2. OBJECTIVES & SUCCESS METRICS

Connected to: Section 1 (Executive Summary), Section 10 (ROI), Section 9 (Monitoring)

Primary Business Objectives

Objective 1: [Primary Objective Title]

• What: [Clear statement of what you want to achieve]
• Why: [Business rationale - how does this advance company goals?]
• Measurable Success: [How you'll know it's done - specific number or outcome]
• Timeline: [When should this be achieved?]
• Owner: [Who is accountable]
• Dependencies: [What must be true for this to work?]

Example:

• What: Launch [Product Name] v1.0 with complete API coverage and production-ready documentation
• Why: Enables users to immediately start using the system, establishing market leadership
• Measurable Success: Launch v1.0, 100% API documentation coverage, pass 500+ integration tests, zero critical security issues
• Timeline: End of Week 8 (Phase 2 completion)
• Owner: Technical Lead
• Dependencies: Core features complete, API design finalized, security audit passed

Objective 2: [Secondary Objective Title]

• What: [Clear statement]
• Why: [Business rationale]
• Measurable Success: [Specific metric]
• Timeline: [When]
• Owner: [Who]
• Dependencies: [Prerequisites]

Objective 3: [Tertiary Objective Title]

• What: [Clear statement]
• Why: [Business rationale]
• Measurable Success: [Specific metric]
• Timeline: [When]
• Owner: [Who]
• Dependencies: [Prerequisites]

30-60-90 Day Success Metrics

Day 30 Checkpoint: MVP Launch & Market Validation

Day 30 Gate Criteria (Must-Have):

• MVP shipped to npm
• Zero critical security issues found
• 50+ active beta testers
• Steering committee approves proceeding to Day 60

Day 60 Checkpoint: Growth & Early Traction

Day 60 Gate Criteria (Must-Have):

• 500+ users acquired
• Product-market fit validated (60%+ feature adoption rate)
• 2+ enterprise pilots in progress
• Revenue/partnership deals totaling $50K+
• Steering committee approves Series A fundraising or Scale Phase

Day 90 Checkpoint: Product-Market Fit & Business Sustainability

Day 90 Gate Criteria (Must-Have):

• 5,000+ users acquired
• 10,000+ active users
• Revenue/partnership pipeline at $150K+ annualized rate
• Series A commitments OR profitability achieved
• Board/Executive decision on next chapter: Series A → Scale or acquisition/strategic partnership

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) - Ongoing Tracking

Product KPIs

• Daily Active Users (DAU): [Target increase from 0 → X by day 90]
• Monthly Active Users (MAU): [Target increase from 0 → X by day 90]
• Feature Adoption Rate: % of users taking primary action = [Target 60%+]
• Time-to-First-Value (TTFV): [Target: <15 minutes from signup to first deployment]
• Engagement Score: [Composite metric combining DAU, feature usage, return frequency]
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): [Target: 40+ by day 60]
• 30-Day Retention Rate: [Target: 70%+ by day 60]

Engineering/Quality KPIs

• Code Coverage: [Target: 80%+ by day 30, 90%+ by day 90]
• Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR): [Target: <1 hour for production incidents]
• Defect Escape Rate: [Target: <1% - bugs found in production vs. testing]
• Test Pass Rate: [Target: 99%+ of automated tests passing in CI/CD]
• Deployment Frequency: [Target: Daily by day 60, multiple times daily by day 90]
• Lead Time for Changes: [Target: <4 hours from commit to production by day 90]
• API Performance (P95 latency): [Target: <200ms by day 30, <150ms by day 90]
• System Uptime: [Target: 99.5%+ SLA]

Business KPIs

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): [$X] = Marketing spend / New customers
• Lifetime Value (LTV): [$X] = Annual revenue per customer × years retained
• LTV/CAC Ratio: [Target: 3:1 or higher by day 90]
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): [$X] - for SaaS/subscription revenue
• Annual Run Rate (ARR): [$X] - MRR × 12
• Churn Rate: [% of customers lost monthly - Target: <5%]
• Revenue per User: [$X] - total revenue / users
• Payback Period: [# months to recover CAC - Target: <12 months]

Community/Market KPIs

• GitHub Stars: [Target: 100 by day 30, 500+ by day 60, 1000+ by day 90]
• npm Downloads: [Target: 1000 by day 30, 5000 by day 60, 50,000 by day 90]
• Discord Members: [Target: 100 by day 30, 500 by day 60, 1000+ by day 90]
• Twitter/Social Mentions: [Sentiment-weighted impressions]
• Enterprise Pilots: [# of active pilots: 0 → 1 by day 30, 3+ by day 60]
• Media Mentions: [# of press mentions, placement tier]

Metric Ownership & Accountability

Success Definition by Phase

Phase 1 (Foundation - Weeks 1-2)

This phase is successful if:

• Architecture finalized and approved by Technical Review Board
• Project governance established
• Team onboarded with roles/responsibilities clear
• Development environment fully operational
• First sprint planned with 10+ story points of deliverables
• Success Metric: Steering committee approves proceeding to MVP development

Phase 2 (MVP Development - Weeks 3-8)

This phase is successful if:

• All core features coded and tested (80%+ coverage minimum)
• API fully documented
• npm package published
• Security audit completed with zero criticals
• 50+ beta users onboarded
• Burn-down stays within 10% of sprint plan
• Success Metric: Day 30 Gate passed; MVP ready for scale phase

Phase 3 (Growth - Weeks 9-16)

This phase is successful if:

• User growth follows target curve (200+ to 500+ to 2000+)
• Feature adoption reaches 60%+
• NPS ≥ 40
• 2-3 enterprise pilots in progress
• Revenue/partnerships at $50K+ rate
• Code coverage maintained at 85%+
• Zero critical security incidents
• Success Metric: Day 60 Gate passed; market fit validated; Series A trajectory confirmed

Phase 4 (Scale & Fundraising - Weeks 17-24)

This phase is successful if:

• 5,000+ users with 2,000+ MAU
• 10,000+ active users
• $150K+ revenue/partnership annualized rate
• Series A commitments signed OR profitability achieved
• Unit economics positive (LTV/CAC ≥ 3:1)
• Team scaled to full capacity
• Organizational processes established
• Success Metric: Day 90 Gate passed; Series A or profitable growth path secured

How Metrics Connect to Roadmap

Every roadmap item maps to one or more KPIs:

• Feature X → Increases feature adoption by [X%]
• Partnership Y → Enables $[X] revenue + [X] new users
• Marketing Z → Drives [X] new GitHub stars, [X] new users
• Hiring W → Enables [X% reduction] in MTTR, [X% increase] in deployment frequency

When prioritizing work, always ask: "Which roadmap items have the highest impact on our Day 30/60/90 success metrics?"

This section is your scorecard. Review metrics weekly, communicate progress to stakeholders, and adjust strategy if metrics trend negatively.

Connected to: Section 1 (Executive Summary), Section 9 (Monitoring), Section 10 (ROI), Section 11 (Governance)