dataproduct-management
Metrics Framework
Define product and engineering metrics frameworks — choosing primary, guardrail, and diagnostic metrics with measurement methodology, review cadence, ownership, and dashboard specifications.
metricsKPIsmeasurementdashboardsanalyticsOKRs
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metrics-framework/
saas-product-metrics.md
Markdown| 1 | # Metrics Framework: Acme Project Management (B2B SaaS) |
| 2 | |
| 3 | ## Business Objective |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Increase net revenue retention (NRR) from 104% to 115% by Q4 2026 through reduced churn and expansion within existing accounts. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | ## Metric Tiers |
| 8 | |
| 9 | ### Primary Metric |
| 10 | |
| 11 | ``` |
| 12 | Metric: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) |
| 13 | Formula: (Starting MRR - Contraction - Churn + Expansion) / Starting MRR |
| 14 | Data source: billing.subscriptions + billing.invoices (Snowflake) |
| 15 | Owner: @sarah-vp-product |
| 16 | Review cadence: Monthly (cohort), Quarterly (board-level) |
| 17 | Alerting threshold: < 100% (trailing 3-month avg) triggers Slack alert to #revenue-metrics |
| 18 | Segmentation: By plan tier (Starter/Pro/Enterprise), by industry, by account age |
| 19 | ``` |
| 20 | |
| 21 | ### Guardrail Metrics |
| 22 | |
| 23 | | Metric | Formula | Threshold | Why it matters | |
| 24 | |--------|---------|-----------|----------------| |
| 25 | | Support ticket volume per account | Tickets created / active accounts (monthly) | Must stay < 2.5/mo | Prevents retention through friction | |
| 26 | | NPS (quarterly survey) | Standard NPS methodology | Must stay > 35 | Catches satisfaction drops before churn | |
| 27 | | P95 API latency | 95th percentile response time | Must stay < 800ms | Performance degradation drives enterprise churn | |
| 28 | |
| 29 | ### Diagnostic Metrics |
| 30 | |
| 31 | | Metric | Formula | Owner | Cadence | |
| 32 | |--------|---------|-------|---------| |
| 33 | | Feature adoption rate | Users who used feature X in 30 days / total active users | @pm-growth | Weekly | |
| 34 | | Onboarding completion rate | Users completing all 5 setup steps / new users | @pm-onboarding | Weekly | |
| 35 | | Time-to-first-value | Median days from signup to first project created | @pm-onboarding | Weekly | |
| 36 | | Weekly active users (WAU) | Unique users with >= 1 meaningful action per week | @pm-growth | Weekly | |
| 37 | | Seat expansion rate | New seats added / total seats (monthly) | @pm-enterprise | Monthly | |
| 38 | | Contraction signals | Accounts with > 30% usage drop month-over-month | @cs-lead | Weekly | |
| 39 | |
| 40 | ## Dashboard Specification |
| 41 | |
| 42 | **Executive dashboard** (Looker, daily refresh): |
| 43 | - NRR trended (12-month view), guardrail status indicators, MRR waterfall chart |
| 44 | - Owner: @sarah-vp-product |
| 45 | - Access: leadership + board |
| 46 | |
| 47 | **Team dashboard** (Looker, hourly refresh): |
| 48 | - All three tiers. NRR and guardrails at top, diagnostics below with segment filters |
| 49 | - Owner: @data-eng-lead |
| 50 | - Access: product, engineering, CS teams |
| 51 | |
| 52 | **Investigation view** (Snowflake + Hex notebooks, on-demand): |
| 53 | - Cohort retention curves, feature adoption funnels, churn risk model outputs |
| 54 | - Owner: @data-analyst |
| 55 | - Access: product and data teams |
| 56 | |
| 57 | ## Review Process |
| 58 | |
| 59 | - **Weekly standup** (15 min, Tuesdays): NRR leading indicators + guardrail check. Assign investigation owners for any anomaly. |
| 60 | - **Monthly review** (45 min, first Friday): Cohort deep-dive on NRR. Diagnostic analysis: which features correlate with expansion? Where are contraction signals concentrated? |
| 61 | - **Quarterly calibration** (90 min): Is NRR still the right primary metric? Review guardrail effectiveness. Adjust diagnostic metrics based on product roadmap shifts. |
| 62 | |
| 63 | ## Anti-Metrics: What We Do NOT Track |
| 64 | |
| 65 | - **Total registered users** — vanity metric, only goes up, informs no decisions |
| 66 | - **Page views** — does not correlate with value delivery for a B2B tool |
| 67 | - **"Engagement score"** — composite of unrelated inputs, obscures signal |
| 68 | - **Daily signups** — interesting but not actionable at our stage; focus is retention and expansion, not top-of-funnel |
| 69 |