Telling devs to “own churn” doesn’t work. It’s too abstract. When I pushed this idea, my team pushed back—rightly. Every feature, refactor, or bugfix is just a tiny piece of what drives churn or retention. It’s not fair to ask engineers to carry the entire weight of business metrics they barely influence.
Here’s what changed results for us: stop forcing devs to chase lagging indicators like churn. Instead, give them ownership of the leading product metrics tied to their work. Not just “be aware” of churn, but “own” what causes or prevents it.
For example:
- When your team ships a new onboarding flow, they own user adoption rates, completion % and error rates.
- When they redesign a key workflow, they track how many users finish the task, and how quickly.
- When they fix a usability bug, they watch error logs and user satisfaction scores.
Quarterly, we update the team on business health—churn, growth, retention. But day-to-day, engineers dig deep into the metrics they can move. This gives them clarity, focus, and pride. Business impact starts with owning the right problems. When engineers see how their work changes the numbers they control, you get real product ownership. That’s how you build teams that care about outcomes, not just output.