How can you justify product investments and resources using engineering metrics?

1 What are engineering metrics?

Engineering metrics are quantitative indicators that measure the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of your product engineering processes and outputs. They can help you track and improve various aspects of your product development, such as code quality, technical debt, reliability, scalability, security, usability, and customer satisfaction. Engineering metrics can also help you identify and prioritize issues, risks, and opportunities for improvement.

2 Why are engineering metrics important for product justification?

Engineering metrics are essential for product justification as they link product engineering activities and outcomes to the strategic goals and objectives of your organization, customers, and investors. Through the use of engineering metrics, you can demonstrate how your product engineering efforts contribute to the value proposition, competitive advantage, return on investment, and growth potential of your product. Specifically, you can show how your product solves a problem or meets a need for your target market; how it differentiates itself from other solutions in the market; how it generates revenue, reduces costs, or increases efficiency for your organization or customers; and how it can scale, expand, or innovate in the future.

3 How to choose the right engineering metrics for product justification?

When deciding which engineering metrics to use to justify a product, you should take into account your product vision, strategy, roadmap, objectives, and key results. Additionally, you must consider the expectations and interests of stakeholders, customers, and investors who evaluate the product performance and impact. As a general rule of thumb, your engineering metrics should be aligned with product goals and outcomes, relevant, meaningful, actionable, and a combination of leading and lagging indicators. Avoid vanity metrics that do not reflect the true value of your product.

4 How to collect and analyze engineering metrics for product justification?

Collecting and analyzing engineering metrics for product justification necessitates the use of various tools and methods to gather, store, process, visualize, and interpret data from product engineering processes and outputs. Version control systems are employed to track code changes, commits, branches, merges, and pull requests. Code analysis tools measure code quality, complexity, coverage, duplication, and security. Testing tools are used for unit, integration, functional, performance, and usability tests. Monitoring tools assess availability, reliability, latency, throughput, and errors. Feedback tools collect customer ratings, reviews, surveys, and suggestions. Additionally, analytics tools measure user behavior, engagement, retention, and conversion.

5 How to communicate and present engineering metrics for product justification?

To effectively communicate and present engineering metrics for product justification, it is important to use clear, concise, and compelling ways to convey your product engineering value and impact to stakeholders, customers, and investors. Storytelling techniques can be used to connect engineering metrics to the product story and vision. Dashboards, charts, graphs, and tables can be used to visualize metrics and trends. Benchmarks, comparisons, and targets can be employed to show engineering metrics and achievements. Case studies, testimonials, and success stories can illustrate engineering metrics and outcomes. Additionally, actionable recommendations and next steps should be included to show engineering plans and priorities.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?