Overview
Cause and effect in products are the result of systems connected by positive and negative feedback loops. How it’s useful Feedback loops help us remember that some of the biggest drivers of growth or decline for a product may be from other parts of the system. For example, say you’re the payments team and your KPI is to grow total credit card payments processed. You have a positive feedback loop with the user acquisition team because as they grow users, you have more potential users that will pay with credit cards. However, you have a negative feedback loop with the cash payments team, who are trying to help users more easily to transact through cash. Knowing these feedback loops can help you change strategy (e.g. you may choose to work on general user acquisition as the best way to grow payment volume), or understand negative changes in your metrics (e.g. credit card payment volume is down, but it’s because the cash payments team is doing really well, not because the credit card products suck). —Brandon Chu
