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What's your process for figuring out what metrics to hold product management accountable for?

5 Answers
Virgilia Kaur Pruthi (she/her)
Virgilia Kaur Pruthi (she/her)
Expedia Group Senior Director of Product, Head of Trust and SafetyFebruary 1

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.

575 Views
Farheen Noorie
Farheen Noorie
Zendesk Senior Director of Product ManagementApril 21

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 these paying customers. Lets say, I discount my product enough that sky rockets the number of paying customers, a good check and balance would be the total revenue we are getting from these customers. 

532 Views
Paresh Vakhariya
Paresh Vakhariya
Atlassian Director of Product Management (Confluence)May 11

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 top 1-2 KPI's that you will meaningfully impact
  • Ensure they are measurable in the given timeframe
  • The roadmaps that PM's own should be aligned to these OKR's and KPI's
  • Report on progress regularly
669 Views
Becky Trevino
Becky Trevino
Snow Software Executive Vice President ProductsOctober 26

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.
417 Views
Sailaja Kalle
Sailaja Kalle
Gainsight Director, Product ManagementJanuary 11

Once we choose a team that defines the path to the success of the team - its important to identofy metrics by groups of Financial KPIs, Product KPIs and Customer Satisfaction KPIs. Each product has its own set or group of metrics that are relevant. The idea is to choose metrics to help improve the Product , help drive decisions.

354 Views
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