How do you define the proper KPIs for your specific product and product team?

A proper KPI is one that directly measures progress toward the desired outcome, is actionable by the team, and provides insight to guide next steps. It should be:• Aligned with the product or business objective,• Measurable with reliable data,• Actionable within the team’s control or influence, and• Insightful enough to explain why results are trending a certain way. KPIs are not just numbers; they are guiding lights. While tracking progress is critical, the insights KPIs provide are even more i ...Read More

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 yo ...Read More

The framework I use for setting KPIs for a new product or area typically looks something like this: 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].” Brainstorming: I like to start with many different categories that we can consider for KPIs such as usage, adoption, customer sentiment ...Read More

When I define KPIs for a product and for a team, I start from the maturity of the company and the clarity of the company goals. In more mature companies, where there are clear company OKRs and north-star metrics, I anchor my KPIs directly to those. I look at the existing company OKRs / metrics and ask:Which of these should my product help with, and in what way?For example: If a company goal is to increase expansion revenue from existing customers, my product KPIs might be: % of existing customer ...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