The right metric for the right stakeholder: a case study of improving product usability

Abstract

The integration of Agile practices with User-Centered Design studies the interactions between designers and software developers, and the alignment of the design and development processes. However, designers are often required to operate within a wider business context, driven by high-level metrics, like Monthly Active Users or Net Promoter Score. Within this context, they are challenged to show how design initiatives and improvements affect the business metrics. This paper describes a case study of a large scale effort to improve the usability of Jira, a project tracking software. It outlines the process that was followed to break down business goals into actionable work streams for the product teams, and to align the metrics that product teams iterate through to the metrics that high level management cares about.