I've learnt a ton about metrics in my time in consumer, tech and speaking to a number of early stage companies. Great metrics form goals which incentivise behaviour, so they are important. Here's what I've learnt about metrics, and some principles to remember (1/9)
1. A good metric should be real, tangible and easily measurable. Seems obvious, but we don't always do it. Everyone on your team should intuitively understand and be bought into the metric (2/9)
2. A good metric should be wholly controlled by the team that uses it; where possible. For e.g. if you have a metric on churn, you should ideally have a team working on churn. (3/9)
3. Your grandmother should understand the metric. Not really, but you get the drift. If you can't explain your metric to someone then its not a good metric (4/9)
4. A good short term metric should be able to be tracked daily. A good long term metric should not change daily (5/9)
5. A great metric will have an anti-metric, where you can see the halo effects of what that metric is driving. Sometimes this anti metric tells you more than what the metric does (6/9)
6. A good metric should be non gameable, otherwise you're incentivising bad behaviour (7/9)
7. A good metric should be the sum of parts; and you should be able to break it down and identify which part is causing the movement of the metric or the lack thereof (8/9)
Anything that you folks would like to add? (9/9)