Up to this point in the book, we have described experimental methods that you can use to improve your business metrics. Since the decision to accept or reject a change to your system ultimately hinges on the values of those metrics, it is worth spending some time discussing how to define and employ them effectively. This is the subject of the present chapter.
Section 7.1 starts us out by contrasting metrics that are directly relevant to a business with other, more technical metrics. In section 7.2, we’ll see how business metrics are derived and how they evolve, and we’ll see how metrics have an inherent timescale that affects your ability to measure them. Finally, in section 7.3, we’ll talk about how to use multiple business metrics to evaluate and experiment.