Heatmaps for small teams

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Most advice about heatmaps assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

What to keep

They show where attention goes, not why. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here.

The practical version

Combine with recordings for context. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

The short version

Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Three things worth confirming about heatmaps before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• They show where attention goes, not why — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.