Business Context

TaskFlow is a B2B team collaboration product used by 12,000 paying companies. Over the last two quarters, engineering output increased, but leadership is worried the team is optimizing for activity rather than customer value.

Metric Scenario

In Q1, the product team shipped 28 features, closed 410 Jira tickets, and increased story points completed by 22% versus Q4. However, core business outcomes were mixed: weekly active teams rose only from 48,000 to 49,200 (+2.5%), trial-to-paid conversion fell from 14.8% to 13.6%, 90-day logo retention declined from 88% to 85%, and average weekly projects created per active team stayed flat at 6.1. Customer support tickets about onboarding increased 18%, while NPS dropped from 41 to 37.

The CPO asks you to design a KPI framework that helps the team focus on the right problems instead of measuring busyness. You need to identify which metrics should define real progress, how to separate leading from lagging indicators, and how to diagnose whether current work is improving activation, engagement, and retention.

Requirements

1. Define a north star metric and 3-5 supporting KPIs that reflect meaningful product progress.
2. Distinguish which metrics are leading indicators versus lagging indicators.
3. Explain why output metrics like features shipped or story points are insufficient on their own.
4. Decompose the weak business outcomes to identify where the team may be solving the wrong problems.
5. Recommend a review cadence and decision rules for using these metrics in planning.

Data Available

• product_events: user_id, team_id, event_name, project_id, event_timestamp, feature_area
• accounts: account_id, company_size, plan_type, signup_date, trial_start_date, paid_conversion_date, churn_date
• team_activity_daily: team_id, date, active_users, projects_created, tasks_completed, integrations_enabled
• support_tickets: ticket_id, account_id, created_at, category, severity
• nps_responses: account_id, response_date, score, response_text