Choosing your metrics, KPIs, etc...

We believe that being data-informed comes down to internalizing a set of values. These are simple, few, yet exceedingly powerful:

1. Conviction around a purpose  rather than searching for meaning in numbers


2. Setting verifiable goals  rather than vague aspirations


3. Company-wide familiarity with metrics  rather than outsourcing to “data people”


4. Active

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Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those val-ues; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets,... See more

When Steve Jobs set goals, he kept them shockingly simple and didn't include any metrics or benchmarks. Are specific, measurable goals a waste of time?

One of the most bizarre contradictions in modern software is that the people building these engagement systems don’t like them either!

Ask anyone who works on onboarding popups, feature tours, lifecycle messaging, or in-app announcements how they feel when an app interrupts them mid-flow to announce something they didn’t ask for. The answer is... See more

There are things that can be measured. There are things that are worth measuring. But what can be measured is not always what is worth measuring; what gets measured may have no relationship to what we really want to know. The costs of measuring may be greater than the benefits. The things that get measured may draw effort away from the things we... See more