[Weekly Retro] Metrics

#5 - Jun.2023

Happy Friday!

Here is a quick idea before you head off for the weekend:

We loved to measure and track things. NPS, customer ratings, story points, top-line sales...as the saying goes: 'what is not tracked, can't be improved'. Metrics give us a sense of control.

We measure what is useful. And also what is not.

In today's productivity-led culture, we tend to over-index on metrics regardless if they lead the team to the right customer outcomes. Building great products might sometimes be at the expense of spending extra effort to tackle unknown constraints, but if this results in something valuable and memorable for customers, it's a win. This type of customer bonding is a proxy for business results. Focus on building something that matters.

Interesting links I found during this week:

• How designers can beat AI at design
• Leading the new generation of digital products
• The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier

Tools I'm exploring:

• SageMaker Studio Lab: a free development environment to experiment ML models.

Quote from the week:

"Just because something is easy to measure doesn't mean it's accurate. Or that it matters.” — Seth Godin