The Weekly Summary

One of the links this week is on the short-term gain but long-term pain of gaming metrics. One of the examples Ryan gives is about burying information to increase time on a page - but this will just create quiet resentment in customers.

The intent behind the metric was positive - have such good content that people stick around. However, the implementation does not match the original intent.

Product metrics are a proxy for business metrics because business metrics are often too lagging to be used as a target. In the book, Working Backwards, there is a great example of how Amazon had to revisit the metrics they assigned to one of their teams multiple times because the the business metrics didn't behave as they expected.

The key learning here is that you need to continuously track your Product Metrics and strategic Business Metrics so that you can ensure they are actually working.

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

Mckinsey Developer Productivity Review by Daniel Terhorst-North
Daniel responds to the McKinsey article on measuring developer productivity as if he were asked to review the doc before publication.

When Managers Take A Coach Approach Everyone Wins by Teresa Hopke
Discover how coaching-minded managers focus on developing their team members, building trust and promoting a culture of feedback and growth.

Product Direction

The Pageview Paradox: How Great Results Cause Poor Performance by Ryan Law
Exploring the consequences of being "data-driven" and how focusing on metrics can hinder long-term business growth and customer trust.

AARRR: Getting The Most Out Of ☠ Pirate Metrics by Dave Baines
Dave dives deep into the pirate metrics framework, a simple way to model your proposition, identify key metrics and stay focused on what matters.

Continuous Discovery

Uncover The Hidden Impact Of Your UX Research by Eli Goldberg
Eli shares the experiences of conducting a study during the pandemic and the unexpected ways in which it influenced various teams in her organization.

UX Research: Craft versus Impact by Roberta Dombrowski
Focus more on the impact of UX research over craftsmanship. Researchers must understand business models and stakeholder priorities.

Continuous Design

The Value Of Good Design by Teresa Mira
Explore the importance of design in business success, its impact on profitability and the importance of user-centered approaches.

Combining UXD and SEO For Business Success by Srushti Vachhrajani
Srushti discusses the synergy between UX design and SEO, focusing on how the combination of the two can reduce bounce rates and improve conversions.

Continuous Delivery

Any Day Can Be Prime Day: How Amazon.com Search Uses Chaos Engineering to Handle Over 84K Requests Per Second by Seth Eliot How Amazon use Chaos Engineering to validate the efficacy of their high-scale distributed services that power Search on Amazon.com.

Designing Stripe For Black Friday: How To Achieve 99.9999% Uptime by Fahim ul Haq
Stripe ensures high availability during peak business days through stress testing, capacity planning and robust system modeling.

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