Problems that a Product Manager Faces in defining metrics and how to define the right metric for your product. Problems that Product Managers face when trying to define their product’s success metric:Unable to get your products prioritized because the company’s priority is not the metric you are moving to
The success of a Product depends on choosing the right metric
Without a measurable success metric your product is directionless and hence there is no way to figure out when to take what actions
- It’s like a race when one doesn’t know where the finish line is
- The difference between a successful product and an unsuccessful product
Input metrics
What will be the important milestones your product will reach before it becomes an overall success?
- Assign a success metric for each of the stakeholders to ensure proper accountability
- Use these metrics as milestones to ensure that the primary output metric is right on track
- Break the monolithic output metric equation as a function of dependent input variables to achieve the output metric
External Dependent Metric
What is the most important external metric which the product does not control and which is required for your product to attain the desired primary output metric?
- The success of the product is also dependent on the right inputs and if these right inputs are not achieved the desired outcomes are not reached.
- This metric can be of two different types
- Input metric is not dependent on your product and is a function of the market forces which is beyond your control
- Type 2: The input metric is either the outcome metric of another product
Iterative Product Development
Check for external dependent metrics and ensure they are right
- Normalize input/output metrics so that the output metrics become independent
- Iterate the product to improve the input metrics
- Once input metrics are right after a lag period, check output metrics and they should be right
What are the different types of products?
New Product Inception
- Metrics
- Optimizations/Additions on top of existing product metrics
- Piece of Advice: If you don’t have the right measurable metric, you should not build the product, and ensure you have the metrics in place to measure success
Change in metrics defines the roadmap
The way product features are added to a product is changed by the metrics in which that particular product is chasing
- Time leading to different features on the product roadmap to optimize for the newer metrics
- Let me know your thoughts and improvements in this framework in the comments
Primary Output Metric
This is the most important measurable outcome of your product and significantly helps to align stakeholders to start product development.
- Over a period of time, PM’s should be able to judge the success and failure of the product based on this metric to determine if additional product investments are required.
Check Metric Question
Are you screwing up another metric of the company while building your product? Why is this metric important?
- Prevent the circular paradox
- Helps product managers think more holistically about the company’s overall good
- Most metrics are interconnected
- Improvement in one metric may lead to degradation of the other
Why are they important?
Metrics define a product decision.
- Helps in effective communication and collaboration with stakeholders about what is important Helps to identify problems and take a corrective course
- They help to provide a feedback loop for the product launched and ensure that product success is identified and recognized throughout the organization
What are some product decisions dependent on metrics?
Estimation of the potential impact of the product
- Prioritizing amongst conflicting initiatives by normalizing products to a common metric
- Scoping user stories within an initiative based on the highest impact first
- Defining the features of a product based on metrics to move
Best Practices of Defining Metrics
Make your primary output much independent from other teams as much as possible
- Always define the increment in the metric that your product will bring
- Define a time period to when that metric will be achieved
- The input metrics can also be attributed to different teams/stakeholders so there is clear accountability on the product
