The 5 Essential Product Frameworks with Rapha Cohen

Rapha Cohen, Chief Product Officer at Waze, joined FirstMark’s Product Guild to share the five essential frameworks he uses to run an efficient, high-performing product organization. Frameworks are an incredibly powerful tool, but they’re not a one-size-fits-all solution. Discover in this article the 5 essential product frameworks.

Goals-Signals-Metrics (GSM) Framework

The purpose of the GSM framework is to select metrics by solving backwards from your North Star product or overall goal. For more information, visit this website https://productschool.com/instructor/rapha-cohen/. The goal is the future state of the world if your product succeeds. Purpose is something you should be able to convey in a short story. Then you identify the signals, evidence of user behavior that indicates that you have achieved your goal. Finally, you identify specific quantitative metrics that tell you whether you are seeing these signals or not.

KPI graph framework

Here we are talking about creating a graph showing the interdependent nature of KPIs. Rapha believes the KPI graph approach is superior to the more traditional KPI tree approach. Traditional KPI trees break down all your KPIs into sub-KPIs ; the problem with this hierarchical approach is that it doesn’t take into account things like « network effects » or the interdependent nature of metrics. With KPI charts, you develop a deep understanding of how actions in one area will affect metrics and behavior elsewhere.

HEART framework

The HEART framework is related to and often used in conjunction with the GSM framework. HEART is the framework that evaluates user experience based on five user-centric measures : happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success. To implement HEART, you simply create a table with two axes : GSM (goals, signals, metrics) live on the x-axis, while HEART metrics are placed on the y-axis. Carefully filling each box gives you a detailed framework to gauge the success of the product.

HOSKR frame

HOSKR can be considered as a hybrid between OKR and GSM frameworks. The main difference is that HOSKR ties metrics and goals to a fundamental assumption. As with other frameworks, HOSKR starts with a concrete worldview, a vision of how your product will impact the world. From this assumption, you develop a series of goals that prove that you have achieved your primary goal.

Framework OKRs

The OKR framework is one of the best-known goal-setting frameworks. It is typically used to set top-down goals in an organization. For those unfamiliar, check out Google’s OKR playbook or John Doerr’s Measure What Matters. Unsurprisingly, OKRs are widely used at Waze. We had the opportunity to dig deeper into how Rapha and her team leverage OKRs across the organization and ensure they are still usable in day-to-day work.