Books on Product Metrics and Analytics

Choosing what to measure, reading the result honestly, and forecasting without pretending to certainty.

Measurement goes wrong in two directions, being metrics that track activity rather than value, and results read with more confidence than the data supports. These cover both, from picking the metric through to the statistics of running experiments at scale.

  1. Lean Analytics

    4.02 ratings

    Which metric matters at which stage, broken down by business model, with real benchmark numbers rather than principles alone.

  2. Outcomes Over Output

    The shortest statement of why measuring what you shipped tells you nothing about whether it worked.

  3. Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments

    The reference on A/B testing done properly, including the traps that make a result look better than it is.

  4. Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability

    Forecasting from cycle time rather than estimates, and the charts that make flow visible. The most practical delivery metrics book.

  5. Measure What Matters

    5.02 ratings

    How goals and measures connect, and the difference between a committed and an aspirational target.

  6. Accelerate

    3.315 ratings

    Four delivery metrics with the research behind them published in full, which is rare enough to be worth the read on its own.

  7. Storytelling with Data

    4.86 ratings

    Having measured it, this is how you present it so the decision actually gets made.

  8. Thinking, Fast and Slow

    4.1236 ratings

    The background on why you will over read a small sample and under adjust a forecast.

  9. Objectives and Key Results

    The operating detail of running OKRs, covering the cadence, the scoring and the common ways a rollout stalls. Read it after you have decided the approach and need to actually run it.

Other reading lists