(2009-06-01) Cagan The Product Scorecard

Martin Cagan: The Product Scorecard. the specific KPI is not the real point here as much as the fact of establishing specific KPI’s, and the fact that they’re prioritized. You can and should debate the specifics of each KPI and its priority, to ensure that you are encouraging the right behavior as you interpret the business strategy.

It’s not an excuse that the product manager isn’t in control of every factor, as this comes with the territory. If the product manager is not satisfied with the customer acquisition strategy, he needs to evangelize to marketing and prioritize instrumenting for online marketing/SEO. If there aren’t resources for user documentation, he needs to work with the designers to reduce or eliminate the need for this documentation, or make the solid business case for contract help there.

One of my favorite benefits of these product scorecards is that they can often help you eliminate a good portion of your backlog/roadmap. If a feature idea doesn’t speak directly to one of the top KPI’s on the product scorecard, it’s generally off the list

Some teams do these scorecards and they have a list of 20 or more KPI’s for each product manager. A big part of the value of a product scorecard is focus. So you only want a few – ideally no more than 5 or 6. The product manager can track lots of data, but should only have a few priority objectives at a time.

Defining these scorecards often helps teams get a better understanding of how they should break up the product management work of their web site. It’s important that each product manager have a clear area of responsibility. If you find that at the product manager level that there are too many shared KPI’s, you may want to consider slicing the pie differently.