16 product management KPIs and how to track them

Customer and user engagement KPIs are the lifelines that connect a product to its audience. 

The following KPIs give insights into user satisfaction, retention, and customer experience: 

• Conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action, such as signing up or purchasing.
• Customer retention rate is the proportion of customers who continue to use your product.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost of acquiring a new customer.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the projected revenue a customer will generate during their lifetime.
• Net promoter score (NPS) measures customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty. Calculate it by conducting a survey that asks customers, “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?”
• Average revenue per user (ARPU) calculates the average income each user generates over a specific period.
• Churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop using your product. 
• Customer satisfaction measures include surveys or customer interviews asking them to rate their satisfaction or provide qualitative feedback.

Metrics such as CAC and CLV help optimize customer relationships, while ARPU and churn rate highlight user engagement. You can prioritize features using NPS. Monitoring these KPIs helps keep users engaged, satisfied, and loyal.

Product development KPIs assess the efficiency and effectiveness of development processes. But do not confuse these metrics with product analytics. While product development KPIs focus on development efficiency, product analytics delves into user behavior, feature performance, and overall product success. It provides a broader view beyond the development process. 

Tracking these KPIs helps optimize development efforts, ensuring your product remains agile and responsive to market demands.

To ensure efficient product development, focus on these KPIs:

• Time to market is the time it takes to develop and launch a new feature or product, usually calculated in days, weeks, or months. It includes the entire development cycle, from concept and planning to testing and deployment. 
• Defect density is the number of defects, issues, or bugs in your product's code divided by the size or complexity of the codebase. 
• Feature adoption rate refers to how quickly users adopt new features. It's typically a percentage reflecting the portion of the user base that has started using the feature.
• Team velocity is the pace at which your development team delivers work. You determine it by using Agile methods, specifically within the Scrum framework, during designated time periods known as sprints or iterations. Team velocity helps you estimate future work and project planning.

Each of these KPIs provides valuable insights into different aspects of the product development process and team performance. Neglecting them can lead to inefficient development and prolonged release cycles, affecting competitiveness and customer satisfaction. Tracking these KPIs helps maintain agility and quality in product development.

KPIs shape decisions and resource allocations. Selecting the best KPIs for product management is crucial to align your strategy with product goals and the company's mission. KPIs should mirror immediate priorities and evolve with regular team input.

For new product managers, this can be the most challenging step. When choosing KPIs, consider their measurability, relevance to business objectives, data availability, benchmarking against industry standards, and cost-efficiency.

Gather team input on KPIs through meetings, brainstorming sessions, surveys, and cross-functional collaboration. Prioritize KPIs collectively and establish ongoing feedback mechanisms. Document choices for transparency and future reference. Monitor and adjust them over time—business priorities can change, and KPIs must stay relevant.

The right tools can help you keep track of your project KPIs. Jira Product Discovery enables product teams to gather and organize ideas in a centralized tool and prioritize those with the biggest impact. It also integrates with Jira, making reporting in Jira Software seamless.

With Jira Product Discovery, you can:

• Automate data collection and reporting: Set up automation rules to gather and report data in Jira Product Discovery. Configure Jira to automatically collect data from various sources, such as customer feedback, feature requests, or development progress.
• Develop a KPI dashboard: Create a dedicated KPI dashboard with customizable charts, graphs, or tables. Give team members and stakeholders access to this dashboard to monitor KPIs and identify trends.
• Communicate KPI results to stakeholders: Use Jira's communication features to inform your team and stakeholders about KPI progress and achievements. Automate notifications or reports to send at regular intervals or when specific KPI milestones trigger them. 

This approach streamlines your workflow and ensures your strategies align with your KPIs, promoting a more successful and data-driven product management process.

Measuring KPIs in product management comes with challenges. 

The first is ensuring KPIs align with overall business objectives. That’s why you should clearly define objectives and only select KPIs that directly contribute to them. Establish a strong connection between the chosen KPIs and the company's mission.

Another common challenge is maintaining data accuracy and availability. Solve this by investing in data management and validation tools. Regularly audit and clean data sources to ensure consistency and reduce errors.

Using the right metrics is vital for effective KPI tracking—but it’s not always straightforward. Select KPIs that are specific, measurable, and actionable. Consult with stakeholders to determine which metrics matter most.

Finally, creating a consistent data collection process can be difficulut. Standardize data collection methods and use automation where possible. Ensure everyone follows the same procedures so your data is consistent and reliable.

Addressing these challenges can enhance the accuracy and relevance of your KPI measurement.

Jira Product Discovery aids product teams in achieving and tracking their product management KPIs. It helps product development teams and stakeholders collaborate as they move from ideas to execution. It provides a structured framework that focuses on aligning ideas with business goals, KPIs, and the product development roadmap.

Jira Product Discovery offers a centralized platform where product teams can collect and organize ideas from team members, customer feedback, support tickets, and more. It helps prioritize ideas and features based on their potential impact and alignment with KPIs and strategic objectives.

Seamless integration between Jira Product Discovery and Jira Software connects product ideas and features, giving teams context and visibility from the discovery phase to product delivery. Jira Product Discovery also optimizes the workflow by centralizing ideas and streamlining the prioritization process.

The Atlassian Marketplace also offers additional purpose-built tools for KPI reporting.

The frequency of reviewing product management KPIs varies based on product nature, specific KPIs, and product stage. 

In the early stages, review weekly or monthly for rapid adjustments. As the product matures, review quarterly or annually. Critical KPIs tied to success (e.g., conversion rates, user retention, revenue) require more frequent reviews. Supporting KPIs need fewer reviews.

Balance between frequent reviews for quick adjustments and less frequent reviews for a strategic perspective.

Jira Software is a versatile project management tool that can help track product management KPIs. Its customizable dashboards display key metrics. Issue tracking monitors the progress of tasks and user stories. It effectively tracks metrics for development, defects and completion. 

Jira Product Discovery organizes product ideas, prioritizes features, and connects ideas to projects. Its reports give high-level visibility into product performance against goals.

Use reliable software for data collection, reporting, and analysis to ensure accurate data, which is critical in tracking product management KPIs. Verify data sources and implement data validation and cleaning. Maintain documentation of data sources, collection methods, and transformations. Include data source details in Jira Issues.

Tracking product management KPIs ensures data-driven decisions, a user-centric approach, and Agile product development. Selecting the right KPIs and appropriate tools, and addressing data accuracy challenges helps product managers succeed. Jira Product Discovery supports tracking KPIs, making it easier for product managers to achieve goals.