What it is
Defining, before design and build, how the team will know the work succeeded. Goals-Signals-Metrics moves from a goal, to the behavior that would signal it, to a measurable metric. HEART (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task success) is a menu, not a checklist.
Why use it
Post-launch evaluation can only judge an outcome defined in advance. Agreeing goals, signals, and targets early aligns the team, shows what to instrument, and stops measures being chosen to fit the result.
Use this when
- Scope is being set and success is undefined
- Stakeholders describe success in different, untestable terms
- A launch will be judged with analytics or post-launch research
- Instrumentation must be requested before development
You may not need this when
- Metrics for this scope are already defined, agreed, and instrumented
- The change is small enough that one existing metric covers it
- The work is exploratory and its outcome is learning
Dependencies — what you need
- Agreed goals, ideally from the story map or opportunity tree
- Analytics and engineering input on what can be measured
- Baseline data, where it exists
- Decision-makers willing to agree targets before launch
People involved
- Design
- Product
- Analytics
- Engineering
- Stakeholders
Typical outputs
- Goals mapped to signals and metrics, with definitions
- Baselines and targets, or a note that they are unknown
- A measurement plan: sources, owners, review timing
- Instrumentation requirements
Template
Success Metrics template
A fill-in structure for running this method: what to prepare, what to do, what to record, and how to read the result.
How AI can help
AI as augmentation — not replacement
- Draft a goals-signals-metrics table for the team to revise
- Suggest candidate HEART metrics, noting new instrumentation
- Flag vague metrics, or ones that could rise without helping users
- Draft a measurement plan outline for the owners
AI prompt
A prompt for any AI assistant. It works only from material you paste in, keeps assumptions apart from findings, and leaves the decisions to you.