Thread by @johncutlefish

I'm going crazy trying to explain this seemingly basic concept, but striking out. Any ideas appreciated!

At the day job (@Amplitude_HQ) I meet teams who imagine the following...that there is a linear relationship between analytics instrumentation "work" and insights ... (1/n)

Meanwhile - the teams that are actually doing the work (and integrating it into day-to-day product work), see something that looks more like this...

A quick pass at instrumentation unlocks a lot of valuable insights. Integrating it into day-to-day work unlocks even more (2/n)

Can't put my finger on the why

With a self-service analytics product, it is 1) easy to add new events, props, etc. and 2) you have a whole variety of insight variations.

With just 2 events, 5 props each, and a handful of user properties you can answer LOTS of questions (3/n)

Some companies on the market scare teams into believing that they can never predict the questions they'll have ... so they should somehow declare measurement bankruptcy and settle for lower quality insights.

Yet the teams that figure this out don't have that problem(4/n)

I wonder if this is a left-over from setups that DO have a more linear relationship? Where if you don't plan the exact insight in advance, you'll be screwed?

This concept of the a small amount of work unlocking lots of potential insights is hard to convey. (5/end)