Any phase · Onboarding
Check the health of a live product
When you take over a live product, check how it is really doing: usage, quality, reliability, costs and user satisfaction.
About 3-5 daysEvergreenLast reviewed 5 November 2026
Who this applies to
- Skills it builds
- Data and measurementDiscovery and research
- PM types
- All
- Product types
- All
- Starting points
- Running a live product
- Ways of working
- All
- Experience
- All
- Size of organisation
- All
Steps, by experience
Beginner (under 1 year)
- Find the dashboards and ask what each number means.
- Look at usage trends over the last year.
- Check reliability, incidents and support volumes.
- Read recent user feedback.
- Write a short health summary with the top three concerns.
Intermediate (1 to 4 years)
- Review usage, quality, reliability and cost.
- Identify trends and risks.
- Write a health summary.
Experienced (5+ years)
- Compare health with goals and peers.
- Find the biggest opportunities and risks.
- Use the summary to set your first priorities.
Who can do this
Owner: Product manager
Can be delegated to
- Performance Analyst or Data Analyst: Walk you through the data
- DevOps / SRE: Share reliability and incident data
Reviewed by: Tech Lead
Tool examples
- Looker
- Review existing dashboards.
- Power BI
- Review existing reports.
- Jira
- Review recent incidents and support tickets.
Definition of done
- Usage, quality, reliability and cost reviewed
- Health summary written
- Top concerns agreed
Common pitfalls
- Trusting dashboards without asking how they work
- Ignoring support data
- Changing things before understanding them