How do I know if the product I’m working on is on track to do well?

An approach to ensure your efforts are going into measuring the things that matter most based on YOUR unique context.

In my recent cohort of my 0 to 1 Group Coaching Program for product managers who are the PM #1 at their respective startups, several iterations of the following question were asked:

“How do I know if the product I’m working on is on track to do well?”

There are many different schools of thought on how to answer this. Most start with the end first and focus on the top metrics that great product teams track.

While there are certainly trends and areas of overlap when it comes to key performance indicators and what teams should be tracking, I’m going to flip this on its head and “product-manager-ize” the actual process I would go through to answer this question — start with more questions and make sure the things you’re putting effort into measuring are the things that matter the most based on your unique context.

Here are the 5 steps I would go through:

1) What does “do well” mean to the business and to the product team?

What does it mean to do well now? What will it mean in the future? Could this change? Think really critically about this. What goals are important to define this? Can progress towards these goals be tracked? Understanding and being aligned on this is crucial.

2) What is the WHY behind the product and does it make sense?

Is it solving the problem well for the particular users who have this problem? Does the team believe in it? Do I believe in it? How well is it solving this problem? If our why still isn’t clear, or if our problem isn’t clearly defined, or if we don’t understand who our users are, we should start there first.

3) What has been done so far to understand what “on track” even looks like?

What stage is the product at right now? Are we still in an early concept phase? Have we got significant user research to…