Product management
Understand service performance
- Part of
- Product management collection
- Last reviewed
- 30 September 2026
Use evidence to understand performance, prioritise improvements and deliver better outcomes.
Use service performance data to understand whether your service meets user needs, delivers value and achieves its intended outcomes.
Use performance measures to decide what to improve next. They are an essential source of information for product managers and provide evidence to support product decisions and prioritisation.
How to measure product performance
Performance measurement helps product teams understand whether a service is meeting user needs and where improvements are needed. This simple loop shows how evidence is used to make better decisions.
1. User needs
What do people need from the service?
2. Outcomes
What change are we trying to achieve?
3. Measures
What evidence will show progress?
4. Insight
What is the evidence telling us?
5. Decisions
What should we improve next?
Your performance framework should help answer these questions:
- can users achieve what they need to do?
- is the service delivering its intended outcomes?
- where are users experiencing problems or friction?
- what improvements should we prioritise?
- are we delivering value for users, the department and government?
Start with outcomes
Every service exists to solve a problem, meet a user need or support a policy objective. Start by measuring whether those outcomes are being achieved.
Examples might include:
- reducing administrative burden
- increasing compliance with a policy or process
- improving timeliness of decisions
- increasing participation in a programme
- improving educational outcomes
- reducing avoidable contact
- improving user confidence or capability
- increasing the proportion of eligible users who successfully complete a process
A service that performs efficiently but does not deliver its intended outcomes cannot be considered successful.
Build a balanced performance framework
No single measure can tell you everything you need to know about service performance.
Use a combination of measures and evidence to identify problems and opportunities for improvement.
Outcome measures
Outcome measures show whether the service is achieving its intended purpose.
Examples include:
- participation rates
- successful completion of policy objectives
- improvements in user capability or confidence
- changes in behaviour or compliance
Service measures
Service measures show how effectively the service operates.
Examples include:
- completion rates
- processing times
- application success rates
- service availability
- user satisfaction
- cost per transaction
- support demand
- backlog volumes
User behaviour measures
User behaviour measures show how people use the service and where they experience friction.
Examples include:
- user journeys
- drop-off rates
- search terms
- navigation patterns
- error rates
- form abandonment
- accessibility issues
These measures are often useful when investigating changes in service performance or user outcomes.
Qualitative evidence
Not everything that matters can be measured through analytics.
Qualitative evidence helps explain user behaviour and provides context for performance data.
This may include:
- user research findings
- user feedback
- support requests
- complaints
- stakeholder feedback
- operational insight
Quantitative data shows what is happening.
Qualitative evidence helps explain why.
Use both together.
Use measures to make decisions
Performance measurement should support decision-making.
Teams should use evidence to:
- identify user problems
- prioritise improvements
- evaluate whether changes have had the intended impact
- understand trade-offs between competing priorities
- assess whether resources are being used effectively
The value of a performance framework comes from how it informs decisions, not from how many measures are reported.
Be cautious of:
- relying on a single measure to represent service performance
- focusing on activity rather than outcomes
- optimising for a metric that does not reflect user needs
- treating proxy measures as direct evidence of success
- assuming that what is easy to measure is what matters most
Different measures answer different questions. The most useful performance frameworks combine multiple sources of evidence to provide a balanced view of service performance.
Review your measures regularly
Ask regularly, what evidence do we need to make our next decision? Performance frameworks should evolve as services evolve.
New user needs, technologies and channels may require teams to adapt how they understand performance.
As a product manager, you should review your measures regularly and consider whether they continue to reflect:
- user needs
- intended outcomes
- policy objectives
- departmental priorities
- changes in technology and user behaviour
A good performance framework should continually help teams answer the same question: what evidence do we need to make our next decision?