Open-source product playbook
Share
Explore
Open-source product playbook
Status updates (that don't) suck

icon picker
Metric updates template

How to effectively communicate the health of a metric.
Peter Wang
info
Use this template to effectively communicate the health of a metric. To get started, copy this page, customize it for your own project, then share it with your team.
⁠
Copy this page
⁠
⁠
⁠

Overview: what are we tracking?

Definition

A succinct definition of the metric, including a link to a longer writeup if needed.

Cadence

Usually on quarterly basis as part of OKR reviews, evaluating how we are tracking against each KR.

Owner

Each metric often has an owner, such as a Product director, who oversees a product area, such as revenue products.

Contributors

Each metric often has one or more teams contributing to it.
⁠

Metric health: Are we on track?

light
Use colors: Quickly show progress and risks with colors. Projects that are at risk or off track should be coupled with a remediation plan to answer the question to put the project back on track.
Articulate the why: Show cause→effect relationships or make a specific ask. For example: team attrition putting capacity at risk, scope creep exceeding original expectation, or a new dependency.
Share new learnings: Include data, dependencies, or potential risks that are new to the team.
Use visuals: Embed mocks, prototypes, or recorded demos to tell a story.

Metric health options
0
Status
Indicating
1
On track
On track to hit a metric.
2
Under-pacing
At the current pace, we’ll fall short of the metric.
3
Delivered
Successfully achieved metric.
4
Made progress, but fell short
Partial progress but did not achieve metric.
5
No progress
Either the metric didn’t move forward, or moved backward.
6
Deprioritized
Goal was deprioritized and/or replaced.
There are no rows in this table
⁠

Example metric health update

This is an example from a fictional recipe app.
Metric
Q2 Average
Q3 Average
Target (End of 2023)
How we did
Why
1
% of new users saving a recipe in their first week (activation metric)
⁠
30.06%
⁠
⁠
31.50%
+4.80%

33.07%
+10%
On track
Latest recipe recommendation algorithm, combined with timely email activation emails have proven to be effective.
2
Recipe views/session
⁠
4.81
⁠
⁠
4.62
-4%
5.39
+12%
Under-pacing
Our hypothesis is that users’ attention have moved away from Home to the Community feed, which contains more conversations about food than just recipes. We are re-evaluating how to balance an conversational engagement with driving interest to recipes in the upcoming quarter.
There are no rows in this table
⁠

Overview: what are we tracking?
Definition
Cadence
Owner
Contributors
Metric health: Are we on track?
Metric health options
Example metric health update
Gallery
Share
 
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.