Count the Behavior Before Arguing About It
The Product Telemetry Checklist
Companion to You Are Not the User · Updated 2026-09-29
Use this when a team is about to argue about how users behave in a workflow the product could already be counting. Worked in “Instrument Before Arguing.”
The Product Telemetry Checklist, part one: what to instrument.
| Signal | Instrumented? | Where it lives and who can read it |
|---|---|---|
| Task start and completion | ||
| Time on task | ||
| Abandonment point | ||
| Errors and validation failures | ||
| Repetition | ||
| Backtracking | ||
| Exports and copy-outs (leaving the application to finish the job) | ||
| Role and practice (or site) dimensions | ||
| Workflow sequences | ||
| The downstream outcome the workflow exists to produce |
The Product Telemetry Checklist, part two: what telemetry can’t answer.
| Question telemetry can’t answer | How we’ll find out instead |
|---|---|
| Why the user did it | |
| What the user intended | |
| Work done outside the product | |
| Whether the right thing happened |
Part one tells you what users did; part two lists the reasons to go watch them anyway. An empty exports row means you’re missing the signal that most often shows the product failing to finish the job.