Questions an analytics lead should ask engineering before freeze

Freeze week is late to discover that the new client mints a user ID on first launch and never reads the old one. The questions below are the ones we wish were asked while there is still time to change a ticket, not a store listing.

One: which identifier will define a returning person on day one, and does anything in the old app write that same identifier today? Two: whose clock buckets a ‘day’ — device local time, a server in Singapore, or the vendor’s default? A Ramadan campaign compared across a clock change looks like a traffic drop.

Three: which events fire when the app is backgrounded? Legacy crash and session libraries often counted a session on resume. New SDKs may not. Four: which screens are remaining as webviews, and do those titles reach the property? Five: if a tester wipes the app and reinstalls, which of the above still hold?

Write the answers in the same document as the baseline, with a name next to each. Unsigned answers have a habit of meaning ‘we will see after launch’, which is how year-on-year charts lose a month.