Field notes · 17 March 2026
Cohort charts worth keeping on the wall
Not every cohort view earns permanent space. These three earn their keep for recurring revenue teams.
A wall of heatmaps impresses visitors and confuses operators. We keep three cohort views for most engagements.
First: retention by signup month for the first twelve periods — enough to see whether recent cohorts behave differently from older ones. Second: retention by acquisition channel for the same window. Third: expansion versus contraction within surviving accounts.
Everything else becomes a drill-down for analysts, not a standing board panel. If a chart needs a five-minute explanation every meeting, it does not belong in the standing pack.
Print the three charts once a quarter and mark them by hand in the Sai Ying Pun workshop. The physical markup reveals where people still disagree about what the color means.