Main Takeaways: - Parameters to check that can hamper the velocity of your team - Factors that can influence the volume and/or adoption challenges - Are you worried about defect inflow and unsure where to start? - Key points that can impact CSAT/NPS scores, but generally ignored - Areas to consider while struggling to control the cost of the product

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Keeping Product Success Metrics in
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5. Session by Nirav Patel, Product Leader at

6. SESSION
AGENDA
❖ Focus the uncommon ones here!
❖ Product Metrics Association
❖ Parameters hampering Velocity
❖ Factors influencing Volume & Adoption
❖ Approaching high Defect Inflow
❖ Points impacting NPS/CSAT
❖ Areas to consider for controlling Cost
❖ Closing

7. Defects
Product Quality
Velocity
Team
Performance
NPS/CSAT
Customer Health
Volume
Usage & Adoption
Cost
Financials Health

8. Inter-Dependency:
Select and bundle associated stories in the sprint.
• Focused on same role/persona/workflow?
• Testable within sprint, without external dependencies
Skills:
Is your product functional domain focused?
• How is team’s functional knowledge? Tech skills always expected!
• Do they understand journeys, workflows, roles/personas well?
Expectations:
Setup right expectations for near and mid-term goals (POC,
Go to market, Fail Fast vs. Perfection, Debt etc.)
• Note that debt will always come up unless product is stable
• Don't spend lot of efforts on Test automation and DevOps, while
product is not stable enough
Involvement:
Ensure sufficient level of team involvement in backlog grooming.
• Check knowledge of roadmap, release plan and upcoming features
• Verify understanding of stories to confidently say if they are ready
• Proactively identify skills upgrade, KT or cross-training needs
Right use of Spike:
Does story need lot of functional analysis and system design,
making it difficult to fit in single sprint?
• Identify during backlog grooming and create spikes
• Work on spikes in previous sprint to take jump start
Testing:
Identify need of repeat testing vs. no testing!
• Prioritize automation of ongoing regression test scenarios.
• Avoid testing of those scenarios what are untouched in sprint

9. ALIGNMENT: Check alignment with company strategy and sales/marketing priorities
COMMUNICATION: Are you clearly conveying the purpose/goal of the product to users?
MVP: Check ring-0 (base) product for missing critical features
QUALITY: Instead of fixing the key defects, are you focusing on building new features?
ATTENTION: Focus on key accounts/users and net promoters, to solving their pain areas.
TRENDS: Understand market trends and consumer needs (travel, digital, security etc.)

10. Volume and Adoption continued…
Identify Problem Area
• Low first-time users
✓ Marketting/sales incentives and alignment
✓ Social media reach, Search score etc.
• Users visit but don't start transaction
✓ Complex look (UX) or Menu/sub-menu/tabs
✓ Product goal not clear
• Users drop in middle of workflow
✓ Data, Validation or browser issues
✓ Complex workflows
• Users don’t complete transaction
✓ Validation surprises or runtime error
✓ Discount or referral code does not work
Onboarding Challanges
• Onboarding not smooth enough
✓ Data transition challenges
✓ Problems in user roles/permissions
• Primary scenarios not working
✓ High priority parameters not configured
✓ In-sufficient testing or opens defects
• Training or change management issues
✓ Users don’t know how to use product
✓ Change management issues in Enterprise
• Not ready for productions
✓ Integrations not working
✓ Master (or profile) data not setup properly

11. High Defects Inflow…
Classify First:
Is it Issue or Genuine Defect?
• Issues can be fixed without code changes
• Generally, no development needed)
• About 70% of reported problems are issues
Fixing Issues:
Address by Training or Documentation.
• Use of wrong role/permission - training
• Product incorrectly used - guidance
• Wrong expectations from product - guidance
• User experience issue – documentation
• Configuration - correct data/parameters
Start
Analyze the
Problems
Reported
Is this Issue?
Take these quick
steps to fix the
Issues.
You need high
focus and long
term plan to fix
this.
Take these steps
to fix the
Technical Defects.
Yes
No
Yes
Is Technical
Defect?
No

12. High Defects Inflow continued…
Addressing Technical Defects (Quick)
•Could be validation, boundary condition, security, performance, load, run-time error etc.
•Most can be fixed quickly by firewall, enhancing infrastructure or via quick code changes
•In a longer run, check for use of right tools, automation, DevOps, Infra (config, hardware)
•Introduce or enhance right level of load, performance and security testing as needed
•See if technical skill enhancement needed in team to fix specific type of defects
Addressing Functional Defects (Longer)
•Team requires to build better understanding of user journeys, scenarios and roles/permissions
•Team possibly not using right configurations and data to test practical user scenarios
•Right level of testing missing (story, feature, integration, regression and/or end to end)
•Fix may require to build domain knowledge of the team (could be time consuming)
•You may want to quickly introduce a domain SME in the team for quick ramp-up

13. Transparency:
Keep it transparent with your customers.
• Give clarity on vision, roadmap and release planning
• Setup right expectations for supported NFRs and upcoming features
Trust:
Work hard to earn trust and build healthy relationship.
• No last moment surprises; ensure that customers hear issues first from you.
• Share loopholes that can impact along with guidance to mitigate the same.
• Share tips and guidance on how to reduce infra/consumption cost.
Empathy:
How is your approach towards Critical Situations and Sev-1 issues?
• Ensure necessary help from core product team; this is not just about support team.
• You much prioritize such issues and propose at least quick work arounds
Protect:
Take care of Compliance and Data Security issues on high priority
• Ensure necessary help from core product team; this is not just about support team.
• You much prioritize such issues and propose at least quick work arounds
Experience:
Provide consistent support experience to customers.
• Capture and process exact same details across emails, chat, mobile, web, social etc.
• Ensure that details captured one channel is readily available to another one.

14. Cost…
Infra and Cloud:
• How many existing environments you really use?
• Do you really need that configuration or can reduce it?
• What all environments and services you need to run 24/7?
• Can you shut down some environments for time?
Team Mix:
• Be practical in team selection (you don’t need many senior folks)
• Addition of one SME may bring down cost of retaining many seniors
• Do you need fulltime scrum master? Can team member play this role?
• Can same team handle L2/L3 support and professional services work?
Don’t Over-build NFRs:
Define NFRs with clear objective goals and ensure that you don’t
over-test team.
Not Now:
It is okay to not have administration module on day one
• Don't target luxury on day 1; go with some dirty code for pilots
• It is okay to upload one-time data/parameters from backend
• If need be, hire cheap manual support staff for some time
• Don't plan to automate everything on day one
Don’t Reinvent:
Try to reuse framework related components from
existing products as much as possible
People Focus:
Work hard to build high morale and least attrition in team
• High morale boosts team productivity significantly
• Low attrition builds and retains knowledge within the team
• Retention helps to improve efficiency (repetitive work + team is in
perform stage, where they know each other)

15. Nirav Patel Product Leader at Microsoft
Email - nirav.p.patel@gmail.com, LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/niravp1, Product School - https://productschool.com/instructor/Nirav-Patel

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