Product Analytics

---
name: product-analytics
description: >
  Product analytics framework for PMs and analytics engineers on instrumenting
  products, defining metrics, building activation/retention funnels, running
  cohort analyses, and translating product data into decisions. Use when
  designing a product metric tree, instrumenting a new feature, auditing
  existing instrumentation, defining North Star + counter-metrics, or
  building an analytics roadmap.
license: MIT + Commons Clause
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
  author: borghei
  category: product-team
  domain: product-analytics
  updated: 2026-05-27
  tags: [analytics, metrics, north-star, retention, activation, funnel, cohort, instrumentation]
---

# Product Analytics

A product analytics skill focused on **decisions from data**, not dashboards.
Covers the metric tree, instrumentation patterns, funnel + retention +
cohort analysis, and the operational rituals that turn measurement into
product changes.

## When to use this skill

- Designing the **North Star metric** and its tree of input metrics
- Auditing **product instrumentation** (events, properties, gaps)
- Building or refreshing an **activation funnel** for a new product or feature
- Designing or analyzing **retention cohorts** (D1/D7/D30/W1/W4/M1/M3)
- Building or refining the **PM analytics dashboard**
- Translating product data into **decisions and roadmap inputs**
- Auditing **dashboards for actionability** (kill the vanity)

## Inputs the advisor expects

- Product type (B2B SaaS, consumer, marketplace, etc.)
- Current analytics stack (Amplitude / Mixpanel / GA4 / Segment / Snowflake + dbt + Looker)
- Existing North Star + input metrics
- Current event taxonomy + instrumentation gaps
- Top product questions you can't answer today
- Org expectations: who consumes analytics, at what cadence

## Workflows

### Workflow 1 — Design the metric tree

1. Define the **North Star** (one number that summarizes value delivered).
2. Decompose into **inputs** (drivers of the NS).
3. Add **guardrails / counter-metrics** that catch unintended consequences.
4. Run `metric_tree_designer.py` against your candidate tree to surface
   imbalance, missing layers, anti-patterns.

```bash
python3 product-analytics/scripts/metric_tree_designer.py \
  --input metric_tree.json --format markdown
```

### Workflow 2 — Audit instrumentation

1. Pull the current event taxonomy + properties.
2. Run `event_taxonomy_auditor.py` to flag PII risk, schema drift,
   naming inconsistency, duplication, undocumented events, and gaps.
3. Generate the remediation backlog and assign owners.

```bash
python3 product-analytics/scripts/event_taxonomy_auditor.py \
  --input event_inventory.json --format markdown
```

### Workflow 3 — Analyze retention cohorts

1. Pull cohort retention data (raw counts by cohort week and offset).
2. Run `retention_cohort_analyzer.py` to compute retention rates, identify
   patterns (smile curve, leaky bucket), and surface cohort-level alerts.

```bash
python3 product-analytics/scripts/retention_cohort_analyzer.py \
  --input retention.json --format markdown
```

## Decision frameworks

### North Star metric — what makes one good

A good North Star metric:
- **Measures value delivered to the user** (not just usage)
- **Aligns to business outcome** indirectly via clear chain
- **Is a leading indicator** of long-term success
- **Can move week-over-week** (so it can be acted on)
- **Is hard to game** without delivering real value

Common patterns by product type:

| Product type | Common North Star |
|--------------|-------------------|
| Communication / messaging | Messages sent per WAU |
| Marketplace | Successful transactions per MAU |
| Content | Hours of meaningful content consumed |
| Productivity SaaS | Activated workspaces × engagement depth |
| Consumer payments | Active payment senders per week |
| Developer tool | Weekly active developers performing core action |

Don't pick "DAU" or "Revenue" as North Star — they're outputs, not value drivers.

### Metric tree structure

A clean metric tree has three layers:

1. **North Star** (1 metric)
2. **Input metrics** (3–5 that combine to produce the NS)
3. **Driver metrics** (per input, 3–5 that move the input)

Plus a **guardrails / counter-metrics** sidebar (3–5 that catch
unintended consequences).

If you have 30 KPIs at the top level, you have no top level.

### The activation question

For any new product or feature, ask: "What does it look like when a user
realizes value from this?"

That's the **activation event**. A clear definition makes:
- Onboarding design — clearer
- Funnel analysis — possible
- Eval of marketing channels — sharper
- Customer success interventions — better-timed

Common mistake: defining activation as "completed signup." Signup is
table stakes; activation is the moment of value.

### Retention curve shapes

| Shape | Diagnosis | Action |
|-------|-----------|--------|
| Power-law smile | Healthy product-market fit | Invest in scale |
| Slow decay then flat | Product-market fit | Investigate the flatline cohort segment |
| Steep then zero | Novelty product | Re-evaluate the value proposition |
| Linear decline | Leaky bucket | Improve retention features |
| Inverted (rising) | Network effects kicking in | Acquire harder |

Read shape before reading numbers.

### Vanity vs actionable metrics

| Metric | Vanity if | Actionable if |
|--------|-----------|---------------|
| DAU / MAU | Tracked alone | Decomposed by segment, action |
| Pageviews | Tracked alone | Tied to conversion funnel |
| Total revenue | Tracked alone | Decomposed by cohort, channel, segment |
| App downloads | Tracked alone | Paired with activation rate |
| Total accounts | Tracked alone | Paired with active accounts |

The test: "If this metric goes up 10% next week, what do we change?"
If you don't have an answer, it's vanity.

## Common engagements

### "Help me design our analytics for the launch"
1. Define activation event and 3–5 input metrics.
2. Spec event taxonomy (event names, properties, user/account context).
3. Pilot dashboards (one for the team, one for execs).
4. Set the review cadence; don't let dashboards rot.

### "Our funnel rate is dropping. What's wrong?"
1. Decompose: which step's conversion dropped?
2. Segment: which user segment is driving it?
3. Cross-check: is the dropping segment newly acquired?
4. Test hypotheses against the data; don't guess.

### "Help me audit our instrumentation"
1. Pull the event inventory (last 30 days, all events fired ≥10x).
2. Tag PII risk, naming inconsistency, gaps.
3. Identify the events that should be fired but aren't.
4. Build the remediation backlog with owners.

## Anti-patterns to avoid

- **More dashboards = more insight.** Usually inverse. Cull aggressively.
- **Confusing event volume for insight.** Tracking everything badly is worse than tracking a few things well.
- **PII in event properties.** Privacy + compliance nightmare.
- **Custom event names per developer.** Naming convention or chaos.
- **No event documentation.** Future you and the next analyst will hate present you.
- **One metric for the whole product.** Different surfaces need different metrics.
- **Vanity North Star.** "Total signups" tells you nothing about value.

## References

- `references/metric-tree-and-north-star.md` — patterns by product type, tree structure, anti-patterns
- `references/instrumentation-and-event-design.md` — event taxonomy, naming, PII, schema discipline
- `references/cohort-retention-and-funnel-analysis.md` — analysis techniques, segmentation, anti-patterns

## Related skills

- `product-team/ab-test-setup` — experimentation (paired with metrics)
- `product-team/product-strategist` — strategy upstream of metrics
- `data-analytics/` skills — for the data engineering side
- `engineering/data-quality-auditor` — for instrumentation data quality
- `c-level-advisor/chief-data-officer-advisor` — for platform decisions