Metrics Course

Yes — especially so. Most PMs have some familiarity with frameworks like HEART and Pirate Metrics, but familiarity is not the same as having a structured approach to choosing the right metrics for any context. Many students arrive knowing frameworks in isolation but without a clear system for deciding when to use each. The course introduces six metric lenses that give you a structured way to evaluate any metric — not just the ones your organisation already tracks.

The Metrics course is an online, self-paced course for product managers and product leaders who want a structured framework for choosing, evaluating, and communicating metrics. It covers what makes a good metric, how to apply six metric lenses across any product context, how to work with customer segments and cohorts, and how to communicate data in a way that drives decisions.

The course is designed for product managers who track metrics but struggle to choose which ones to act on, product leaders looking for a structured framework, and enterprise teams who need consistent OKRs, KPIs, and success criteria across multiple teams. It is also well suited to anyone transitioning into a more data-driven product role.

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are often used interchangeably — but they serve different purposes. KPIs measure ongoing health and performance, giving you a continuous read on how the product or business is doing. OKRs define where you are trying to go and how you will know you have arrived. The Metrics course covers both within the Strategic Metrics Lens unit, helping you understand the OKRs vs KPIs distinction, when to use each, and how they fit together within your broader metrics framework.

Input metrics measure the actions and activities your team takes — what you put in. Output metrics measure the results of those actions — what comes out. Output metrics alone, like revenue or retention, are often lagging indicators that only tell you what happened after it is too late to change course. The Metrics course teaches you to identify leading indicators — input metrics that signal future outcomes — so you can act before problems surface in your output data. TrackCo's story in the course is a vivid example of what happens when a team relies only on lagging indicators.

Yes. While many metrics resources focus exclusively on quantitative data, the Metrics course addresses qualitative metrics through the Quality Metrics Lens — covering customer satisfaction, proxy metrics, and quality indicators. You will learn how to find useful proxies for things that are hard to measure directly, and how to combine qualitative and quantitative signals to build a fuller picture of your product's performance.

None. The Metrics course focuses on the thinking and frameworks behind good metrics practice — how to choose the right metrics, evaluate them across six dimensions, and communicate them effectively. It is not a course in specific analytics tools for product managers. The frameworks apply regardless of whether your organisation uses Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics, or a custom data stack.

Yes. As AI tools make it faster and cheaper to build and ship, knowing which metrics signal real progress becomes more critical, not less. The course frameworks apply directly to AI products — including how to set meaningful success criteria when outcomes are harder to predict, how to use quality metrics to evaluate AI-generated outputs, and how to communicate progress to stakeholders in a way that reflects actual value rather than just usage volume.

The course has 5 units and 32 bite-sized lessons, each around 10 minutes. Most students work through it over 4–6 weeks alongside their full-time role. You have 12 months' access with no deadline, so there is no pressure to rush — and you can revisit any lesson, template, or activity any time.

Yes. Enterprise teams often roll out the Metrics course to build a shared metrics framework across their organisation. When everyone on the product team is evaluating metrics through the same lenses and working from the same definitions of success, decisions get faster and cross-team alignment gets easier. Most teams also choose to bundle the Metrics course with PM Foundations or our full product catalogue. Talk to our team about group licensing and LMS integration.

The course was created by Melissa Perri, Founder of Product Institute and author of Escaping the Build Trap (O'Reilly Media). Melissa has taught product management at Harvard Business School and advised Fortune 500 product organisations worldwide. 16,652 product professionals have taken the Metrics course.