Product review sample template
What shipped, what moved, what you learned, what you will do next.
Four headings, one page
A product review sample template is an agenda, not a star rating. Use four headings: what shipped, which metric moved, what you learned, and the decision. What shipped is a list of changes a user could notice. The metric is one number you named in advance. The learning is a sentence you did not believe last month. The decision changes the roadmap: keep, stop, or investigate.
Tie the metric to the problem statement. If the problem was time spent searching, the metric is that time or a ticket count that stands in for it. A review with no metric is a demo. The feedback loop is this meeting plus the change that follows it.
Sample, labeled as a sample
Product: a club sign-up form. Shipped: the form rejects a date in the past and shows one line of helper text. Metric: support messages about dates, from 11 in the week before to 3 in the week after. Learned: two of the remaining messages were about the club's actual meeting day, which the form never states. Decision: next, add the meeting day under the title. Later items stay later. This sample uses round counts so you can see the shape. Replace them with your own.
Questions
- What is a product review template?
- A one-page agenda: what shipped, the metric you promised to watch, what you learned, and the decision for the next period.
- How often should a product review happen?
- On the same cadence as the metric. A weekly metric wants a short weekly look. A quarterly metric will not survive a daily meeting.
- What if the metric did not move?
- Say so, and decide whether to change the product, change the measure, or stop. A review that only celebrates is a release note.