Metrics

• You can’t manage what you don’t measure. What gets measured gets managed
• Discussion: What is a metric? Examples?
• Vanity vs. Actionable metrics
  • The fact that I have more users today than I did last week doesn’t mean that much
  • You need to know what you are trying to optimize for
  • Then you need to figure out what changes improve those variables
  • Only then can you tell if it’s a good thing that you have more users today!
  • Discussion: What are some examples of metrics? How could we tel if they are vanity or not?
• Useful Metrics are
  • Actionable:
    • You can use them to figure out what to do, or what you did, to cause the change.
    • Need to know what to do to get more of that result
  • Transparent: Publish metrics to the team
  • Accessible: Make the definition of what’s being measured clear. No made up words or jargon.
  • Auditable: Make it easy to see the underlying raw data
• But, beware of ‘vanity metrics!’
  • More users today than yesterday? Not enough.
  • How do I change it. What changes will affect what metrics?
  • You can make changes, but will they matter to customers?
• Discussion: How do you decide what metrics matter?