yet measuring.

I would start by understanding what is the company being graded on by its investors and how is this new product going to deliver/contribute to that KPI. Let's say your investors are keen on seeing revenue growth this year. You can begin by benchmarking the lifetime revenue growth of the various product offerings of your company and then estimate (based on your user research/data) what will be the adoption rate for this new product area/market. You can then begin to model out some first year numbers. Of course, this will seem super arbitrary but truth be told once you launch, your prediction...

+1 to arbitrary! I think setting goals for both new and existing markets may feel like excel magic, some numbers that are based on mainly assumptions and the product manager's gut. Its uncomfortable and may feel unscientific but I think all forward planning is like that.  I would address some uncertainity in the following way 1. Make sure I am tracking the right metrics, New markets could mean new metrics, the business is starting from scratch and may be different from the metrics that a mature market may have. Example in a mature market I would focus on expansions vs in a ...

This is a great question. I am a fan of actually being ambitious and setting unrealistic targets or stretch goals and seeing where we end up in the first couple of reporting periods. To get a dose of realism, you can always reference analyst reports and right-size your total available market vs. serviceable market and current penetration into the new market. I don't advise setting realistic targets when entering new markets because that can lead to complacency instead of innovation. You can also leverage a range, and use a moderate case and best case target achievement. For example, if you ...

If you are lucky enough to have a PMM partner, then I would create a very transparent RACI chart which showcases who is: R - responsible A - accountable C - consulted I - informed  about the various pieces of work. In my experience, depending upon the size of the team/company roles and responsibilies realy vary between product and PMM when it comes to product launches. Here is just one example of what could work: Product Management - Responsible for managing launch ready engineering and design work - Responsible for ensuring stakeholder buy in  - Responsible for iterating on any us...

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 and PMM are aligned on who does what. If your PMM does not show you a copy of the launch plan, ...

The framework I use for setting KPIs for a new product or area typically looks something like this: 1. Framing: I think big picture about the product, what is the purpose, and how can I measure whether or not we are tracking towards that ultimate purpose. This can even be thought of in terms of a user story, “As an [x] user, I want to be able to [y], so that [z].” 2. Brainstorming: I like to start with many different categories that we can consider for KPIs such as usage, adoption, customer sentiment (NPS), sales friction, impacted ARR, tangentially related products, ...

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 I can reach my objective through the key result. 4. Once I have an idea of by OKRs, I...

I’ve worked with developer focused tooling for almost 7 years so I know exactly what you mean here. On almost every new feature or product our teams put into motion, we have a huge list of factors to consider such as security, legal, or billing. For developer tooling, there’s usually no change to pricing or billing, no new SKU. Does that mean these types of products don't provide value? No way! Libraries, SDKs, APIs, CLIs, and other developer focused tools are a huge part of the overall product. They can open your product up in a way to create value you never imagined. When it comes to mak...

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 your product is an internal tools that helps payroll to be processed faster. Then likely befor...

What a terrific question! This is one takes time and depending upon your organization will require patience. The best way I have learned, is to ask "why" a particular feature is being prioritized, and the "impact" it is bringing to the customer. The best way to create change is to start with your own product team (even if that consists of you as the PM, engineering, and UX/UI). For every epic/story, make sure to note down the KPI that it will impact, and why that is important to your target (end) customer.  After a few cycles (e.g. sprints if you follow the agile approach), share the resu...

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 metrics matter to your business and put those into individual PMs goals. For instance, let's say...