What metrics do you focus on as Platform Product Manager?
From metrics perspective, it's no different from standard product metrics. I've seen many different metrics frameworks being used, all of which essentially boil down to these 4 metric categories:
1. Operational metrics: Is the product functioning as expected? Success rates, Latency etc.
2. Usage metrics: Is the product being used? DAU/MAU, Frequency of use, customer retention/churn, Requests/sec, data volume etc.
3. Satisfaction metrics: Are customers satisfied? In-product feedback (thumbs-up, thumbs-down), NPS scores via surveys etc.
4. Impact metrics: How is the product helping customers achieve business impact? This is subjective and need to be defined per product and is also typically based on customer scenarios.
Platform metrics will vary depending on who your users are (internal vs. external) and the project specifically. They are different from normal product management in that the focus tends to be on scaling rather than generated revenue since it can be difficult to measure that direct impact. Here are some metrics that my teams focus on:
Adoption/usage: Since customers are building with your tools, adoption/usage is usually the main metric you track. How many customers have built a solution? Are their end users using the solution? You need to be patient with platform work since adoption will take longer than usual and need to be measured over several quarters as opposed to within a single quarter. While the beginning may be slow, you'll ideally see a drastic uptick after customers find your tools and start building with them.
Customer NPS: Customer NPS becomes a really important measurement since you’re able to measure how customers feel about the tools you released by comparing satisfaction surveys before and after releasing your tools. Since a lot of your users will be internal, you will be able to get a lot of more in-depth, direct feedback.
Associated revenue (monthly recurring revenue, customer dollar retention, deals won): Measuring direct impact on revenue can be difficult since customers are building their own solutions instead of you giving them one. Instead, we measure a lot of associated revenue meaning, “did we win a bigger deal size because the customer is interested in using some of the features we built?” “Do customers with a higher customer dollar retention tend to use our features?”
While platform work requires quite a bit of patience, there's no other satisfaction like seeing customers delighting their own customers and teams with what you've enabled them to build.
Being a successful platform company means offering developers tools and reusable APIs that allow new product experiences to be quickly composed from existing building blocks. Companies that do this well become factories for new features, new products, and new businesses.
My personal take on metrics is often multifaceted. I focus on (I) the overall health and success of the platform, (II) the satisfaction and productivity of the developers using it, and (III) the overall business impact.
The exact metrics you collect and want to move can vary based on your circumstances. For some teams it may useful to count how many transactions are flowing through platform, for some latency in responses to the platform, for others actual money flowing through.
No matter what your platform does the hardest parts of tracking KPIs are:
Understanding how your work connects to the larger company goals and how the business makes money.
Finding a metric that is leading not lagging. If the metric starts to move in the wrong direction it means you will miss your goals but you have time to correct.
So take the time needed to understand how the platform connects to larger goals and think about what is a leading metric. Do not worry if it's not quite right the first, second or even fifth time. By continually reviewing and questioning the data you will continue to learn and find the right thing.
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