Survival Metrics: Prioritization for Product Managers
Adam Thomas
Product leader for tough decisions
Stop being an order-taker; use survival metrics to drive product strategy.
You know this moment: you’re feeling stuck. Every team is begging for more features, and your job is to nod along and “make it work.”
You’re managing by keeping everyone happy instead of making real product bets. You can feel that the strategy is off, but you don’t have a clear way to say what should stop, what should pivot, and what deserves more investment.
This course gives you that decision system.
In Survival Metrics, you’ll build a small set of stop / pivot / invest metrics that tie revenue, risk, and learning back to your product strategy and the politics in your org. You’ll practice turning vague ideas into crisp invest statements, then use them to run better roadmap conversations with your leadership team.
Underneath it all, we’ll work on critical thinking: how to frame problems, challenge assumptions, and cut through noise so you’re no longer an order-taker, but the person others trust to make the hard calls.
What you’ll learn
Learn a survival-metrics system that turns roadmap anxiety into clear, defensible stop / pivot / invest decisions.
Define a small set of survival metrics tied directly to product bets and goals.
Set decision thresholds so teams know in advance when to stop, pivot, or double down.
Practice turning fuzzy ideas into concrete, testable survival metrics.
Use invest statements to compare initiatives by impact, risk, confidence, and cost.
Map work into portfolios so you can see tradeoffs across teams, not just tickets.
Build a repeatable process for ranking bets instead of re-arguing every quarter.
Use survival metrics to frame tradeoffs so leaders debate bets, not personalities.
Practice scripts for explaining stop / pivot / invest calls to skeptical stakeholders.
Run live reviews using students’ real examples, with feedback on language and framing.
Translate survival metrics into simple narratives about risk, upside, and timing.
Use one-page visuals and templates to show how bets ladder up to strategy.
Get feedback on your own roadmap story so it’s sharper and easier to repeat.
Design decision boundaries that make it safer to kill or change projects.
Identify the real power dynamics blocking good decisions in your org.
Practice aligning stakeholders without becoming the “idea police” or a doormat.
Learn question sets that uncover hidden assumptions in product ideas and metrics.
Use short, focused exercises to practice structuring fuzzy problems into decisions.
Leave with habits you can reuse in 1:1s, planning docs, and leadership reviews.
Learn directly from Adam
Adam Thomas
Managed Over 200MM In Product Portfolios over the last 15 years - 2x Founder.
Who this course is for
PMs and product leaders who own a roadmap but feel prioritization is chaotic, political, and hard to defend.
PMs stuck in prioritization paralysis: everything is priority 1, nothing gets cut, and the roadmap keeps changing.
Product leaders tired of taking orders who need a clear, defensible way to say stop, pivot, or invest.
What's included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Adam Thomas in a real-time, interactive format.
Lifetime access
Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.
Community of peers
Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.
Certificate of completion
Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.
Maven Guarantee
This course is backed by the Maven Guarantee. Students are eligible for a full refund up until the halfway point of the course.
Course syllabus
10 lessons • 3 projects
Week 1
Taming the Backlog: From Order-Taker to Proactive PM
Designing Survival Metrics: Stop, Pivot, or Invest
Operating & Storytelling with Survival Metrics
Schedule
Live sessions
3-5 hrs / week
Projects
1-3 hrs / week
Async content
1-3 hrs / week
Testimonials
- Survival Metrics has proven a critical framework for aligning product teams with the existential success of their business.
Matt LeMay
Author of Product Management in Practice - Survival Metrics drives teams to success by helping teams find clarity on what drives incentives, and makes the next steps easy.
Chris Butler
Lead PM @ Google - He (Adam) was also very thoughtful in his work, and his excitement and knowledge of the field of product management were infectious. It's clear he's motivated and dedicated to a high standard in this field, and I'd be happy to work with him again.
Rebecca Feliciano
Director of Operations at Product Collective | Co-Organizer of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference - As someone who helps new services get off the ground, I wasn’t sure if Survival Metrics was for me, as the title felt dire. I was so happy I decided to take this workshop. Survival Metrics have been helpful in sharpening my decision making process by giving me a set of tools that helps keeps teams strategically focused, but not overly locked in.
Adam Attas
Product Manager - Survival Metrics were very helpful with organizational level thinking - giving language to help position metrics based on the person you are engaging with and the desired outcome.
Diana Stepner
VP Product - Survival Metrics helped me understand how to keep conversations about product strategy away from emotional reasoning and focused on the impact of the choices we make. By acknowledging these tactics for what they are, we step out of the desire to control our environment and into our ability to control our next steps as a team.
Sade Ragsdale
Group Product Manager
Frequently asked questions
$1,000
USD