As a product manager, you need to define and measure your product goals to ensure that you are building the right thing for the right users and delivering value to your stakeholders. But how do you set and evaluate your product goals effectively? In this article, we will cover some best practices and tips to help you with this crucial aspect of product management.
Your product goals should not be random or isolated. They should be aligned with your product vision, which is the long-term direction and purpose of your product, and your product strategy, which is the high-level plan and roadmap to achieve your vision. Your product goals should support and communicate your vision and strategy to your team, your users, and your stakeholders. They should also be consistent and coherent across different levels of granularity, such as portfolio, product, feature, and sprint goals.
SMART is a popular acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. These are the criteria that you should use to define and evaluate your product goals. Specific means that your goals are clear and well-defined, not vague or ambiguous. Measurable means that your goals are quantifiable and trackable, not subjective or opinion-based. Achievable means that your goals are realistic and attainable, not impossible or out of reach. Relevant means that your goals are meaningful and valuable, not irrelevant or trivial. Time-bound means that your goals have a clear deadline or timeframe, not indefinite or open-ended.
OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. It is a framework that helps you to set and communicate your product goals in a simple and effective way. An objective is a qualitative statement that describes what you want to achieve. A key result is a quantitative metric that measures how you will know if you have achieved your objective. For example, an objective could be "Increase user engagement" and a key result could be "Increase average session duration by 20% by Q4". OKRs help you to align your product goals with your vision and strategy, to prioritize and focus on the most important outcomes, and to track and share your progress and results.
While OKRs are great from a qualitative perspective, KPIs offer an alternative to keep a track of the quantitative aspects of your Product Goals and depending on the kind of product you are building it might be worth considering using KPIs as a complementary metric to OKRs.
Moreover, OKRs can act as a bridge between product strategy and product execution so that they are essential to communicating and executing the product strategy.
Your product goals are not only yours. They are shared by your team and stakeholders, who are the people who are affected by or interested in your product. Therefore, you should involve them in setting and evaluating your product goals. By involving your team, you can leverage their insights, expertise, and creativity, as well as increase their ownership and commitment. By involving your stakeholders, you can understand their needs, expectations, and feedback, as well as build trust and alignment. You can use various methods to involve your team and stakeholders, such as brainstorming, surveys, interviews, workshops, reviews, and retrospectives.
Your product goals are not set in stone. They are dynamic and flexible, as they depend on the changing needs of your users, the evolving market conditions, and the emerging opportunities and challenges. Therefore, you should review and adapt your product goals regularly, based on the data and feedback that you collect and analyze. You should check if your product goals are still relevant and achievable, if you are making progress and delivering results, and if you need to adjust or update your product goals to reflect the new situation. You should also celebrate and communicate your achievements and learnings, as well as identify and address any gaps or issues.
One of the key aspects of evaluating your product goals is to measure and analyze your product performance and user behavior. To do this, you need to use product analytics and feedback tools that can help you to collect, visualize, and understand the data and feedback that you need. Product analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or Amplitude, can help you to track and analyze your key metrics, such as user acquisition, retention, engagement, conversion, and satisfaction. Feedback tools, such as surveys, interviews, user testing, or reviews, can help you to gather and understand your user needs, preferences, opinions, and pain points. By using these tools, you can evaluate your product goals more objectively and effectively, as well as identify and validate new opportunities and improvements.