What are some of the *worst* KPIs for Product Managers to commit to achieving?

Let's cover this in two ways: (1) how to think about KPIs, (2) examples of poor ones and how they can be better. I'll also approach the question a little more broadly than Product Managers alone. Remember that Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used at all levels of a company (e.g. project, team, group, division, exec team) with different levels of fidelity and lag (e.g. daily active user vs. quarterly revenue). The appropriateness of standard KPIs will also differ by industry (e.g. commerce ...Read More

Some of the worst KPI's in my opinion are: KPI's that cannot be measured correctly KPI's that do not give a sense for the goal you are tracking. You can use the AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral) framework to understand the best metrics you can choose to align with your outcome/goal. KPI's that are not achievable in a desired timeframe. Yes there could be exceptions here but generally these are not the best ones in my opinion. Any KPI's that do not really tell you the ...Read More

Rates: To me without absolute numbers, rates may paint a false picture. Let me explain with an example. Lets say you have a trial experience for your product and you are responsible for the cart experience and thereby conversion rates which is measured by number of paid customers/number of trialers. I would suggest that instead of rates the north star metrics should be a combination of number of paid customers as well as Average Deal Size (ADS) per paid customer. A conversion rate is a good numb ...Read More

The worst KPIs are those that don’t provide actionable insight. A common misconception is that tracking NPS or CSAT for a chatbot is inherently bad - it isn’t. These metrics are valuable for understanding overall sentiment. The problem arises when PMs only track high-level user experience metrics without connecting them to product inputs. For example, if you only monitor CSAT, you won’t know whether issues stem from model accuracy, workflow logic, feature gaps, or data quality. Vanity metrics - ...Read More

A product manager should prioritize addressing customer problems to create long-term value and profitability for the business. , there are several ineffective KPIs that we often fall prey to: Output-Focused KPIs Deliver X Number of Features: Emphasizing quantity over quality can dilute the value provided to users. Create Y PRDs, Processes, or Briefs: Focusing solely on documentation can lead to a lack of actionable outcomes. Tactical KPIs Cost-Cutting Metrics: Overemphasizing reductions in costs ...Read More

KPIs around delight unless this is your key product differentiator (which is proven to be compelling to customers). Focus on building an intuitive and effective product experience that users would want to recommend to their friends/colleagues. Focusing on the final pieces of polish such as interactions, delight, animations, etc are fluff until you're really providing value to your customers. This is why keeping your KPI or success metrics concise and essential will allow you to provide the most ...Read More

Since the question suggests “achievements”, I assume we want to reason about Key Results and not KPIs. See question: “What are good OKRs for product management?” for a general introduction to the topic. Good Key Results are often hard to come by, and we often fall into the trap of bad Key Results. Here are the common trouble maker patterns. The binary metric: Deliver [feature] by [date]. This metric is useless to understand progress since it often is 0% for the entirety of the execution, and bec ...Read More

For me, the worst KPIs for Product Managers are the ones that measure output instead of outcome, or that can look great on a slide while customers and the business see no value. The clearest example is: Number of features shipped.This is basically a development or throughput metric, not a product metric. I can ship ten features or a thousand features that: no one discovers no one uses don’t move revenue, retention, or satisfaction at all On paper, I “hit the KPI”, but in reality nothing got bett ...Read More

The worst KPIs are vanity metrics that have no ties back to actual adoption or business metrics. I once had a product manager commit to hitting a number of emails a notification system was supposed to send in a 30-day period. Without context, this seems like a great metric to track for volume, except the total count of emails tells you nothing about how many people are getting value, if they are getting value, if they are recurring users, or if the emails are contributing to user satisfaction. T ...Read More

Some of the worst KPIs for Product Managers are those that reward activity over impact or ignore user value. Examples: Number of features shipped — encourages output, not outcomes. Story points completed — measures engineering throughput, not customer success. Daily active users (DAU) without context — can rise even if satisfaction drops. Vanity metrics like page views, downloads, or sign-ups — say nothing about real engagement. Total revenue (for non-monetized or shared products) — outside PM c ...Read More

Maybe this is controversial, but I believe KPIs should be hypothesis-oriented with an eye towards learning what is and is not working to move the needle on an overarching business objective rather that just a random number we think might mean...something? Let me give an example here. Say we are launching an update that we believe will increase adoption of a feature most closely understood to drive retention (ie customers that adopt this tool tend to stay with us longer and spend more money). I w ...Read More

I might contradict some of the PMs out there when I say this but here we go and Ill prove it: 1. The numbers of released features I think this is a bad one to track because it encourages quantity over quality whereby PMs would ship features that add little or no real value to users. 2. DAU with no context DAUs can be misleading if they aren't tied to meaningful engagement or conversion. A product might see a spike in users from a promotional campaign, but if those users don't convert or stick ar ...Read More