Google Sheets Success Metrics: North Star, Collaboration Inputs and Guardrails

You are a product manager on Google Sheets. How would you measure whether the product is succeeding? Lay out the metrics you would track and say which one you would watch most closely. ```hint Count value, not visits Think about what a person has gained when a spreadsheet goes well, such as data organized, a question answered or a team working from one file, and look for actions that show it happened rather than counting opens. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is this for Sheets as a whole, or for one segment such as business customers on paid Workspace plans versus free consumer accounts? - Should success include revenue, given that Sheets is sold as part of the Workspace bundle rather than on its own? - Are we measuring the long-run health of the product or the effect of a specific launch? - Does activity from scripts, connected apps and the API count as usage, or only actions taken by people? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - The product's purpose and goals, including its place inside Workspace and against competing spreadsheets - The distinct users (owners, editors, viewers; consumers, students, businesses) and the value each one gets - A metric set across the user journey: acquisition, activation, engagement, collaboration, retention and contribution to the business - One north-star metric with a justification and its known weaknesses - Guardrails for quality, trust and performance, and how the metrics would be segmented ### Follow-up Questions - After a launch, weekly active editors go up but the share of sheets with more than one editor goes down. How do you read that? - How would you tell whether rising downloads in Excel format mean people are leaving Sheets or simply exchanging files with others? - How would the metrics you report change for the admin of a paying business deciding whether to renew Workspace?